07/16/14 – Mike Maharrey – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
Next up is Michael Meharry from OffNow.org.
We've got a project to nullify the NSA.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing?
Hey, Scott.
How are you, buddy?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us today.
Tell me something.
What's nullification mean?
It means saying no.
It means putting up roadblocks and taking steps to stop unwarranted actions.
That's a pretty simple way to put it.
I always like to compare it to a three-year-old.
The three-year-old tries to nullify his parents all the time.
It's so easy even a three-year-old can do it.
That's a good way to put it.
All right, so what's so bad about the NSA?
You want to nullify it?
Oh, my gosh.
What's so bad about it?
It seems like every day we get a new piece of news or a new revelation from Snowden or from other whistleblowers that tell us something else that the NSA is doing.
I've done several articles over at OffNow.com or OffNow.org over the last couple of weeks.
I made the point in one of them that it doesn't seem like—I can't ever remember a time when we've gotten one of these revelations and we've sat back and go, oh, it's not as bad as we thought.
It's always, oh, my gosh, it's worse than we thought.
And I shudder to think what is going on that we don't know about.
Just the other day, William Binney, who's a high-level NSA technical chief back during the Cold War—he was a big codebreaker, broke Russian codes and whatnot—he quit the NSA and discussed after 9-11.
And he spoke at a conference in London not long ago and said that the NSA's goal was total population control.
This is a guy that comes from the inside, so, you know, I think this is probably something that all Americans need to be aware of in realizing just how ubiquitous and how deep its tentacles run, and we need to do something to stop it.
All right.
Now, so I'm going to pretend I believe this for a second in order to argue with you.
You know what, though, man, they're collecting everything, yeah, but they really are just looking for needles.
They're not wasting their time on us.
They don't care about us.
And really, it's all just protecting us from getting blown up.
So who cares?
Yeah.
I hear that kind of stuff a lot, and, you know, let's be real honest.
You know what?
I'll add one thing to that, too, Michael.
I'm paranoid as hell that these ISIS guys want America to re-invade Iraq and that that would be a smart strategy for them, and therefore they might try to attack America in September 11th fashion, or even a tenth of that would still be a massacre and would be, you know, absolutely troublesome.
And so thank baby Jesus for the NSA keeping all those guys way on the other side of Turkey from here.
Yeah, you're right, because, you know, without the NSA, we'd never have anybody, like, bombing marathons or, you know, doing anything like that that would know, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait.
Another interesting thing that Mr. Binney said was that the NSA's never done anything to stop any terrorist attack.
Again, this is coming from a guy from the inside, but I do hear that a lot.
And here's the thing.
No one's ever refuted his point either, I don't think.
No, I'm not.
They tried to cite, you know, they got narrowed down all the way to some cab driver in San Diego, mail, you know, Instagram some money, or MoneyGram some money, Instagram is different, Western Union some money to Somalia or something.
It's all that they could claim victory for this whole time.
Yeah.
You know, here's the thing, here's the bottom line, and I think most people know this intuitively if they sit back and think about it for a minute.
Whenever a group of people accumulates a great deal of power, it's always abused.
I can't think of any time that there's been any group of people that's ever accumulated a big chunk of power and have not abused it somewhere.
I mean, we even have precedent on this type of thing with the FBI.
I mean, you look back to the years of J. Edgar Hoover, and you know, he was a powerful FBI director, and we know for a fact that he used that power to spy on political enemies and undercut people.
The fact of the matter is, if this type of power is allowed to exist without any controls on it, operating in complete secrecy, we know that they're going to do bad things with it.
And so it's incumbent upon us, as the normal people out there just living our lives, that we do something to make sure that they cannot violate our rights and do things to us that are inevitably going to be harmful, because it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
You know, you could say I'm being paranoid, I could just as well say the person saying that the ISS is going to come over here, or ISIS, or whatever the hell they are, that they're going to come over here and invade us.
I think there's a far more likelihood that the out-of-control agency in our own federal government is going to do us harm, and we know these guys.
Got that right, especially, and you don't sound crazy at all after we just interviewed John Whitehead from the Rutherford Institute about how absolutely out-of-control the Department of Homeland Security is already, and of course they work in partnership with the NSA all day, help laundering their illegally gotten intelligence and applying it to Americans in criminal cases.
Absolutely.
And I'm so glad you brought that up, because this is kind of something that I was just thinking about, you know, what would I like to communicate to the audience today?
You know, there's not a lot going on with the campaign right now, we're between legislative sessions, but one thing that has really struck me over the last couple of weeks is the way that the police state, the security state, the military, and local law enforcement are all knitted together in this big incestuous web, and I've got the example to kind of show that.
Grand Rapids, Michigan, just came out a couple of weeks ago that the police are now going to have access to video feeds from private cameras that are set up along the streets of Grand Rapids.
They're all real excited about this, police are going to be able to tap in and watch the streets and keep us safe.
Then you find out, read down in the article, you find out that the police department is looking to get a grant from Homeland Security to upgrade these cameras, so what they're going to do is they're going to get Homeland Security money to upgrade private cameras so that the government can tap into them and snoop.
Well, do you think the federal government, Homeland Security, is going to hand out money with no strings attached?
Of course not.
They're going to want access to that information, and of course local law enforcement is going to be more than happy to supply it.
Then you get in, and you think about the FBI, and here's where people are going to start saying, oh, this Mike Meharry guy is crazy, but this isn't crazy, this is happening.
The FBI right now is bringing online facial recognition, facial recognition that will ultimately, as it learns, as it gets smarter, as it recognizes more faces, will be able to track people virtually everywhere they go in public.
So now you've got the Homeland Security with access to private cameras in a city that can utilize facial recognition.
They're going to be able to track ...
I mean, talk about Big Brother.
Orwell has got to be feeling like a prophet now, wherever he might be.
It's amazing the way all of this is tied together.
It's not just your local police, it's not just the federal government.
All of these guys are working together, and we need to be facial at the local level.
You know what it is, Michael?
It's a matter of time.
It's just the computer power gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, the cameras get cheaper and cheaper, the radio frequency readers get cheaper and cheaper, and whatever it is.
Unless there is a giant pushback, unless there is a campaign to nullify, it just goes on its own course.
I mean, what gadget company doesn't have an entire division dedicated to selling gadgets to the government?
I mean, it's the same as anything else.
It's just like a survey company.
They survey private property, but boy, if they can get a contract for a highway, hell yeah.
That's where the money is.
That's right.
So it's the same kind of economics on this kind of thing, only there's 10,000 ways to enslave us and network all these databases together, you know?
It is, and it's frightening, and that's why I think campaigns like OffNow are so important, you know, because I don't trust these guys in Congress.
They're not going to fix it.
In fact, right now they're working on passing this CISA, which is just CISPA without a P.
Another way to intertwine private corporations and the government to, you know, they're going to tell us, oh, we're going to protect you from hackers, but what they're really going to do is start information sharing.
In other words, these tech companies are going to have free reign to share your personal data with the federal government, and they're going to be shielded from even being sued or being subject to any type of lawsuits or anything.
This stuff is so deep.
We have to fight it at the local level.
All right.
Hang tight right there.
It's Michael Meharry from OffNow.org.
We'll be right back.
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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
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We're talking with Michael Meharry from OffNow.org.
And I'm sorry for interrupting you so damn much, dude.
I just get so excited about this stuff.
And the things you say, they they remind me of things that I like saying.
But the point is that where we ended up, it wasn't me interrupting you.
It was the damn commercial break.
Come on.
So we had to stop.
But now I would like to let you go on where we left off, which is about what people can actually do about it.
Because you know, hey, I'm living proof of me not knowing what to do about anything.
I show up here every day and I interview people about it.
That's all I know what to do.
And that's just really another way of saying I have no idea what to do.
But you do.
So tell them, Michael.
Well, you know, let me kind of start at the beginning.
About this time last year, Michael Bolden and me and some folks over at the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and some other people, we started looking at all of the information that was coming out, especially with the Snowden leaks and started to think about, OK, we know that this institution, this spy state is even more invasive than anybody ever imagined.
And we all imagined it was pretty bad to start with.
And we started to think about, OK, what can we do about it?
And we asked the same question that you just did, recognizing that, you know, these guys in Congress, the courts, the president, they're going to talk a lot about it, but they're probably not going to actually do anything.
We figured we need to find some way to make a splash, to have an impact and bypass the political class in Washington, D.C.
So we started looking at, OK, what can we do?
And we thought, well, you know what?
We've got these little power centers that we call states.
Is there anything that a state could do that we could harness that power to at least hinder what the NSA is doing?
And we realized that, yes, we can.
And we realized this because of a newspaper article, actually, we came across.
It was published in 2006 in the Baltimore Sun.
And it talked about how the NSA in Maryland had maxed out its power grid and how they were struggling to have enough electricity to run their spy computers.
So we thought, ah, an Achilles heel.
And then we realized that, hey, in a lot of these facilities, states or their political subdivisions like cities are actually providing resources to the NSA and helping them spy on us and violate our rights.
In particular, Bluffdale, Utah, these 1.7 million gallons of water, at least they will when fully operational, to cool their spy computers.
The city of Bluffdale has no obligation to help the NSA violate our rights.
The strong legal precedent that says that the federal government cannot force states to provide resources or take action to implement their federal programs.
So essentially, Utah could turn off the water.
They could just pass a bill and say, you know what, we're not going to provide any material support to the NSA.
And boom, no water, no water, no cooling, no cooling, no spy computers.
So we can make an impact and hinder what the NSA is doing.
And surely that will get their attention.
So instead of depending on the federal government to limit the federal government, we're going to use these other little governments, which, granted, they can be just as bad as the federal government, but we can use them against each other.
We can use that power.
And that was the birth of the Off Now strategy to create this piece of legislation to get it passed in as many states as possible and use it to hinder what the NSA is doing and force them to reform, to quit violating the Constitution, to quit violating our rights and operate with transparency instead of in the dark of night.
All right, now, so get your fingers out and tick off on them.
All of your successes and partials count, too.
Well, the biggest success is, I think, something that's on the horizon, and that's in California.
They've taken the the Second Amendment or the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, a piece of legislation that I just mentioned, and it's passed through their assembly or I'm sorry, it's passed the Senate.
It passed an assembly committee.
And from what we're hearing, it's looking really good to pass the full assembly and go on to the governor.
And people that are in California are saying that the governor is probably going to sign it.
But California, I expect by this fall, will be the first state to actually implement a law that will set the stage for denying material support to the NSA.
They've changed their bill a little bit.
And once it's passed, then somebody will have to make the determination that the NSA or any other organization is violating the Fourth Amendment and illegally seizing information.
But that's a that's a formality.
So California could be the first.
This bill was also introduced in Utah, which is significant because of what I already discussed with the water.
And it made it into a committee.
They debated it.
And instead of killing the bill, which, you know, first time around, we were thinking it's a little bit out there.
They might not be willing to do this.
They didn't kill the bill.
They referred it to an interim study committee, which means that it will be taken up again in the upcoming 2015 legislative session.
And in the meantime, they're going to have to hold at least one public hearing.
So sometime probably in the fall, late fall, early winter, we will have a public hearing in the state of Utah to discuss this strategy to turn off the water to the Bluffdale facility.
That's a win in and of itself, because we know that that's going to get a lot of attention.
It's going to make more people aware that, hey, there's other things going on and begging our Congress critters to make them stop.
We've also had some pretty cool stuff just in in the media, in the fact that our efforts have sparked reporters to go, huh, what's going on?
Reporter in Salt Lake City for the Salt Lake Tribune actually forced the NSA to provide information on their water usage, and he also forced disclosure of the contract between the city of Bluffdale and the NSA, which unsurprisingly revealed that the city of Bluffdale gave the NSA a sweetheart deal.
In other words, if you live in Utah, you're paying more money for your water than the NSA is.
So all of this came to light because of the work and the efforts that we're doing.
And we expect these efforts to grow as the next legislation legislative session moves into into being in 2015.
And I know you've had at least the bills introduced in many more state houses than that.
And all of it is important.
You know, little victories, you know, add up.
And really, you know, if the government could say if the TV could claim for a minute that I guess nobody cares about this boy, they will.
And they try sometimes.
But when you are leading efforts like this, they just you know, you make it very difficult for them anyway.
When, you know, they have to interrupt.
They go from one story talking about nobody cares to the next stories about how people with seemingly no political power are coming together and are actually really doing something about it because they love liberty so damn much and that kind of thing.
You know, that's really important.
And man, if you guys could really get the governor to sign the one in California.
Now, you guys have a prior victory, a real victory in California when Jerry Brown signed y'all's anti-NDAA, kidnap Americans with military power legislation there.
And so, you know, that sure makes me believe it's possible.
It sounds like you're pretty optimistic about what's going to go on there.
I'm very optimistic.
And I think that's going to it's going to jumpstart the effort in other states.
And you're right.
We had that.
That's going to be a section that was introduced.
If you can get it, you know, the bill was introduced in more than a dozen states this last session.
This was basically gearing up just in November.
And, you know, when you really stop and think about it to the average American, when you say, hey, these states are going to turn off the water to an NSA facility.
I mean, I understand what people look at me and go, man, that's a little out there.
And yet we got 12 states to introduce this piece of legislation.
And the other cool thing is that there was coverage in CBS News.
We had coverage in The Guardian, other major newspapers, both left leaning and right leaning.
And very few of them actually criticized the idea.
You know, some of them said, oh, I'm not sure that this is going to work.
But none of them said it was a dumb idea.
Yeah.
ACLU likes it, too.
I brought it up to the ACLU on the show and they're like, hell yeah, we totally support that.
Well, and, you know, just kind of an exciting thing.
We're going to be having some meetings, Michael Bolden and I, with folks at the ACLU in a couple of weeks to actually talk about working together on some legislation that would serve to restrict data sharing and the seizure of cell phone data and whatnot.
So right now, in 45 seconds, tell us all about how people can contribute, how they can join, what they'll get when they join, how they can go on and talk with their state representatives, etc.
We need to go to offnow.org.
Everything you need to know is there.
You're going to see a place where you can make a donation.
And I know money is tight for everybody, but if you can chip in five bucks, that'll be great because we can use that money to create new videos.
We can use it to do radio stuff.
So definitely, if you can contribute, that would be great.
And if you're willing to help in a state, if you're willing to go to your state legislator and say, hey, I want you to introduce this bill, model legislation is there.
And another cool thing is, is we plan on rolling out a brand new website here in the next month or so.
It's going to have a lot of really good activist tools.
And that'll be also at offnow.org, right?
That's absolutely right.
Hey, you own a business?
Maybe we should consider advertising on the show.
See if we can make a little bit of money.
My email address is Scott at Scott Horton dot org.
Phone records, financial and location data, Prism, Tempora, X-Key Score, Boundless Informant.
Hey all, Scott Horton here for offnow.org.
Now, here's the deal.
Due to the Snowden revelations, we have a great opportunity for a short period of time to get some real rollback of the national surveillance state.
Now, they're already trying to tire us by introducing fake reforms in the Congress and the courts.
They betrayed their sworn oaths to the Constitution and Bill of Rights again and again and can in no way be trusted to stop the abuses for us.
We've got to do it ourselves.
How?
We nullify it at the state level.
It's still not easy.
The off now project of the 10th Amendment Center has gotten off to a great start.
I mean it.
There's real reason to be optimistic here.
They've gotten their model legislation introduced all over the place in state after state.
I've lost count more than a dozen.
You're always wondering, yeah, but what can we do?
Here's something, something important, something that can work if we do the work.
Get started cutting off the NSA support in your state.
Go to offnow.org.
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