New Bill Claims To Ban 'Surveillance Advertising,' But Doesn't Actually Do It

Overhype

from the half-measures dept

This week Representatives Anna Eshoo and Jan Schakowsky, and Senator Cory Booker introduced the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act, which the trio proclaim will dismantle the snoopvertising industry and make everybody immeasurably safer:

“Surveillance advertising is a predatory and invasive practice. The hoarding of people?s personal data not only abuses privacy, but also drives the spread of misinformation, domestic extremism, racial division, and violence,? said Senator Booker. ?With the introduction of the Ban Surveillance Advertising Act, advertisers will be forced to stop exploiting individuals? online behavior for profits and our communities will be safer as a result.”

Except it’s not really clear the bill actually does that.

This bill does claim to prohibit digital advertisers from flinging targeted ads at users based on protected class information like race and sexual orientation. But “broad” location-based targeting would still be allowed as would “contextual advertising,” or ads linked to specific online content being viewed. It also continues to allow a lot of behavior just as long as ad market participants pinky swear they’re doing the right thing:

“Paragraph (1) does not apply to the targeting of the dissemination of an advertisement based on information described in clauses (i) through (iv) of subparagraph (B) of such paragraph that is provided to an advertising facilitator by an advertiser or by a third party on behalf of an adver6 tiser, if the advertising facilitator is provided a written attestation that the advertiser is not in violation of subsection (b) with respect to such information.

So basically, if companies proclaim they’re doing the right thing (which they often won’t be, and over-extended regulators likely won’t be able to consistently confirm), they’ll get a bit of a pass:

That’s the real problem here. The entire digital advertising space is such an intentionally complicated mess, even reporters who cover it for a living are often utterly dumbfounded as to what’s actually happening. Some of this is just because internet technology can be complicated, something that’s a challenge for Luddite lawmakers. Some of it is because making it intentionally complicated makes it extremely difficult for even competent regulators to effectively regulate. The idea that a single bill can fix vast problems across an ocean of global industries seems a bit simplistic at this point.

All policed by U.S. regulators that are so underfunded, understaffed, under-resourced, or just plain corrupt that they can’t even tackle the majority of obvious fraud occurring everyday, much less the elaborate data monetization systems driving the global economy. Which is why we keep seeing a rotating parade of ad and privacy related scandals that take years for policymakers to even identify, much less address. More often than not, these scandals end with adorable wrist slaps long after the fact (see: the tale of Verizon’s “zombie cookie,” or the wireless industry’s recent location data scandals) and fines that are paltry in comparison to the money made off of the offense.

Much like the recent bill to force companies to shorten overlong terms of service, this bill feels like a feel-good venture to fix a very complicated problem with language that doesn’t actually do what it promises to do. There are so many reasons we don’t really effectively police the entire massive data collection realm (from telecom networks and app stores to data brokers), but a major reason is we don’t actually enable and fund our regulators to actually do a job of this (or any real) scope. And the regulators we do have tend to be of the revolving door variety — utterly disinterested in any solution that might topple the money trough for their previous or future employees.

A core underlying component of U.S. dysfunction is corruption. And our regulators are so dysfunctional, under-resourced, and corrupt they can’t even tackle very basic, obvious examples of fraud and monopolization (see the telecom, banking, pharmaceutical, and energy sectors). This idea that they’re going to fix the entire data collection ecosystem (which again includes telecom, data brokers, app makers, the entirety of modern tech, and even the prison industry) without first fixing those problems — much less with a bill filled with loopholes — feels a tad performative and naïve.

Filed Under: advertising, anna eshoo, cory booker, jan schakowsky, privacy, targeted advertising

House Democrats Decide To Hand Facebook The Internet By Unconstitutionally Taking Section 230 Away From Algorithms

Legal Issues

from the this-is-not-a-good-idea dept

We’ve been pointing out for a while now that mucking with Section 230 as an attempt to “deal” with how much you hate Facebook is a massive mistake. It’s also exactly what Facebook wants, because as it stands right now, Facebook is actually losing users to its core product, and the company has realized that burdening competitors with regulations — regulations that Facebook can easily handle with its massive bank account — is a great way to stop competition and lock in Facebook’s dominant position.

And yet, for reasons that still make no sense, regulators (and much of the media) seem to believe that Section 230 is the only regulation to tweak to get at Facebook. This is both wrong and shortsighted, but alas, we now have a bunch of House Democrats getting behind a new bill that claims to be narrowly targeted to just remove Section 230 from algorithmically promoted content. The full bill, the “Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act of 2021 is poorly targeted, poorly drafted, and shows a near total lack of understanding of how basically anything on the internet works. I believe that it’s well meaning, but it was clearly drafted without talking to anyone who understands either the legal realities or the technical realities. It’s an embarrassing release from four House members of the Energy & Commerce Committee who should know better (and at least 3 of the 4 have done good work in the past on important tech-related bills): Frank Pallone, Mike Doyle, Jan Schakowsky, and Anna Eshoo.

The key part of the bill is that it removes Section 230 for “personalized recommendations.” It would insert the following “exception” into 230.

(f) PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATION OF INFORMATION PROVIDED BY ANOTHER INFORMATION CONTENT PROVIDER.?

??(1) IN GENERAL.?Subsection (c)(1) does not apply to a provider of an interactive computer service with respect to information provided through such service by another information content provider if?

?(A) such provider of such service?
??(i) knew or should have known such provider of such service was making a personalized recommendation of such information; or
??(ii) recklessly made a personalized recommendation of such information; and
??(B) such recommendation materially contributed to a physical or severe emotional injury to any person.

So, let’s start with the basics. I know there’s been a push lately among some — including the whistleblower Frances Haugen — to argue that the real problem with Facebook is “the algorithm” and how it recommends “bad stuff.” The evidence to support this claim is actually incredibly thin, but we’ll leave that aside for now. But at its heart, “the algorithm” is simply a set of recommendations, and recommendations are opinions and opinions are… protected expression under the 1st Amendment.

Exempting Section 230 from algorithms cannot change this underlying fact about the 1st Amendment. All it means is that rather than getting a quick dismissal of the lawsuit, you’ll have a long, drawn out, expensive lawsuit on your hands, before ultimately finding out that of course algorithmic recommendations are protected by the 1st Amendment. For much more on the problem of regulating “amplification,” I highly, highly recommend reading Daphne Keller’s essay on the challenges of regulating amplification (or listen to the podcast I did with Daphne about this topic). It’s unfortunately clear that none of the drafters of this bill read Daphne’s piece (or if they did, they simply ignored it, which is worse). Supporters of this bill will argue that in simply removing 230 from amplification/algorithms, this is a “content neutral” approach. Yet as Daphne’s paper detailed, that does not get you away from the serious Constitutional problems.

Another way to think about this: this is effectively telling social media companies that they can be sued for their editorial choices of which things to promote. If you applied the same thinking to the NY Times or CNN or Fox News or the Wall Street Journal, you might quickly recognize the 1st Amendment problems here. I could easily argue that the NY Times’ constant articles misrepresenting Section 230 subject me to “severe emotional injury.” But of course, any such lawsuit would get tossed out as ridiculous. Does flipping through a magazine and seeing advertisements of products I can’t afford subject me to severe emotional injury? How is that different than looking at Instagram and feeling bad that my life doesn’t seem as cool as some lame influencer?

Furthermore, this focus on “recommendations” is… kinda weird. It ignores all the reasons why recommendations are often quite good. I know that some people have a kneejerk reaction against such recommendations but nearly every recommendation engine I use makes my life much better. Nearly every story I write on Techdirt I find via Twitter recommending tweets to me or Google News recommending stories to me — both based on things I’ve clicked on in the past. And both are (at times surprisingly) good at surfacing stories I would be unlikely to find otherwise, and doing so quickly and efficiently.

Yet, under this plan, all such services would be at significant risk of incredibly expensive litigation over and over and over again. The sensible thing for most companies to do in such a situation is to make sure that only bland, uncontroversial stuff shows up in your feed. This would be a disaster for marginalized communities. Black Lives Matter? That can’t be allowed as it might make people upset. Stories about bigotry, or about civil rights violations? Too “controversial” and might contribute to emotional injury.

The backers of this bill also argue that the bill is narrowly tailored and won’t destroy the underlying Section 230, but that too is incorrect. As Cathy Gellis just pointed out, removing the procedural benefits of Section 230 takes away all the benefits. Section 230 helps get you out of these cases much more quickly. But under this bill, now everyone will add in a claim under this clause that the “recommendation” cause “emotional injury” and now you have to litigate whether or not you’re even covered by Section 230. That means no more procedural benefit of 230.

The bill has a “carve out” for “smaller” companies, but again gets all that wrong. It seems clear that they either did not read, or did not understand, this excellent paper by Eric Goldman and Jess Miers about the important nuances of regulating internet services by size. In this case, the “carve out” is for sites that have 5 million or fewer “unique monthly visitors or users for not fewer than 3 of the preceding 12 months.” Leaving aside the rather important point that there really is no agreed upon notion of what a “unique monthly visitor” actually is (seriously, every stats package will give you different results, and now every site will have incentive to use a stats package that lies and gives you lower results to get beneath the number), that number is horrifically low.

Earlier this year, I suggested a test suite of websites that any internet regulation bill should be run against, highlighting that bills like these impact way more than Facebook and Google. And lots and lots of the sites I mention get way beyond 5 million monthly views.

So under this bill, a company like Yelp would face real risk in recommending restaurants to you. If you got food poisoning, that would be an injury you could now sue Yelp over. Did Netflix recommend a movie to you that made you sad? Emotional injury!

As Berin Szoka notes in a Twitter thread about the bill, this bill from Democrats, actually gives Republican critics of 230 exactly what they wanted: a tool to launch a million “SLAM” suits — Strategic Lawsuits Against Moderation. And, as such, he notes that this bill would massively help those who use the internet to spread baseless conspiracy theories, because THEY WOULD NOW GET TO SUE WEBSITES for their moderation choices. This is just one example of how badly the drafters of the bill misunderstand Section 230 and how it functionally works. It’s especially embarrassing that Rep. Eshoo would be a co-sponsor of a bill like this, since this bill would be a lawsuit free-for-all for companies in her district.

10/ In short, Republicans have long aimed to amend #Section230 to enable Strategic Lawsuits Against Moderation (SLAMs)

This new Democratic bill would do the same

Who would benefit? Those who use the Internet to spread hate speech and lies about elections, COVID, etc

— Berin Sz?ka ? (@BerinSzoka) October 14, 2021

Another example of the wacky drafting in the bill is the “scienter” bit. Scienter is basically whether or not the defendant had knowledge that what they were doing was wrongful. So in a bill like this, you’d expect that the scienter would require the platforms to know that the information they were recommending was harmful. That’s the only standard that would even make sense (though would still be constitutionally problematic). However, that’s not how it is in the bill. Instead, the scienter is… that the platform knows they recommend stuff. That’s it. In the quote above the line that matters is:

such provider of a service knew or should have known such provider of a service was making a personalized recommendation of such information

In other words, the scienter here… is that you knew you were recommending stuff personally. Not that it was bad. Not that it was dangerous. Just that you were recommending stuff.

Another drafting oddity is the definition of a “personalized recommendation.” It just says it’s a personalized recommendation if it uses a personalized algorithm. And the definition of “personalized algorithm” is this bit of nonsense:

The term ‘personalized algorithm’ means an algorithm that relies on information specific to an individual.

“Information specific to an individual” could include things like… location. I’ve seen some people suggest that Yelp’s recommendations wouldn’t be covered by this law because they’re “generalized” recommendations, not “personal ones” but if Yelp is recommending stuff to me based on my location (kinda necessary) then that’s now information specific to me, and thus no more 230 for the recommendation.

It also seems like this would be hell for spam filters. I train my spam filter, so the algorithm it uses is specific to me and thus personalized. But I’m pretty sure that under this bill a spammer whose emails are put into a spam filter can now sue, claiming injury. That’ll be fun.

Meanwhile, if this passes, Facebook will be laughing. The services that have successfully taken a bite out of Facebook’s userbase over the last few years have tended to be ones that have a better algorithm for recommending things: like TikTok. The one Achilles heel that Facebook has — it’s recommendations aren’t as good as new upstarts — gets protected by this bill.

Almost nothing here makes any sense at all. It misunderstands the problems. It misdiagnoses the solution. It totally misunderstands Section 230. It creates massive downside consequences for competitors to Facebook and to users. It enables those who are upset about moderation choices to sue companies (helping conspiracy theorists and misinformation peddlers). I can’t see a single positive thing that this bill does. Why the hell is any politician supporting this garbage?

Filed Under: algorithms, anna eshoo, frank pallone, intermediary liability, jan schakowsky, mike doyle, news feeds, personalized recommendations, recommendations, section 230
Companies: facebook, yelp

Bad Section 230 Bills Come From Both Sides Of The Aisle: Schakowsky/Castor Bill Would Be A Disaster For The Open Internet

Policy

from the that's-not-how-any-of-this-works dept

It truly is stunning how every single bill that attempts to reform Section 230 appears to be written without any intention of ever understanding how the internet or content moderation works in actual practice. We’ve highlighted tons of Republican-led bills that tend to try to force websites to host more content, not realizing how (1) unconstitutional that is and (2) how it will make the internet into a giant garbage fire. On the Democratic side, the focus seems to be much more on forcing companies to takedown constitutionally protected speech, which similarly (1) raises serious constitutional issues and (2) will lead to massive over-censorship of perfectly legal speech just to avoid liability.

The latest bill of the latter kind comes from Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Rep. Kathy Castor. Schakowsky has been saying for a while now that she was going to introduce this kind of bill to browbeat internet companies into being a lot more proactive in taking down speech she dislikes. The bill, called the Online Consumer Protection Act has now been introduced and it seems clear that this bill was written without ever conferring with anyone with any experience in running a website. It’s the kind of thing one writes when you’ve just come across the problem, but don’t think it’s worth talking to anyone to understand how things really work. It’s also very much a kind of “something must be done, this is something, we should do this” kind of bill that shows up way too often these days.

The premise of the bill is that websites “don’t have accountability to consumers” for the content posted by users, and that they need to be forced to have more accountability. Of course, this leaves out the kind of basic fact that if “consumers” are treated badly, they will go elsewhere, so of course every website has some accountability to consumers: it’s that if they’re bad at it, they will lose users, advertisers, sellers, buyers, whatever. But, that’s apparently not good enough for the “we must do something” crowd.

At best the Online Consumer Protection Act will create a massive amount of silly busywork and paperwork for basically any website. At worst, it will create a liability deathtrap for many sites. In some ways it’s modeled after the idiotic policy we have regarding privacy policies. Almost exactly a decade ago we explained why the entire idea of a privacy policy is dumb. Various laws require websites to post privacy policies, which no one reads, in part because it would be impossible to read them all. The only way a site gets in trouble is by not following its privacy policy. Thus, the incentives are to craft a very broad privacy policy that gives sites leeway — meaning they have less incentive to actually create more stringent privacy protections.

The OCPA basically takes the same approach, but… for “content moderation” policies. It requires basically every website to post one:

Each social media platform or online marketplace shall establish, maintain, and make publicly available at all times and in a machine-readable format, terms of service in a manner that is clear, easily understood, and written in plain and concise language.

That terms of service will require a bunch of pointless things, including a “consumer protection policy” which has to include the following:

FOR SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS.?For social media platforms, the consumer protection policy required by subsection (a) shall include?

(A) a description of the content and behavior permitted or prohibited on its service both by the platform and by users;
(B) whether content may be blocked, removed, or modified, or if service to users may be terminated and the grounds upon which such actions will be taken;
(C) whether a person can request that content be blocked, removed, or modified, or that a user?s service be terminated, and how to make such a request;
(D) a description of how a user will be notified of and can respond to a request that his or her content be blocked, removed, or modified, or service be terminated, if such actions are taken;
(E) how a person can appeal a decision to block, remove, or modify content, allow content to remain, or terminate or not terminate service to a user, if such actions are taken; and
(F) any other topic the Commission deems appropriate.

It’s difficult to look at that list and not laugh and wonder if whoever came up with it has ever been anywhere near a content moderation or trust & safety team, because that’s not how any of this works. Trust & Safety is an ongoing effort of constantly needing to adjust and change with the times, and there is no possible policy that can cover all cases. Can whoever wrote this bill listen to the excellent Radiolab episode about content moderation and think through how that process would have played out under this bill? If every time you change the policies to cover a new case you have to publicly update your already ridiculously complex policies — while the new requirements be that those same policies are “clear, easily understood, and written in plain and concise language” — you’ve created an impossible demand.

Hell, someone should turn this around and push it back on Congress first. Hey, Congress, can you restate the US civil and criminal code such that it is “clear, easily understood, and written in plain and concise language?” How about we try that first before demanding that private companies be forced to do the same for their ever changing policies as well?

Honestly, requiring all of this be in a policy is just begging angry Trumpists to sue websites saying they didn’t live up to the promises made in their policies. We see those lawsuits today, but they’re kicked out of court under Section 230… but Schakowsky’s bill says that this part is now exempted from 230. It’s bizarre to see a Democratic bill that will lead to more lawsuits from pissed off Trumpists who have been removed, but that’s what this bill will do.

Also, what “problem” does this bill actually solve? From the way the bill is framed, it seems like Schakowsky wants to make it easier for people to complain about content and to get the site to review it. But every social media company already does that. How does this help, other than put the sites at risk of liability for slipping up somewhere?

The bill then has separate requirements for “online marketplaces” which again suggest literally zero knowledge or experience with that space:

FOR ONLINE MARKETPLACES.?For online marketplaces, the consumer protection policy required by subsection (a) shall include?

(A) a description of the products, product descriptions, and marketing material, allowed or disallowed on the marketplace;
(B) whether a product, product descriptions, and marketing material may be blocked, removed, or modified, or if service to a user may be terminated and the grounds upon which such actions will be taken;
(C) whether users will be notified of products that have been recalled or are dangerous, and how they will be notified;
(D) for users?

(i) whether a user can report suspected fraud, deception, dangerous products, or violations of the online marketplace?s terms of service, and how to make such report;
(ii) whether a user who submitted a report will be notified of whether action was taken as a result of the report, the action that was taken and the reason why action was taken or not taken, and how the user will be notified;
(iii) how to appeal the result of a report; and
(iv) under what circumstances a user is entitled to refund, repair, or other remedy and the remedy to which the user may be entitled, how the user will be notified of such entitlement, and how the user may claim such remedy; and

(i) how sellers are notified of a report by a user or a violation of the terms of service or consumer protection policy;
(ii) how to contest a report by a user;
(iii) how a seller who is the subject of a report will be notified of what action will be or must be taken as a result of the report and the justification for such action;
(iv) how to appeal a decision of the online marketplace to take an action in response to a user report or for a violation of the terms of service or consumer protection policy; and
(v) the policy regarding refunds, repairs, replacements, or other remedies as a result of a user report or a violation of the terms of service or consumer protection policy.

Honestly, this reminds me a lot of Josh Hawley’s bills, in that it seems that both Hawley and Schakowsky want to appoint themselves product manager for the internet. All of the things listed above are the kinds of things that most companies do already because you need to do it that way. But it’s also the kind of thing that has evolved over time as new and different challenges arise, and locking the specifics into law does not take into account that very basic reality. It also doesn’t take into account that different companies might not fit into this exact paradigm, but under this bill will be required to act like they do. I can’t see how that’s at all helpful.

And, it gets worse. It will create a kind of politburo for how all internet websites must be run:

Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Commission shall conduct a study to determine the most effective method of communicating common consumer protection practices in short-form consumer disclosure statements or graphic icons that disclose the consumer protection and content moderation practices of social media platforms and online marketplaces. The Commission shall submit a report to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate with the results of the study. The report shall also be made publicly available on the website of the Commission.

Yeah, because nothing works so well as having a government commission jump in and determine the “best” way to do things in a rapidly evolving market.

Also, um, if the government needs to create a commission to tell it what those best practices are why is it regulating how companies have to act before the commission has even done its job?

There are a bunch more requirements in the bill, but all of them are nitty gritty things about how companies create policies and implement them — something that companies are constantly changing, because the world (and the threats and attacks!) is constantly changing as well. This bill is written by people who seem to think that the internet — and bad actors on the internet — are a static phenomena. And that’s just wrong.

Also, there’s a ton of paperwork for nearly every company with a website, including idiotic and pointless requirements that are busywork, with the threat of legal liability attached! Fun!

FILING REQUIREMENTS.?Each social media platform or online marketplace that either has annual revenue in excess of $250,000 in the prior year or that has more than 10,000 monthly active users on average in the prior year, shall be required to submit to the Commission, on an annual basis, a filing that includes?

(A) a detailed and granular description of each of the requirements in section 2 and this section;
(B) the name and contact information of the consumer protection officer required under subsection (b)(4); and
(C) a description of any material changes in the consumer protection program or the terms of service since the most recent prior disclosure to the Commission

(2) OFFICER CERTIFICATION.?For each entity that submits an annual filing under paragraph (1), the entity?s principal executive officer and the consumer protection officer required under subsection (b)(4), shall be required to certify in each such annual filing that?

(A) the signing officer has reviewed the filing;
(B) based on such officer?s knowledge, the filing does not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact necessary to make the statements, in light of the circumstances under which such statements were made, not misleading;
(C) based on such officer?s knowledge, the filing fairly presents in all material respects the consumer protection practices of the social media platform or online marketplace; and
(D) the signing consumer protection officer?

(i) is responsible for establishing and maintaining safeguards and controls to protect consumers and administer the consumer protection program; and
(ii) has provided all material conclusions about the effectiveness of such safeguards and controls.

So… uh, I need to hire a “consumer protection officer” for Techdirt now? And spend a few thousand dollars every year to have lawyers (and, most likely a new bunch of “compliance consultants” review this totally pointless statement I’ll need to sign each year? For what purpose?

The bill also makes sure that our courts are flooded with bogus claims from “wronged” individuals thanks to its private right of action. It also, on top of everything else, exempts various state consumer protection laws from Section 230. That’s buried in the bill but is a huge fucking deal. We’ve talked about this for years, as various state Attorneys General have been demanding it. But that’s because those state AGs have a very long history of abusing state “consumer protection” laws to effectively shake down companies. A decade ago we wrote a definitive version of this in watching dozens of state attorneys general attack Topix, with no legal basis, because they didn’t like how the company moderated its site. They were blocked from doing anything serious because of Section 230.

Under this bill, that will change.

And we’ve seen just how dangerous that can be. Remember how Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood demanded all sorts of information from Google, claiming that the company was responsible for anything bad found online? It later came out (via the Sony Pictures hack) that the entire episode was actually funded by the MPAA, with Hood’s legal demands written by the MPAA’s lawyers, as part of Hollywood explicit plan to saddle Google with extra legal costs.

Schakowsky’s bill would make that kind of corruption an every day occurrence.

And, again, the big companies can handle this. They already do almost everything listed anyway. All this really does is saddle tons of tiny companies (earning more than $250k a year?!?) with ridiculous and overly burdensome compliance costs, which open them up to not just the FTC going after them, but any state attorney general, or any individual who feels wronged by the rules.

The definitions in the bill are so broad that it would cover a ton of websites. Under my reading, it’s possible that Techdirt itself qualifies as a “social media platform” because we have comments. This is yet another garbage bill from someone who appears to have no knowledge or experience how any of this works in practice, but is quite sure that if everyone just did things the way she wanted, magically good stuff would happen. It’s ridiculous.

Filed Under: busywork, consumer protection, content moderation, ftc, jan schakowsky, kathy castor, paperwork, private right of action, section 230, terms of service

The Bizarre Flip-Floppers: 13 Reps Who Voted To Stop Patriot Act Spying 2 Years Ago, But Voted To Continue It Yesterday

Politics

from the oddities dept

We’ve already noted that there were quite a few oddities in the group of Representatives who voted against the Amash Amendment yesterday, effectively giving their stamp of approval of the NSA spying on every single American. But, the strangest of all were those who had spoken out against the very same program in the past. We noted a few who had spoken out years ago, but the Long Strange Journey blog noticed that there are 13 Representatives who voted against extending parts of the Patrtiot Act (including the provision that the Amash Amendment sought to clarify to stop mass data collection), but then voted against the amendment yesterday.

In other words, these 13 Representatives had no problem killing off this data collection program two years ago. They didn’t think that ending such a data collection program would put us all at risk or whatever FUD was being spread about why all Americans needed to have their data sucked up by the NSA — but, yesterday it suddenly became so important that they couldn’t vote to stop it? The 2011 vote is here and yesterday’s vote is here. The list is led by Nancy Pelosi, who is generating a lot of disappointment from her constituents who aren’t happy about NSA spying. Two years ago, she led the charge to stop excessive surveillance and to include more privacy protections. When it failed, she made a statement regretting better privacy protections for Americans:

“Today Congress failed to seize the opportunity to enact measures and improvements needed to preserve Americans’ privacy and to incorporate oversight and compliance with the law. In addition, Congress failed to consider meaningful reforms to National Security Letters to address documented abuses. Instead, we were left to vote only on a long extension of some of the most controversial and troubling aspects of the PATRIOT Act.

“Moving forward, we must ensure that we can protect the American people, and protect and defend the Constitution.”

She had a chance to do that yesterday, but she chose the other side. This was almost certainly political. The White House certainly got spooked that the Amash Amendment might pass, and it seems likely that it put tremendous pressure on Pelosi to side with them — and to coax other Democrats to vote with her. Nearly all of the other 12 listed below who voted against extending this provision of the Patriot Act in 2011, but to allow it to continue yesterday, were likely pressured by Pelosi.

• Rep. Nancy Pelosi, California
• Rep. Eliot Engel, New York
• Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Illinois
• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida
• Rep. Mike Thompson, California
• Rep. Bob Andrews, New Jersey
• Rep. Al Green, Texas
• Rep. Luis Guitierrez, Illinois
• Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, Hawaii
• Rep. Rick Larsen, Washington
• Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas
• Rep. Edith Bernice Johnson, Texas
• Rep. Marcy Kaptur, Ohio

I would hope that the constituents of these 13 Democrats would reach out to their Representatives and find out why they flip-flopped their vote, from protecting American’s privacy to suddenly having no problem with the NSA collecting all their data. If these 13 had stayed true to their earlier vote, the Amash Amendment would have passed and the NSA collection of all data on Americans would have been stopped.

Filed Under: al green, amash amendment, bob andrews, colleen hanabusa, debbie wasserman schultz, edith bernice johnson, eliot engel, flip flop, jan schakowsky, luis guitierrez, marcy kaptur, mike thompson, nancy pelosi, patriot act, rick larsen, s, sheila jackson lee