Left-Right Grassroots Efforts to Cut the NSA’s Juice

WASHINGTON - A wide array of groups is organizing “The Day We Fight Back” against NSA surveillance on Tuesday, Feb. 11. Revelations of NSA spying continue, as the Guardian reports, the German press is reporting the “NSA tapped German ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s phone … after opposition to military action in Iraq in 2002.”

Groups from the left and right are joining together in many states to “Turn It Off” — offnow.org — urging local governments to cut off the electricity to NSA facilities.

The Los Angeles Times reports in the article “Arizona legislator pushes bill to combat NSA surveillance” that: “So far, 12 states — from California to Mississippi — have introduced similar bills to make it more difficult for the agency to do surveillance in the United States, according to the Tenth Amendment Center, which provides model legislation to resist NSA surveillance.”

The Examiner reported last month in “NSA scandal: Washington State considers cutting off electricity, water for NSA” that: “According to officials at the Tenth Amendment Center, Washington became first state with a physical NSA location to consider the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, which was written and proposed specifically to make life extremely difficult for the powerful and super-secret spy agency.

“In a bipartisan move, State Rep. David Taylor (R-Moxee) and State Rep. Luis Moscoso (D- Mountlake Terrace) introduced HB2272 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.”

MATTHEW KELLEGREW, media at bordc.org, @bordc
Kellegrew is the legal fellow of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. He said today: “It took activists from across the political spectrum to develop the OffNow model legislation. And we see Fourth Amendment Protection Acts that have been introduced in over a fifth of the states in the union reflect this unique approach. Unconstitutional government spying is both an individual privacy issue and a social justice matter. By working together, activists across the left-right divide are not only restoring the protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, but also elevating our political discourse up and away from the type of hyper-partisan bickering that has held people in the United States hostage for over a half decade.” Kellegrew recently wrote the piece “Washington State next in line to take on unconstitutional federal surveillance.”

MICHAEL BOLDIN, michael.boldin at tenthamendmentcenter.com
Boldin is the executive director of the Tenth Amendment Center. He said today: “It has been more than three decades since Sen. Frank Church warned that the NSA could enable ‘total tyranny.’ After so many years of hoping that the NSA would limit itself, people across the political spectrum are energized by the idea that there is another option. By introducing and passing 4th Amendment Protection Acts in states around the country, we have an opportunity to box the NSA in and defend the Tenth Amendment whether Congress wants to or not.”