https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180111/09493638985/trump-doesnt-understand-surveillance-powers-house-votes-to-give-him-more-it.shtml

As discussed this morning, the House voted a few hours ago on a bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act that did not reform the widely abused surveillance rules -- other than to codify some of the power allowing them to continue to abuse it for warrantless surveillance on Americans. There was a vote on an important Amendment from Reps. Justin Amash and Zoe Lofgren that would have allowed the reauthorization of the underlying program, but (importantly) required a warrant (as per the 4th Amendment) for spying on Americans. And, unfortunately, the amendment was voted down (183-233) and the awful reauthorization passed, 256 to 164.

The fight over this bill was... weird in so many ways. There was the expected bullshit: politicians outright lying to the public, arguing that the Amash/Lofgren amendment (which again, just said that the program had to be conducted in accordance with the 4th Amendment) would somehow stop the intelligence and law enforcement community from finding terrorists (it wouldn't). Again: everyone expected that. What was weird was (1) having some of Donald Trump's loudest detractors in Congress... then argue against the Amash amendment and in favor of giving the Trump administration more power to warrantlessly spy on Americans and share that data widely among law enforcement. And (2) having President Trump tweet a series of confused tweets this morning that demonstrated that he clearly didn't know what the debate is actually about... and suggesting he was against the reauthorization, despite the fact that the White House (his White House) had issued a statement strongly supporting the reauthorization.