The States Strike Back: Washington Introduces Bill to Cut Off Power to the NSA
Posted on January 17, 2014
We know the NSA shares data with state and local law enforcement. We know from a Reuters report that most of this shared data has absolutely nothing to do with national security issues. This bill would make that information inadmissible in state court. This data sharing shoves a dagger into the heart of the Fourth Amendment. This bill would stop that from happening. This is a no-brainer. Every state should do it.”
– Mike Maharrey, National Communications Director of the Tenth Amendment Center
In case you haven’t heard of the OffNow coalition, the group is leading a nationwide charge to convince state legislatures to put a stop to the NSA’s unconstitutional spying by restricting crucial state resources such as water and power to NSA facilities. This tactic first received national attention earlier this year when California introduced such legislation, but it does not have actual NSA facilities in the state. Washington State does.
The NSA operates a listening center on the Army’s Yakima Training Center (YTC), and there is a bipartisan effort in Washington to prevent the allocation of state and local resources to the facility as long as the spy agency continues to violate Americans’ 4th Amendment rights. The Bill is called HB2272 and it is based on model language drafted by the OffNow coalition.
Kudos to Washington state, which has been leading the way in various freedom related issues, such as the drone debate as well as marijuana legalization.
More from OffNow:
In a bipartisan effort, Washington became first state with a physical NSA location to consider the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency.
Rep. David Taylor (R-Moxee) and Rep Rep. Luis Moscoso (D- Mountlake Terrace) introduced HB2272 late Tuesday night. Based on model language drafted by the OffNow coalition, it would make it the policy of Washington “to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant.”
Practically speaking, the bill prohibits state and local agencies from providing any material support to the NSA within their jurisdiction. This includes barring government-owned utilities from providing water and electricity. It makes information gathered without a warrant by the NSA and shared with law enforcement inadmissible in state court. It blocks public universities from serving as NSA research facilities or recruiting grounds. And it disincentivizes corporations attempting to fill needs not met in the absence of state cooperation.
A Washington company also has a strong link to the NSA. Cray Inc. builds supercomputers for the agency.
If the bill passes, it would set in motion actions to stop any state support of the Yakima center as long as it remains in the state, and could make Cray ineligible for any contracts with the state or its political subdivisions.
Three public universities in Washington join 166 schools nationwide partnering with the NSA. Taylor’s bill would address these schools’ status as NSA “Centers of Academic Excellence,” and would bar any new partnerships with other state colleges or universities.
Let’s keep the momentum going.
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
ragman
January 18, 2014 8:36 am
Admin: Good for Washington State! About the only thing left to fuck them up us something like this. Ostracize the employees. Refuse to provide services to the worthless fuckers that are a part of this. Hit ’em in the pocketbook if you can.
Stucky
January 18, 2014 9:04 am
Nig-Oreo said there has been no evidence of abuse in NSA programs. That means he does not consider any of the following abuse;
.
The NSA spied on the porn and phone sex habits of ideological opponents, including those with no significant ties to extremists, and including a US person.
According to the NSA in 2009, it had a program similar to Project Minaret — the tracking of anti-war opponents in the 1970s — in which it spied on people in the US in the guise of counterterrorism without approval. We still don’t have details of this abuse.
When the NSA got FISC approval for the Internet (2004) and phone (2006) dragnets, NSA did not turn off features of Bush’s illegal program that did not comply with the FISC authorization. These abuses continued until 2009 (one of them, the collection of Internet metadata that qualified as content, continued even after 2004 identification of those abuses).
Even after the FISC spent 9 months reining in some of this abuse, the NSA continued to ignore limits on disseminating US person data. Similarly, the NSA and FBI never complied with PATRIOT Act requirements to develop minimization procedures for the Section 215 program (in part, probably, because NSA’s role in the phone dragnet would violate any compliant minimization procedures).
The NSA has twice — in 2009 and 2011 — admitted to collecting US person content in the United States in bulk after having done so for years. It tried to claim (and still claims publicly in spite of legal rulings to the contrary) this US person content did not count as intentionally-collected US person content (FISC disagreed both times), and has succeeded in continuing some of it by refusing to count it, so it can claim it doesn’t know it is happening.
As recently as spring 2012, 9% of the NSA’s violations involved analysts breaking standard operating procedures they know. NSA doesn’t report these as willful violations, however, because they’ve deemed any rule-breaking in pursuit of “the mission” not to be willful violations.
In 2008, Congress passed a law allowing bulk collection of foreign-targeted content in the US, Section 702, to end the NSA’s practice of stealing Internet company data from telecom cables. Yet in spite of having a legal way to acquire such data, the NSA (through GCHQ) continues to steal data from some of the same companies, this time overseas, from their own cables. Arguably this is a violation of Section 702 of FISA.
NSA may intentionally collect US person content (including Internet metadata that legally qualifies as content) overseas (it won’t count this data, so we don’t know how systematic it is). If it does, it may be a violation of Section 703 of FISA.
Administrator
Author
January 18, 2014 9:05 am
Bill Maher and Glenn Greenwald clash over ‘totally batsh*t’ Edward Snowden
Bill Maher acknowledged his respect for former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden during Real Time‘s return episode on Friday, while comparing him to former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) during an interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald.
“I agree with what he says, I nod along,” Maher said. “And then he says something totally batsh*t.”
Maher then quoted from Snowden’s “open letter to the people of Brazil” last month, in which Snowden said programs like the NSA’s surveillance efforts “were never about terrorism” but were instead about “social control, and diplomatic manipulation.”
“That’s crazy,” Maher told Greenwald. “They were about stopping terrorism. They may have gone too far. But everybody in the government isn’t out to get you.”
After reading Snowden’s allegation that the government can “go back in time” to chart a person’s online history, Maher asked Greenwald, “This is nuts, right?”
“No, Bill, what’s nuts is the fact that you think that’s nuts,” said Greenwald, who published several articles based on knowledge seized by Snowden. “A lot of the stories we reported had nothing to do with terrorism. They’re spying on economic summits in Latin America, oil companies in Brazil, democratically-elected leaders of our closest allies who have nothing to do with terrorism.”
Greenwald further argued that the reporting enabled by Snowden’s information showed that the NSA had the ability to “slow down the internet” by storing data long enough to search through a person’s search history and correspondence.
“He’s a 29 years old who’s not a trained politician,” Greenwald continued. “He doesn’t have aides whispering in his ear what he should say. He’s not adept at that. That’s what makes him so impressive — it was an act of conscience.”
“No one is arguing with that Glenn,” Maher said, cutting in. “What I said is, every time he opens his mouth, he always says something f*cking nuts. When he says, ‘They know every friend you’ve ever discussed something with,’ we’ll just have to agree to disagree on what’s f*cking nuts.”
Stucky
January 18, 2014 9:12 am
And if you have a few minutes, listen to the OTHER great Presidential speech;
Stucky
January 18, 2014 11:23 am
[img[/img]
Iska Waran
January 18, 2014 12:11 pm
This whole discussion about the NSA and spying reminds me of the discussion about Catholic clergy sexual abuse. It’s all a bunch of non sequiturs. If someone fucks children, we don’t need a “time of healing”. We need to throw them in prison for a long time (as well as any bishops who conspired and were, in fact, accomplices after the fact). Similarly, this NSA stuff is not about “balancing privacy concerns with the need to stop terrorism”. It should be about making sure the Constitution is adhered to – especially the 4th amendment. Obviously Obama doesn’t give a shit about the Constitution, but there ought to be at least a couple of media jackals who can reference the constitutional issues. I don’t give a shit if we spied on Angela Merkel. She’s not a US citizen. I don’t give a shit about the privacy of any non-US-citizen anywhere. Sure there are areas of prudential judgment – whether it’s wise to risk getting caught spying on foreign leaders, for example, but those are secondary concerns – to the extent that they’re concerns at all. The argument about the the efficacy of NSA spying is also largely beside the point. The privacy defenders bring up the fact that no known terrorist attack has been stopped by NSA snooping. That’s a mildly interesting tidbit, but even if hundreds of attacks had been thwarted it wouldn’t negate the primary need to follow the constitution. You wanna spy on a US citizen? Get a fucking warrant.
The States Strike Back: Washington Introduces Bill to Cut Off Power to the NSA
Posted on January 17, 2014
We know the NSA shares data with state and local law enforcement. We know from a Reuters report that most of this shared data has absolutely nothing to do with national security issues. This bill would make that information inadmissible in state court. This data sharing shoves a dagger into the heart of the Fourth Amendment. This bill would stop that from happening. This is a no-brainer. Every state should do it.”
– Mike Maharrey, National Communications Director of the Tenth Amendment Center
In case you haven’t heard of the OffNow coalition, the group is leading a nationwide charge to convince state legislatures to put a stop to the NSA’s unconstitutional spying by restricting crucial state resources such as water and power to NSA facilities. This tactic first received national attention earlier this year when California introduced such legislation, but it does not have actual NSA facilities in the state. Washington State does.
The NSA operates a listening center on the Army’s Yakima Training Center (YTC), and there is a bipartisan effort in Washington to prevent the allocation of state and local resources to the facility as long as the spy agency continues to violate Americans’ 4th Amendment rights. The Bill is called HB2272 and it is based on model language drafted by the OffNow coalition.
Kudos to Washington state, which has been leading the way in various freedom related issues, such as the drone debate as well as marijuana legalization.
More from OffNow:
In a bipartisan effort, Washington became first state with a physical NSA location to consider the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency.
Rep. David Taylor (R-Moxee) and Rep Rep. Luis Moscoso (D- Mountlake Terrace) introduced HB2272 late Tuesday night. Based on model language drafted by the OffNow coalition, it would make it the policy of Washington “to refuse material support, participation, or assistance to any federal agency which claims the power, or with any federal law, rule, regulation, or order which purports to authorize, the collection of electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant.”
Practically speaking, the bill prohibits state and local agencies from providing any material support to the NSA within their jurisdiction. This includes barring government-owned utilities from providing water and electricity. It makes information gathered without a warrant by the NSA and shared with law enforcement inadmissible in state court. It blocks public universities from serving as NSA research facilities or recruiting grounds. And it disincentivizes corporations attempting to fill needs not met in the absence of state cooperation.
A Washington company also has a strong link to the NSA. Cray Inc. builds supercomputers for the agency.
If the bill passes, it would set in motion actions to stop any state support of the Yakima center as long as it remains in the state, and could make Cray ineligible for any contracts with the state or its political subdivisions.
Three public universities in Washington join 166 schools nationwide partnering with the NSA. Taylor’s bill would address these schools’ status as NSA “Centers of Academic Excellence,” and would bar any new partnerships with other state colleges or universities.
Let’s keep the momentum going.
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
Admin: Good for Washington State! About the only thing left to fuck them up us something like this. Ostracize the employees. Refuse to provide services to the worthless fuckers that are a part of this. Hit ’em in the pocketbook if you can.
Nig-Oreo said there has been no evidence of abuse in NSA programs. That means he does not consider any of the following abuse;
.
The NSA spied on the porn and phone sex habits of ideological opponents, including those with no significant ties to extremists, and including a US person.
According to the NSA in 2009, it had a program similar to Project Minaret — the tracking of anti-war opponents in the 1970s — in which it spied on people in the US in the guise of counterterrorism without approval. We still don’t have details of this abuse.
When the NSA got FISC approval for the Internet (2004) and phone (2006) dragnets, NSA did not turn off features of Bush’s illegal program that did not comply with the FISC authorization. These abuses continued until 2009 (one of them, the collection of Internet metadata that qualified as content, continued even after 2004 identification of those abuses).
Even after the FISC spent 9 months reining in some of this abuse, the NSA continued to ignore limits on disseminating US person data. Similarly, the NSA and FBI never complied with PATRIOT Act requirements to develop minimization procedures for the Section 215 program (in part, probably, because NSA’s role in the phone dragnet would violate any compliant minimization procedures).
The NSA has twice — in 2009 and 2011 — admitted to collecting US person content in the United States in bulk after having done so for years. It tried to claim (and still claims publicly in spite of legal rulings to the contrary) this US person content did not count as intentionally-collected US person content (FISC disagreed both times), and has succeeded in continuing some of it by refusing to count it, so it can claim it doesn’t know it is happening.
As recently as spring 2012, 9% of the NSA’s violations involved analysts breaking standard operating procedures they know. NSA doesn’t report these as willful violations, however, because they’ve deemed any rule-breaking in pursuit of “the mission” not to be willful violations.
In 2008, Congress passed a law allowing bulk collection of foreign-targeted content in the US, Section 702, to end the NSA’s practice of stealing Internet company data from telecom cables. Yet in spite of having a legal way to acquire such data, the NSA (through GCHQ) continues to steal data from some of the same companies, this time overseas, from their own cables. Arguably this is a violation of Section 702 of FISA.
NSA may intentionally collect US person content (including Internet metadata that legally qualifies as content) overseas (it won’t count this data, so we don’t know how systematic it is). If it does, it may be a violation of Section 703 of FISA.
Bill Maher and Glenn Greenwald clash over ‘totally batsh*t’ Edward Snowden
Bill Maher acknowledged his respect for former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden during Real Time‘s return episode on Friday, while comparing him to former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) during an interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald.
“I agree with what he says, I nod along,” Maher said. “And then he says something totally batsh*t.”
Maher then quoted from Snowden’s “open letter to the people of Brazil” last month, in which Snowden said programs like the NSA’s surveillance efforts “were never about terrorism” but were instead about “social control, and diplomatic manipulation.”
“That’s crazy,” Maher told Greenwald. “They were about stopping terrorism. They may have gone too far. But everybody in the government isn’t out to get you.”
After reading Snowden’s allegation that the government can “go back in time” to chart a person’s online history, Maher asked Greenwald, “This is nuts, right?”
“No, Bill, what’s nuts is the fact that you think that’s nuts,” said Greenwald, who published several articles based on knowledge seized by Snowden. “A lot of the stories we reported had nothing to do with terrorism. They’re spying on economic summits in Latin America, oil companies in Brazil, democratically-elected leaders of our closest allies who have nothing to do with terrorism.”
Greenwald further argued that the reporting enabled by Snowden’s information showed that the NSA had the ability to “slow down the internet” by storing data long enough to search through a person’s search history and correspondence.
“He’s a 29 years old who’s not a trained politician,” Greenwald continued. “He doesn’t have aides whispering in his ear what he should say. He’s not adept at that. That’s what makes him so impressive — it was an act of conscience.”
“No one is arguing with that Glenn,” Maher said, cutting in. “What I said is, every time he opens his mouth, he always says something f*cking nuts. When he says, ‘They know every friend you’ve ever discussed something with,’ we’ll just have to agree to disagree on what’s f*cking nuts.”
And if you have a few minutes, listen to the OTHER great Presidential speech;
[img
[/img]
This whole discussion about the NSA and spying reminds me of the discussion about Catholic clergy sexual abuse. It’s all a bunch of non sequiturs. If someone fucks children, we don’t need a “time of healing”. We need to throw them in prison for a long time (as well as any bishops who conspired and were, in fact, accomplices after the fact). Similarly, this NSA stuff is not about “balancing privacy concerns with the need to stop terrorism”. It should be about making sure the Constitution is adhered to – especially the 4th amendment. Obviously Obama doesn’t give a shit about the Constitution, but there ought to be at least a couple of media jackals who can reference the constitutional issues. I don’t give a shit if we spied on Angela Merkel. She’s not a US citizen. I don’t give a shit about the privacy of any non-US-citizen anywhere. Sure there are areas of prudential judgment – whether it’s wise to risk getting caught spying on foreign leaders, for example, but those are secondary concerns – to the extent that they’re concerns at all. The argument about the the efficacy of NSA spying is also largely beside the point. The privacy defenders bring up the fact that no known terrorist attack has been stopped by NSA snooping. That’s a mildly interesting tidbit, but even if hundreds of attacks had been thwarted it wouldn’t negate the primary need to follow the constitution. You wanna spy on a US citizen? Get a fucking warrant.