In 2013 and 2014, a bipartisan amendment to limit surveillance by the National Security Agency and protect encryption was passed with increasingly wide margins in the House of Representatives, but later stripped out in a Senate conference committee. This Wednesday the amendment, sponsored again by Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California and Republican Reps. Tom Massie of Kentucky and Ted Poe of Texas, was defeated in the wake of the Orlando massacre committed by Omar Mateen.

The amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill, as in the past, would have prohibited funds being allocated for the NSA to continue warrantless searches of Americans’ data authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. It also would have barred the Defense Department from spending on projects designed to make software or hardware vulnerable to security breaches.

Essentially, it was a move to reinforce the much-battered Fourth Amendment.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that the NSA has previously weakened encryption as well as user security and privacy by various means including "’extend[ing] the reach of surveillance under cover of advising companies on protection,’ and intercepting hardware shipments and surreptitiously undermining their operation.”

The amendment was backed by civil liberties organizations with the aim of keeping the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency from subverting the purpose of encryption devices and standards. Activists have viewed it as one step forward in their efforts to maintain citizens’ security and privacy against the vast amount of unconstitutional government surveillance, evidence of which was leaked three years ago by whistleblower Edward Snowden.