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WASHINGTON, July 24 (RIA Novosti) – US lawmakers are set to vote this week on legislation that would substantially curb the federal government’s ability to collect information about Americans’ phone calls in the wake of fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden’s disclosure of secret government surveillance programs last month.
The amendment to a nearly $600 billion defense bill set for a vote Wednesday or Thursday in the US House of Representatives would place restrictions on how the US National Security Agency (NSA) collects data on the phone records of US citizens, a legislative push the White House urged lawmakers to reject.
“We oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our intelligence community’s counterterrorism tools,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement Tuesday. “This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open, or deliberative process.”
The amendment was introduced by Rep. Justin Amash, a conservative Republican from Michigan who has found bipartisan support for the measure in the House of Representatives.
A top-secret document leaked by Snowden to the British newspaper The Guardian last month showed that the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secretive body known as the FISA court that authorizes such surveillance, had ordered US telephone carrier Verizon to provide the NSA with daily information about calls made by the company’s customers.
The revelation and subsequent leaks by Snowden about US intelligence gathering operations set off an international furor that saw the former CIA employee go into hiding as US authorities issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of leaking state secrets.
Snowden arrived in Russia on a flight to Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23. The United States has revoked his passport, and he has reportedly been holed up in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport while trying to secure temporary asylum from Moscow.
