(CNN) -- The effects of l'Affaire Snowden continued to accumulate this past week with a dramatic vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. By a bare 12-vote margin, a bipartisan coalition of more or less centrist Republicans and Democrats defeated an equally bipartisan coalition of their more ideological brethren, the latter an incredibly improbable alliance that almost succeeded in defunding NSA's telephone metadata program. One Hill participant described the hours before the vote as "hand to hand combat," but for now, at least, NSA will continue to acquire American telephone "business records" to help it detect terrorist activity in the United States.
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Supporters of NSA metadata program only had 12-vote margin in favor
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Ex-NSA director Hayden: PRISM program is used to target foreign threats
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He says agency employees are trained to respect privacy
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Hayden: NSA doesn't have access to servers of Internet service providers
And both programs are responsive to the world in which @placeholder found itself after 9/11.