Washington State Bill Proposes Criminalizing Help to NSA, Turning Off Resources to Yakima Facility

NSA listening post in Yakima, Washington. (Image: via Google Maps)

The campaign to turn off power to the NSA has gotten a big boost. Washington has become the first state with a physical NSA location to consider a Fourth Amendment protection act designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency.

The state-level campaign to turn off power to the NSA got a big boost January 15, 2014, as Washington became the first state with a physical NSA location to consider a Fourth Amendment protection act designed to make life extremely difficult for the massive spy agency.

Bills introduced in California, Oklahoma, Indiana, Missouri and Kansas seek to prevent the NSA from expanding further or sharing data and metadata in non-terror investigations. But Washington’s House Bill 2272 (HB2272) takes things a step farther because the state is home to the secretive “Yakima listening post” documented by famous NSA researcher James Bamford in his 1982 book, The Puzzle Palace.

HB2272 was introduced by a bipartisan team of legislators, Rep. David Taylor, a Republican from Moxee, and Rep. Luis Moscoso, a former three-term secretary of the state Democratic Party from Mountlake Terrace.

If passed, the bill would make it the policy of the state “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.”

Taylor, whose district houses the Yakima post, said he “cannot sit idly by while a secretive facility in his backyard violates the rights of people everywhere.”

“We’re running the bill to provide protection against the ever-increasing surveillance into the daily lives of our citizens,” Taylor said. “Our founding fathers established a series of checks and balances in the Constitution. Given the federal government’s utter failure to address the people’s concerns, it’s up to the states to stand for our citizens’ constitutional rights.”

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 bans corporations who continue to do business with the NSA from holding any contracts with the state.

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