In a late-night vote Thursday, June 19, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to prohibit US intelligence agencies from searching government databases for information about U.S. citizens. It also voted to eliminate funding for the development of further backdoor data gathering.

The amendment passed at 10:47 PM with a vote of 293 to 123. There are two types of backdoors that the amendment addresses:

The first, warrantless searches

The FISA Amendments Act gives the NSA broad power to collect data through any number of programs. One of these data collection programs broadly collected and stored emails, web-browsing, and chat histories of random people, many of which were U.S. citizens. Previously, the NSA had the authority to search these massive databases without a warrant. These warrantless searches were known as “backdoor searches”. The amendment prevents the NSA from using money to do a backdoor search on a U.S. citizen, effectively stopping the practice altogether.

The second, private company backdoors

In the tech world, “backdoor” is a term of art that has specific meaning: a method of bypassing normal security and authentication routines, effectively allowing someone who shouldn’t have access to a computer system to get in. The NSA has been asking larger private companies to modify their encryption mechanisms to add backdoors, which would allow the NSA to expand their data collection efforts. The amendment eliminated funding for this type of program.

The amendment had bipartisan support, and the vote took just 10 minutes of debate. If you look at the vote results and see that your representative voted Nay, maybe it’s time to give him or her a call and urge intelligence reform for future votes. While you’re at it, contact your senator, so we can make sure this passes in the Senate as well.