The California State Legislature has revisited a bill introduced earlier this year that would make it nearly impossible for the National Security Agency to conduct its Big Brother-esque surveillance operations in the state, since the federal government has failed to offer Americans such protection.
SB-828 — also known as the Fourth Amendment Protection Act — was passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this week, and sent to the state Senate for a vote. A date for the vote has not yet been decided.
Though the bill wouldn’t bar the NSA or any other federal government that engages in the “illegal and unconstitutional collection of electronic data or metadata, without consent, of any person not based on a warrant that particularly describes the person, place, and thing to be searched or seized, from operating in the state,” it would essentially prohibit the state from participating in the collection of said data or providing material support or resources to any agency that did.
According to the bill, all state government-owned utilities would be prohibited from providing NSA offices with water and electricity; information gathered by the NSA without a warrant would be inadmissible in state court; public universities would not be allowed to serve as NSA research facilities or recruiting grounds; and any corporations that try to provide resources denied by the state to the agency will become ineligible for state and local government contracts or work.
Introduced in January by state Sens. Ted Lieu and Joel Anderson, the bill is similar to those introduced in a handful of other states such as Arizona.
“State-funded public resources should not be going toward aiding the NSA or any other federal agency from indiscriminate spying on its own citizens and gathering electronic or metadata that violates the Fourth Amendment,” Lieu said earlier this year.
While the NSA may not have operational centers in the state quite yet, six California state universities currently have partnerships with the NSA. These schools conduct research on behalf of the agency, the Department of Defense and other government agencies. The NSA is also granted more access to the students on those campuses in order to recruit “spies” or data collectors.
Though there doesn’t appear to be any publicly announced plans to build an NSA facility in the state, Shan Trejo, a spokesman for the OffNow Coalition, a group that includes the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and state-level advocacy groups and is encouraging states to pass anti-NSA laws, says passing this law will ensure that the NSA knows it won’t be welcome to conduct unlawful activities in the state in the future.
“We know the NSA has aggressively worked to expand its physical locations because it maxed out the Baltimore area power grid in 2006,” Trejo said. “They’ve built new locations in Utah and Texas, and expanded in several other states.”
Trejo further explained that as a center of the high-tech industry, California would be a “likely candidate” to house a new NSA data center or “threat operations center” amid the agency’s aggressive expansion.
“This act yanks away the welcome mat and tells the NSA, ‘We don’t want you in California unless you follow the Constitution,’” Trejo said.
Read the full text of Bill SB-828 below