The US House of Representatives late on Thursday approved a bill that would restrict the electronic surveillance powers of the National Security Agency (NSA).
The margin was wide, 293 to 123, for the bill attached to the defense budget for next year, which begins on Oct. 1.
However, the bill will have no effect on the agency, as it has not been debated by the Senate.
The message from the lower house is clear.
It wants to embrace a court ruling and bar the agency from using personal electronic information from US citizens without a prior court order.
As it stands, under the so-called Prism program, the agency focuses on foreign targets on the Internet via Facebook, Gmail and other services.
However, the agency has acknowledged it used information taken from the servers of such companies, without approval from a judge.
The US constitution and laws require that the government obtain a court order before searching among data of US citizens.
Thursday’s amendment would bar the agency from carrying out any search without a court order, including information from Americans, even if their communications were picked up inadvertently. The bill would bar the agency and the CIA from including secret “back doors” allowing the agency to skirt coded gateways and gain access to users’ personal data. The agency is accused of having done this for several years.
A year after the revelations made by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Congress is still debating how to reform US surveillance programs.
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