From today's New York Times(24 Jan)
The Senate, on a voice vote, decides to hold up financing of Bush's Total Information Awareness program, the
" Pentagon project to search for terrorists by scanning information in Internet mail and in the commercial databases of health, financial and travel companies here and abroad."

..."Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who proposed the amendment, said after the vote that it passed so easily because dismayed Republican senators had told him that "this is about the most far-reaching government surveillance proposal we have ever heard about." He said the amendment means "there will be concrete checks on the government's ability to snoop on law-abiding Americans."