A group of California state lawmakers have introduced legislation designed to cripple the National Security Agency.
U.S. News and World Report says the bill would deny access to water and electricity to NSA facilities in the state and outlaw NSA research partnerships with state universities. Additionally, companies that have contracts with the state would be prohibited from working with or for the NSA.
Similar legislation is pending in Arizona.
“I agree with the NSA that the world is a dangerous place,” state Sen. Ted Lieu, the bill’s Democratic co-author, said in a statement. “That is why our founders enacted the Bill of Rights. They understood the grave dangers of an out-of-control federal government.”
Lieu said the NSA’s surveillance programs pose “a clear and present danger to our liberties.”
The California bill would specifically ban the state and its political subdivisions from “[p]roviding material support, participation or assistance in any form to a federal agency that claims the power, by virtue of any federal law, rule, regulation or order, to collect electronic data or metadata of any person pursuant to any action not based on a warrant that particularly describes the person, place and thing to be searched or seized.”
The California legislation is largely symbolic as the NSA does not have any facilities in that state.
