US House rejects effort to curtail surveillance

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday, July 24, narrowly beat back an effort to cut funding to National Security Agency programs that scoop up telephone data on millions of Americans. The legislation, introduced by Michigan Republican Justin Amash, was opposed by the White House and several key senior members of Congress, including the heads of the Senate and House intelligence committees. But it forced lawmakers to go on record on perhaps the most sensitive national security issue of the year: whether the NSA program that collects telephone “metadata” on innocent Americans breaches constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

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