Can meaningful surveillance reform pass the current Congress?

[joshcryer]

7. The Amash amendment didn't split among party lines.

Politically speaking it's terrifying: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/113-2013/h412

As long as the party leaders on both sides support it, it's going to be very hard to override the vote, party leaders will simply keep making vote trades and secret deals with others in the Congress to keep it stalled.

Amash thinks he has the votes but I don't buy it with people like Pelosi voting against it.

Sickeningly, I think some of the top Dems aren't for it because defunding NSA's spying program would put some 35-50k+ spy agency workers, at the same level of Snowden, out of a job. There's also probably a concern that there are dozens of Snowdens waiting to drop data dumps if they lose their jobs. The US seriously fucked up this program epically.