House leaders agree to vote on amendment to bar warrantless browser history searches

Leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives have struck a new deal to protect Americans from warrantless searches of their browsing history.

The issue at stake is an amendment to a reauthorization of key surveillance provisions, some of which date back to the Patriot Act, that failed in the Senate by one vote in May. Now that the issue is going to the House, tech companies and privacy advocates urged House legislators to include protections against warrantless surveillance during their vote.

On Friday, House lawmakers agreed to allow a vote on "significant reform" to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, Gizmodo reported. That amendment, which could be voted on as early as this week, would prohibit the Justice Department from collecting Americans' browsing history without a warrant.

The amendment was cosponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), and will specifically require the FBI to get a warrant even if there's only a chance that a surveillance target is American.

It would also prohibit government agencies from obtaining the IP addresses of anyone who visits a website unless it can "guarantee" that no U.S. persons will be identified.

"Without this prohibition, intelligence officials can potentially have access to information such as our personal health, religious practices, and political views without a warrant," Lofgren said in a statement.

The agreement was a product of three days of negotiations between Lofgren and Rep. Adam Schiff, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, according to Gizmodo.

Earlier in May, a coalition of technology companies — including a group that represents Apple — urged House leaders to include an amendment to protect the browsing privacy of those in the U.S.

6 Comments

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

About 4 years ago

It’ll still be collected, but no one will know about it.

sconosciuto 289 comments · 4 Years

sadly, I think SpamSandwich is correct. This is from seven years ago, does anybody really believe NSA has cleaned up its act? https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-per-year-1.1496157

fastasleep 6451 comments · 14 Years

sconosciuto said:

sadly, I think SpamSandwich is correct. This is from seven years ago, does anybody really believe NSA has cleaned up its act? https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-per-year-1.1496157

Pretty sure this applies to investigations by the FBI targeting certain people. The NSA I assume is still able to monitor if not bulk collecting all data that passes through the various hubs they have their PRISM hardware siphoning bulk internet traffic from. What're you gonna do? ¯\(°_o)/¯

sconosciuto said:

sadly, I think SpamSandwich is correct. This is from seven years ago, does anybody really believe NSA has cleaned up its act? https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-per-year-1.1496157

Edward Snowden made perfectly clear what our spy agencies are capable of doing, all completely illegal and unmonitored.

chasm 3595 comments · 10 Years

fastasleep said:

sconosciuto said:

sadly, I think SpamSandwich is correct. This is from seven years ago, does anybody really believe NSA has cleaned up its act? https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-per-year-1.1496157

Pretty sure this applies to investigations by the FBI targeting certain people. The NSA I assume is still able to monitor if not bulk collecting all data that passes through the various hubs they have their PRISM hardware siphoning bulk internet traffic from. What're you gonna do? ¯\(°_o)/¯

Well, voting in November for stronger Congressional oversight would probably be a good idea. It controls the NSA's (et al) funding. I'm not saying that would magically fix all problems, but it's a place where citizens can put pressure on for reform.