House Defeats Effort to Rein In N.S.A. Data Gathering

The 205-to-217 vote was far closer than expected and came after a brief but impassioned debate over citizens’ right to privacy and the steps the government must take to protect national security. It was a rare instance in which a classified intelligence program was openly discussed on the House floor, and disagreements over the  program led to some unusual coalitions.

Conservative Republicans leery of what they see as Obama administration abuses of power teamed up with liberal Democrats long opposed to intrusive intelligence programs. The Obama administration made common cause with the House Republican leadership to try to block it.

House members pressing to rein in the N.S.A. vowed afterward that the outrage unleashed by Mr. Snowden’s disclosures would eventually put a brake on the agency’s activities. Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and a longtime critic of post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism efforts, said lawmakers would keep coming back with legislation to curtail the dragnets for “metadata,” whether through phone records or Internet surveillance.

At the very least, the section of the Patriot Act in question will be allowed to expire in 2015, he said. “It’s going to end — now or later,” Mr. Nadler said. “The only question is when and on what terms.”

Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, promised lawmakers that he would draft legislation this fall to add more privacy protections to government surveillance programs even as he begged the House to oppose blanket restrictions.

The amendment to the annual Defense Department spending bill, written by Representatives Justin Amash, a libertarian Republican from Western Michigan, and John Conyers Jr., a veteran liberal Democrat from Detroit, turned Democrat against Democrat and Republican against Republican.

It would have limited N.S.A. phone surveillance to specific targets of law enforcement investigations, not broad dragnets. It was only one of a series of proposals — including restricting funds for Syrian rebels and adding Congressional oversight to foreign aid to Egypt — intended to check President Obama’s foreign and intelligence policies.

But in the phone surveillance program, the House’s right and left wings appeared to find a unifying cause. Representative Raúl R. Labrador, Republican of Idaho, called it “the wing nut coalition” and Mr. Amash “the chief wing nut.”

Mr. Amash framed his push as a defense of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, and he found a surprising ally, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin and one of the principal authors of the Patriot Act. Mr. Sensenbrenner said his handiwork was never meant to create a program that allows the government to demand the phone records of every American.

“The time has come to stop it,” Mr. Sensenbrenner said.

Opposing them were not only Mr. Obama and the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, but also the leaders of the nation’s defense and intelligence establishment.

On Tuesday, the director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Keith Alexander, spent hours providing classified briefings to lawmakers about the program, and the White House took the unusual step of issuing a statement urging lawmakers not to approve the measure. On Wednesday, James L. Jones, the retired Marine Corps general who was Mr. Obama’s national security adviser from 2009-10, added his name to an open letter in support of preserving the N.S.A. programs that more than half a dozen top national-security officials from the Bush administration had signed.

“Denying the N.S.A. such access to data will leave the nation at risk,” said the letter, which was circulated to undecided members.

Mr. Rogers took a personal swipe at Mr. Amash, a darling of social media, when he said the House was not in the business of racking up “likes” on Facebook. He said the calling log program was an important tool for protecting against terrorist attacks.

“This is not a game,” he fumed. “This is real. It will have real consequences.”

But many rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats appeared impervious to such overtures. Representative Jared Polis, Democrat of Colorado and a supporter of the amendment, said that if the Obama administration felt strongly about defending the program, Mr. Obama would have spoken out personally. Instead, the White House released a statement under the name of the press secretary, Jay Carney.

“The press secretary says hundreds of things every day,” Mr. Polis said.

The divisions in Congress seemed to reflect the ambivalence in the nation. In a CBS News poll released Wednesday, 67 percent of Americans said the government’s collection of phone records was a violation of privacy. At the same time, 52 percent called it a necessary tool to help find terrorists.

But the final tally in the House suggested the tide was shifting on the issue. In the weeks after the Snowden leaks, the united voices of Congressional leaders and administration officials in support of the N.S.A. programs seemed to squelch the outrage Mr. Snowden had hoped for. Anger seemed to be trained more on Mr. Snowden than on the programs he revealed.

As the news media and the government chronicled Mr. Snowden’s flight from law enforcement, a web of privacy activists, libertarian conservatives and liberal civil liberties proponents rallied support behind Congressional action. House members said they received hundreds of phone calls and e-mails before Wednesday’s vote, all in favor of curtailing the N.S.A.’s authority.

Ultimately, 94 House Republicans defied their leadership; 111 Democrats — a majority of the Democratic caucus — defied their president.

“This is only the beginning,” Mr. Conyers vowed after the vote. The fight will shift to the Senate, where two longtime Democratic critics of N.S.A. surveillance, Mark Udall of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon, immediately took up the cause.

“National security is of paramount importance, yet the N.S.A.’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records violates innocent Americans’ privacy rights and should not continue as its exists today,” Mr. Udall said after the vote. “The U.S. House of Representatives’ bipartisan vote today proposal should be a wake-up call for the White House.”

Charlie Savage contributed reporting.

Media Decoder Blog: At High-Level Gathering of Moguls, Kids Get the V.I.P. Treatment

4:49 p.m. | Updated Ah, to be the child of privilege.

As their dads and moms make the rounds at the Sun Valley Resort attending panels ranging from cloud storage to Iran and Israel relations, the children of the attendees have the run of the sprawling resort in the Idaho countryside.

Every year the media and technology executives who attend the conference (dubbed “summer camp for moguls”) bring their children. They wear the same approved name tags that their parents wear, to indicate to the hordes of security that they should have unlimited access.

And each child (or group of siblings) gets his or her own “camp counselor” whose job is to, essentially, make sure every child is happy. And the moguls-in-training can request the same counselor, typically college students, every year if they desire.

Ice skating in 90-degree weather? Check. A cheeseburger by the pool? No problem. White-water rafting? Done.

“I know one person who was thinking of not attending this year, but his kids made him go,” said one attendee on Wednesday night.

The conference, sponsored by the boutique investment firm Allen & Company, organizes events for the little ones and makes sure they’re in paradise, so as not to disturb the deals their fathers (and more frequently, mothers) are brokering. On Wednesday, the kids learned archery — the Nerf kind — and enjoyed a giant plastic castle, part of a medieval fair set up near a tranquil river. On Wednesday afternoon, the daughter of Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, was seen scampering toward the castle, squealing in delight.

A cheerful Mr. Yang described the setup as wonderful.

Sometimes the kids can pick up some professional advice. On Wednesday night a bespectacled 8-year-old approached Mark Zuckerberg to say hello and ask for advice about learning to program. Mr. Zuckerberg told him to practice building games and things he likes. “I just did it for myself,” the Facebook founder said.

With all the corporate strategy being discussed in Sun Valley, keeping the kids happy seems to be a smart one.

Media Decoder Blog: At High-Level Gathering of Moguls, Kids Get the V.I.P. Treatment

4:49 p.m. | Updated Ah, to be the child of privilege.

As their dads and moms make the rounds at the Sun Valley Resort attending panels ranging from cloud storage to Iran and Israel relations, the children of the attendees have the run of the sprawling resort in the Idaho countryside.

Every year the media and technology executives who attend the conference (dubbed “summer camp for moguls”) bring their children. They wear the same approved name tags that their parents wear, to indicate to the hordes of security that they should have unlimited access.

And each child (or group of siblings) gets his or her own “camp counselor” whose job is to, essentially, make sure every child is happy. And the moguls-in-training can request the same counselor, typically college students, every year if they desire.

Ice skating in 90-degree weather? Check. A cheeseburger by the pool? No problem. White-water rafting? Done.

“I know one person who was thinking of not attending this year, but his kids made him go,” said one attendee on Wednesday night.

The conference, sponsored by the boutique investment firm Allen & Company, organizes events for the little ones and makes sure they’re in paradise, so as not to disturb the deals their fathers (and more frequently, mothers) are brokering. On Wednesday, the kids learned archery — the Nerf kind — and enjoyed a giant plastic castle, part of a medieval fair set up near a tranquil river. On Wednesday afternoon, the daughter of Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, was seen scampering toward the castle, squealing in delight.

A cheerful Mr. Yang described the setup as wonderful.

Sometimes the kids can pick up some professional advice. On Wednesday night a bespectacled 8-year-old approached Mark Zuckerberg to say hello and ask for advice about learning to program. Mr. Zuckerberg told him to practice building games and things he likes. “I just did it for myself,” the Facebook founder said.

With all the corporate strategy being discussed in Sun Valley, keeping the kids happy seems to be a smart one.

DealBook: Uncertainty Looms Over Annual Gathering

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg NewsTechnology and media moguls are gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho, for Allen & Company’s annual gathering.

As moguls descended on Sun Valley on Tuesday for Allen & Company’s annual gathering, they were greeted by a giant plume of smoke.

Fanned by wind, wildfires in southern Idaho had spawned a huge cloud, obscuring the area’s verdant hills and creating a mess on the runways. Commercial and private jets were delayed. Many circled Friedman Memorial Airport, waiting for their turn to land. And about a dozen private jets were diverted to the airport in Twin Falls — an hour and a half drive from the resort.

As the attendees straggled in, a few headed for the Duchin Lounge, the resort’s go-to watering hole. Many who arrived late headed to bed.

Tuesday’s muted kickoff was apropos.

After a year of mixed initial public offerings and continuing disruptions in the media industry, a cloud of uncertainty now hangs over Sun Valley.

And while many technology hotshots are back, their golden patina has faded.

Last year, the industry was busy toasting the new Web kings, a group led by Mark Pincus, the chief executive of Zynga; Andrew Mason, the chief executive of Groupon; and Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, who had brought his playful Puli, Beast. At the time, their companies were on the precipice of going public at sky-high valuations.

In the months since, the start-ups have received a swift lesson on the capricious nature of the public markets. Zynga, the game maker, is roughly 50 percent below its offering price. Groupon is trading below $8, an all-time low. And Facebook, after a tumultuous first month, has clawed its way back, but is still 18 percent below its offering price. The pain in the public markets has seeped into the private, bogging down enthusiasm for other high-profile start-ups like Twitter, the micro-blogging service.

Still, there were plenty of reasons to grab a drink on Tuesday night.

The lounge, though less populated than last year, gave the technology and media moguls a chance to mingle and hatch potential partnerships. Mark Pincus and Eric Lefkofsky, the co-founder of Groupon, made quick visits before retiring to their rooms. (Mr. Mason, practically stapled to Mr. Lefkofsky’s side last year, was notably absent.)

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and Square, held court with a small group outside. And after a late entrance, Mr. Zuckerberg also showed up, alongside his friend Drew Houston, the chief of Dropbox. Clad in his uniform gray shirt and jeans, Mr. Zuckerberg made a quick beeline for Duchin, but not before Dennis Kneale of Fox Business Network managed to get in a few words.

“Can I buy you a vodka gimlet,” the boisterous Mr. Kneale asked, also dressed down in a short-sleeved black top and worn-in sneakers. The Facebook billionaire, whose stake is still billions of dollars, politely demurred, “I’m good, thanks.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg arrived with the former New York City schools chancellor Joel I. Klein (now chief executive of News Corporation’s newly formed education division) and Cory Booker, the Democrat mayor of Newark. Kazuo Hirai, the recently named chief executive of Sony, rushed past reporters as his predecessor, Howard Stringer, lingered in the lobby. Filmmaker Harvey Weinstein also made a brief appearance.

While the techies had been taken down a peg, many media executives strolled in with a little more spring in their step than in previous years.

Tensions remain between media and technology companies over the distribution of content via online digital. But in the last year, media executives have said they feel more positive about harnessing new media as a means to build additional revenue streams.

Last year, Time Warner and CBS struck their biggest deal yet to allow Netflix to license its television content. The $1 billion deal over eight years will give Netflix the right to stream shows like “The Vampire Diaries” and “ Gossip Girl” broadcast on the CW network. Those types of deals could amount to a new revenue stream for media giants, who can try to make money off TV series that would not necessarily sell in a traditional syndication model.

Time Warner’s Jeffrey L. Bewkes (who once compared Netflix to the Albanian army taking over the world) said he had already chatted with the company’s chief, Reed Hastings, at the conference, with more discussions planned during the week. He also said he expected to talk to Apple‘s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, about plans for the secretive new Apple TV. Mr. Bewkes said his best guess for Apple TV would be a partnership with a cable operator similar to the way Apple partnered with AT&T on the iPhone.

“It will probably be a lot more painless than everyone thinks,” Mr. Bewkes said, who also took the opportunity to boast about Time Warner’s improved stock price.

Regardless of how the hierarchy of Sun Valley shakes out this year, there is one great equalizer.

When one Duchin server was asked what time she would have to kick out Mr. Zuckerberg, who was lingering at the bar along with a handful of other executives at midnight, she said she could not serve alcohol all night — no matter who was ordering.

“Well, 1:30 is the law in Idaho,” she said.