Amash, a Michigan Republican was backed by Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat. In all, 111 Democrats supported the measure along with 134 GOP members.

“It was the first time that either house of congress has gone on the record concerning NSA’s blanket surveillance since the NSA leaks started coming out,” said Will Adams, Amash’s press secretary.

“We got 205 votes despite the fact that we were up against the entire establishment in Washington,” Adams said. “The civil liberties of Americans is not a partisan issue.”

After information of the NSA’s surveillance practices ­— which includes collecting phone records of regular American citizens and other metadata ­— was leaked by Edward Snowden, a hailstorm of reports came to light, met with mass outrage over the intelligence agency’s practices, though supporters like President Barack Obama have down played the amount of information NSA collects.

Still, civil liberties activists have denounced the surveillance as an Orwellian and unconstitutional
practice.

“We believe this amendment would not hamper the government’s ability to gather information on terrorists, but would and rightfully so, limit the government’s ability to spy on innocent Americans,” said Rana Elmir, deputy director of ACLU Michigan in Detroit.

While the measure was defeated, supporters are hopeful it will spark and fuel similar proposals in the future.

Bill sponsor Conyers said in a statement to reporters, “This discussion is going to be examined continually … as long as we have this many members in the House of Representatives that are saying it’s ok to collect all records you want just as long as you make sure you don’t let it go anywhere else. That is the beginning of the wrong direction in a democratic society.”