Calif. Senate Urges Congress To Revisit Vote On NSA Surveillance

CBSLA.com) ^ | January 7, 2014 9:47 AM | Margaret Carrero

[BenLurkin]

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A sweeping bill intended to rein in the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is making its way through the halls of Sacramento.

KNX 1070′s Margaret Carrero reports the California State Senate has voted overwhelmingly to approve Senate Resolution 16, which calls on lawmakers in Washington to take action against the NSA.

Passed in a bipartisan 31-1 vote on Monday, Senate Resolution 16 (PDF) bans state agencies, officials, and corporations from giving any material support, participation or assistance to any federal agency to collect electronic or metadata — including emails and text messages — of any person unless a warrant is issued that specifically describes the person, place and thing to be searched or seized.

Sen. Ted Lieu, who co-authored SR 16 with Assemblyman Joel Anderson (R-San Diego), said the legislation comes in response to recent revelations of the NSA’s “massive phone and internet records collection program on Americans.”

“The NSA is violating our Constitutional rights on a daily basis by doing a blanket search-and-seizure of all our phone records of every American for the last several years, and I want to put a stop to that,” Lieu said.

SR 16 also urges Congress to pass legislation that would specifically bar the NSA and other agencies from using Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act to collect records, including telephone records “pertaining to persons not subject to an investigation under the USA PATRIOT Act.”

According to Lieu, records show the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, Jr., initially denied the existence of the NSA’s blanket phone surveillance of all Americans. Multiple media reports regarding NSA activities have now caused Clapper to admit the NSA has, in fact, been collecting phone information on all 317 million Americans for years, Lieu said.

But Lieu added the resolution was not meant to downplay the work of the NSA in tracking potential threats.

“The NSA is doing a great job, but they need to do a great job within the confines of the Constitution,” he said.

It was not immediately clear if or when Congress would respond to Senate Resolution 16.

[Bshaw]

That has to be the first common sense thing I’ve seen come out of California in half a decade.

[Sparticus]

Of course this is completely unenforceable. The NSA must have several Federal Judges by the short hairs who they could get to throw this out in short order if it in any way impacted their operations.

[Yollopoliuhqui]

We have a hideously powerful branch of government waging war upon its own citizens. Nobody has a clue as to who benefits from the intel gathered by the NSA, who the covert recipients of that intel might be. The NSA would be the core strategy center for any coup against the Constitution. We already know which party is trying to pry America’s fingers from the most relevant document in human history.

The assumption that the CIA, FBI, FEMA and NSA are firmly patriotic needs to be reanalyzed by conservatives. We no longer live if William F. Buckley’s statecraft milieu. These agencies need to be ridden like a truck on the Grapevine with no brakes.

The left is getting more desperate by the day and will be tempted to out its covert assets in a large scale false flag provocation of some sort. Call your Senator and Representative in the next 15 minutes and let them know their re-elction potential if they don’t support a massive high colonic for these agencies.