Vote Tally Count Senate NSA Data Spying restrictions voted down

Now isn’t this an upside down world? Left is Right, and Right is Left. Did I think I would be on the side of Progressives? Vote tally at end of post. Earlier post: Former NSA analyst tells Germany that ‘NSA has totalitarian mentality’ Any questions?  Two posts today. Here we go

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a sweeping overhaul of the once-secret National Security Agency program that collects records of Americans’ phone calls in bulk.

Democrats and a handful of Republicans who supported the measure failed to secure the 60 votes they needed to take up the legislation. The vote was 58 to 42 for consideration.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who drafted the bill, blamed what he said was fear-mongering by the bill’s opponents for its defeat. “Fomenting fear stifles serious debate and constructive solutions,” he said. “This nation deserves more than that.”

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, worked hard to defeat the bill, which had the support of the Obama administration and a coalition of technology companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

The new Congress will also be working against a hard deadline because the legal authority for the data collection will expire next year.

Under the bill, which grew out of the disclosures in June 2013 by Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor, the N.S.A. would have gotten out of the business of collecting Americans’ phone records.

More over at the NY Times

Here are the individual votes:

For individual votes, click on “Blue Vote Icons” below.

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 113^th Congress – 2^nd Session

as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate

Vote Summary

Here the filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.

Filed under: Government, War on Terror Tagged: NSA, senate vote, Spying, William binney