11/15/13 – Michael Boldin – The Scott Horton Show

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Where our first guest on the show is today, Michael Bolden of the Tenth Amendment Center.
That's Tenth Amendment dot org.
Tenth Amendment Center dot org.
But it's also offnow.org and nullify NSA dot com.
Very importantly, write that down if you're not near your computer now.
Although everybody's got a computer in their hand nowadays.
Welcome back to the show, Michael.
How are you doing?
I'm good, Scott.
Well, good.
I'm very happy to have you here.
Now, can you tell me real quick for starters?
Sorry for the stupid question to begin it, but it is my show after all.
Offnow.org and nullify NSA dot com.
What's the difference between those two?
It's the same site.
Okay, one just forwards to the other.
Yeah, yeah.
It's well, I mean, some people like certain language when they're talking about things.
The primary place people go is offnow.org.
A lot of people like the idea of trying to nullify the NSA, which is what we're trying to do.
So we have that available too.
I guess we'll figure it out over time.
I see what you mean though, because liberal types are afraid of the nullification word in a way.
So you can just get around the touchy buzzword and get right to the point about stopping the NSA, which is what matters to everyone.
Exactly.
And sometimes language causes problems because people don't understand what words mean or they have real bad associations with them.
And if you're talking about liberals, like in the mainstream Democrat liberal type, a lot of times the first thing they're going to think of is like, oh, you're a racist.
And then when you have a one-on-one conversation with them and say, oh, well, you know, one of the best ways that nullification has been used in modern times is to stop a lot of marijuana prohibition in the state.
Then they start getting it.
And it really takes getting through the misconceptions.
Right.
And now, so you guys are pushing model legislation to push back against the National Security Agency.
Tell us all about this.
Well, I guess really the first thing to do is to step back and talk a couple of minutes about Dianne Feinstein, if you don't mind, because I think she's important in this whole equation strategically.
She's the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and she's a very powerful person there who happens.
I mean, the thing that she happens to say makes me think that she could probably be the head of the NSA.
She talks about being their surveillance program being fully constitutional and legal.
I don't know if you talked about her op-ed in The Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago where she used the old 9-11 scare tactics, basically saying if they stop this mass surveillance program, everyone is.
In danger of a terrorist attack.
In other words, we spy or you might die.
And this is really nasty arrogance from someone like her.
And the reason I think she's important as the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, any bill in Congress which might limit the power of the NSA, like the USA Freedom Act that a lot of good people support, is going to have to go through Dianne Feinstein.
And to me, that means there's absolutely zero chance of any bill in Congress ever passing as long as she's in there to stop the NSA.
And that's why we have this model legislation on a state level.
A place where it's going to be very difficult to stop the NSA or push back against them, but at least there's a chance.
Right.
And now, I mean, they do have the Wyden and it's Leahy, right, have their bill.
But as long as she's the chair of the Intelligence Committee, you're saying that their bill doesn't have a chance.
She gets to make it.
Her bill is the one that the Senate will vote on, if anything.
Well, I mean, anything dealing with intelligence has to go through her committee.
And as the committee chair, she chooses whether or not that bill even gets heard, because there's a number of bills like Bernie Sanders has one as well.
There'll probably be others coming up.
What likely I would expect to happen is she would have like a hearing on all the bills.
And because she's so in love with the NSA spying program, I can't imagine her letting the really good ones get through.
I mean, people in Congress generally don't let that happen in the first place.
And then you find someone who's really in favor of a federal program.
I just logically, I just can't imagine that actually happening.
Right.
All right.
So now get to the state legislation, because I think anybody can tell you don't have to be of any particular political bent to understand that your voice is loudest at your local town hall.
And they say you can't even fight City Hall.
But if you got a prayer at all, maybe.
But then at the state legislature, your voice is a much smaller voice among many more.
And on the national lever, you got to be Dianne Feinstein to make decisions like this.
And if you're not her, you don't even really get to say whatsoever.
But so, you know, everybody seems to kind of know that, but they still always look for national solutions.
But I really like your bottom up approach to this is what can be done from the levels where regular people, the ones who have, you know, the best interests of other people like them in mind, can have the most effect on up.
Yeah, and that's really the bottom line.
No pun intended.
We have we recognize that the NSA isn't as all powerful as they'd like us to believe they are.
They rely on the assistance of state and local agencies, law enforcement to be able to do the things that they want to do.
And that happens in three primary areas.
One in states where there are currently NSA locations.
Who knows how many they're going to be in the future?
We're talking Utah, Texas, Washington State, Hawaii, Colorado, Tennessee, Georgia, West Virginia and Maryland.
In those locations, they rely on state location specific to provide some type of resources.
Water in Utah, for example, one point seven million gallons of water every day is needed to make sure the computers are cooled and operational at the new data center in Texas.
The new one opening up in San Antonio.
The electricity is going to be provided by the city of San Antonio.
And the reason that's important before getting on to the other two areas, the reason why that's important under the anti commandeering principle of the Constitution, that the federal government can't require your state to carry out federal programs, regulations, laws, etc.
These states don't actually have to participate in this.
Utah could stop providing the water.
Texas could stop providing the electricity.
Augusta, Georgia could stop the sewage treatment.
And it's going to make things much more difficult.
This is obviously not a silver bullet, but anything that can be done that would, I don't know, slow the NSA down, I think is a very positive thing.
And then if you want, go ahead and go on to your other two things and then I'll try to follow up.
All right, cool.
Cool.
So the other two parts where the NSA relies on assistance, I think the big one, which happens all over the country, is research and development.
And this happens through partnerships at universities.
There's 166 what they call centers for academic excellence under the NSA, where the NSA is partnering with universities, some private, a large number of them state run universities around the country.
Where they're actually using these colleges as not only recruiting grounds, like the military has done for so many years, but they're using them as a way to expand their capabilities, partnering with funding and research and things like that.
And the third part is through information sharing via fusion centers.
Information from local gets passed up to the feds and vice versa and around the country.
And then also via the Drug Enforcement Agency, the NSA is passing.
It's this division called Special Operations Division.
The NSA is passing information to the DEA and they're secretly handing stuff off.
Well, not as secretly anymore, but they're passing that information off.
Of course, the information was collected without a warrant and that information is being passed to local law enforcement.
Local law enforcement is being told by the Special Operations Division of DEA to say, oh, well, we got this information on our own.
They're told to cover their tracks and pretend they never got it from NSA.
And this Fourth Amendment Protection Act, we expect at least five states to be introducing this legislation in the next couple of months based on our conversations with state reps.
This type of legislation would ban all that type of cooperation.
And you get a lot of states doing this stuff and it becomes very difficult for NSA to do everything it wants to do.
Well, and you know, too, the thing of it is that more and more Snowden revelations are just going to keep coming out and this is going to stay a topic for a while now.
And any kind of pushback is itself big news.
I mean, if you can win even in just one municipality where they're relying on water services, for example, or or even make a real credible fight out of it.
That's going to be just huge for getting other people involved and getting them paying attention.
Well, you have a very good point there, Scott, and I think what's going to be huge news and I'm very confident that it's going to happen is when a bill gets introduced in Utah to say that we're going to turn the water off.
We're not going to participate with the NSA.
I don't know if that bill is going to get passed.
I know the governor there loves the NSA because the NSA hands them a lot of money.
But you know what that will, like you said, it's going to rile people up and say, wow, there are some state reps in Utah that want to shut down the NSA.
We need to support them.
That could be a rallying cry.
Right.
I mean, after all, as sad as it is, the fact of old Republican in a suit saying, well, yeah, I think we should deny them their water or whatever.
That is what can help define this as a very kind of mainstream, moderate, reasonable issue and not the province of radicals and radicalism.
But no, no, no, no, no.
There's the NSA is the radicalism.
And those of us who care about what America was supposed to be and all of that kind of stuff are the ones who are insisting on this.
And that's by far most of us, not some fringe.
No doubt about it.
And the fascinating part on top of this is that a model that we're basing this off of the strategic model is the state level resistance in the 1850s to the Federal Fugitive Slave Act.
So anyone who really I mean, if we want to get into crazy rhetoric like the mainstream tends to want to do, anyone who opposes this strategy would have to say that they supported federal slave laws.
And that's not an easy thing for someone to say.
Yeah, they always.
Well, let's not get all the way down that track because it's too hilarious and it'll take too long to quit laughing.
But so, yeah, no, here's the thing about this is.
Well, first of all, let me remind everybody you're listening to Michael Bolden of the Tenth Amendment Center and off now dot org.
Turn it off.
The NSA is Achilles heel.
Primary target would be water resources for the new NSA center in Utah.
But then they're also picking all these other states.
The in cities, electricity for the Alamo Dome sized facility being built near the Alamo Dome down there in San Antonio and and all the rest of them, too.
And this guy's mother Jones approved for you progressives out there who are afraid that that well, you always thought that the southern states were the ones using nullification against the north.
And now you're confused from what Michael just said.
Even Mother Jones is not in on Michael Bolden.
He's all right, man.
He's really good on peace and civil liberties and stuff.
And we tested him out and he ain't racist at all.
So he's all right.
You guys, we can fight this from the bottom up.
And after all, if you're a certain amount, if you move a certain amount to the left, all of a sudden you get to where localism is almost a religion, right?
Even though it might be contradictory at times, but, you know, gotta get that local lettuce or whatever it is at all costs.
So maybe localism in power makes a little bit of sense in that context to people on the left who I know have been used to supporting a more liberal national government versus their more conservative state governments over the last couple generations.
Well, I think the whole localism concept, whether you're talking mainstream left or right, is certainly there's a little hypocrisy on both ends because standard conservatives will often be very small government, local on some issues, and then on security issues, they're global.
So we can go on both sides on that.
But I guess, you know, honestly, I wasn't even thinking to appeal the right wingers because why bother?
The truth is the Democrats are in power and right wingers like to pretend they care about liberty when Democrats are in power.
So maybe that can be exploited a little bit for the short term until Jeb comes.
Well, yeah, who knows what's next, but you're back on track on this.
I think that we have a very effective strategy.
We have one that actually has a chance.
And I know we focus a lot on the resources, but information sharing, I think, is a big part of this with fusion centers around the country.
All these universities and the NSA obviously isn't saying, OK, 166 universities around the country, do some research for us.
We don't really need it.
But if you want to do it, do it.
Well, certainly they're relying on this.
And the more universities that are partnering with the NSA, the faster they're going to be able to expand their capabilities.
So legislation that would ban that type of partnership on a state level is going to be helpful as well as law, as well as the type of information sharing that goes on from local law enforcement to NSA via the Drug Enforcement Agency's Special Operations Division and the fusion centers all over the country.
Hmm.
And now, can you go through that list again of states that have these major NSA facilities and almost all of these are new facilities or not?
Well, some of them have been around for a while.
So the old school one that James Bamford would have talked about quite a bit is the Yakima Listening Post in Washington state.
They've said for a couple of years that one was going to close down.
But somehow it sticks around and around and around.
And we know a state representative that can actually see that that's his district.
He sees it from his porch and he's indicated that he's likely going to introduce the Fourth Amendment Protection Act in Washington state because there's some water issues going on there.
There's also a Colorado one that's been around for a long time, but they're building a larger new location.
The Augusta, Georgia one went from a small center and it's now turned into what's called a threat operations center.
Hawaii is on an old Pearl Harbor location and that's being expanded greatly currently.
Obviously, Utah, the San Antonio one is a huge deal.
I mean, I haven't been able to confirm it, but I think that one's actually going to be bigger than the Utah one.
In Tennessee, it's Oak Ridge.
I mean, that's basically a third of the state's economy.
Maryland, the whole state might as well be part of the NSA.
West Virginia is another small listening post, and I'm sure they're going to be opening more in the coming years.
Well, you know, might as well mention that 9-11 happened on their watch, and I know they try to cry and pretend that, well, they just didn't have the power and authority to tap the phones they needed, but that isn't true.
It never was true.
And James Bamford's book proves for a fact that it's not true either.
The only reason they got away with it was because the 9-11 Commission didn't even use the letters NSA a single time.
They just never even asked a single question about, well, what did those guys know and not do about it?
So that's why it's fascinating that the Feinstein goes to the page of the Wall Street Journal to say, well, if the NSA had been doing what we have now, it's possible that 9-11 may not have happened, and if we stop it, you're in danger.
But certainly that's what governments do all through history, is that they claim more power for themselves to do all kinds of things, and they try to convince the public that they're going to be in trouble if the government doesn't do that.
The key is, is if enough people agree with that government, then certainly they're going to have that power that they want.
Yeah, and you know, it's funny about it, too.
If you think about it, you know, as much as it's always part of the scandal about how much of their ability they farm out, if you think of it in the sense, what if they farmed out everything?
And what if the NSA was basically just the administrators who were in charge of hiring and firing the different contractors that were in charge of the different aspects of their job?
Don't you think that the contractors who they had hired, who were most responsible for 9-11 happening on their watch and not stopping it, that they would have been fired and replaced with a different group of contractors?
But when it's the NSA itself, nah, no accountability whatsoever.
They get more and more funding, too.
Oh, you know, actually, there was something I wanted to mention in doing some of this research on the resources.
We found a press release from back in 2006, which actually affirmed that the NSA itself was concerned about lack of resources.
It was late that year in 2006 where what they were doing.
So under the Bush administration, this indicates to me that they wanted to accelerate the surveillance state much faster than what actually happened, although it was bad.
But they wanted to go even faster because what happened in Baltimore in late 2006 was they actually maxed out the power capacity of the Baltimore area power grid.
So they couldn't actually build up the amount of computers that they needed to do the things they wanted to do.
They're very concerned that this power shortage could lead to a potential shutdown of the agency.
That's the statement we found in the press release.
And this is part of what led them to aggressively look around the country for other data center locations.
And that's the indication that I have that even though they have these seven, eight, nine locations now that they're building and expanding, the odds are very likely that they're going to want to continue to do this.
And that's why I think right now, before that happens, it's important to get this type of state level legislation, which would ban any assistance to the NSA, effectively telling them, hey, we don't want you here.
That's kind of building up a little bit of a protection in advance.
Right.
You know, I was just going through the New York Times version of this.
It's kind of a limited hangout in a way.
This story that came out, I think by Scott Shane, no morsel too minuscule for all consuming NSA because he just names he like breaks 10 stories with hardly any elaboration, you know.
So it kind of makes them no longer breaking news to really be scooped.
You know, he kind of scoops Greenwald in them, but without really going through it all.
But what he does talk about is these guys are trying to scrape up every last electron on Earth that they can possibly get.
And they're using it for all kinds of reasons, mostly economic espionage, it seems like, and and almost nothing having to do with protecting the American people at large whatsoever.
So and I think that that kind of truth, you know, even when you can't help but notice in the New York Times article that that's really the bottom line here is that these guys have gone completely mad in their secrecy and impunity in trying to just track down every time anyone hits enter in the whole world, you know.
And so, you know, I think the time is certainly right to push back on this.
And I think you're you're definitely right that it's going to be hardest in the US Congress.
And if the people can, you know, get organized and follow your lead here on fighting it from the bottom up in the different states, I think we could have a lot of success.
Because I think the truth is really getting around that, where people are going, wow, I really want a complete file on my whole, you know, a permanent record that includes everything about me forever.
And my youngins too, and that kind of thing.
People don't want that.
And so, you know, again, I think politically speaking, you could have some crusty old pro-rack war Republican type saying, yeah, I think it's time we scale this thing back, you know, just because it's the politically it's the only politically acceptable thing to do at this point.
It's so far out of control.
So obviously so far out of control.
That's why you see guys like Sensenbrenner.
I mean, who likes him?
He's a horrible monster.
I mean, I wouldn't go so far as calling him a lizard or anything.
I mean, that's my reserve for Dick Cheney.
But, you know, he's a really horrible guy.
And even he's saying, oh, I never intended this, although everyone on the Patriot Act, everyone opposing the Patriot Act was saying, you know what?
Someday they're going to use this to monitor everybody on Earth.
So, yeah, of course, this is political grandstanding.
And so at best in Congress, I think there's there's no chance.
And our view is, look, this is such a major thing that the entire world is pretty upset about it.
People all over the world are upset.
What are we going to do about it?
Are we going to make a phone call to some politician in D.C. knowing that they're not really going to do anything?
And then when we die, say, well, I gave it a shot.
Or are we going to do something a little stronger and maybe do a little resistance?
I kind of like the latter.
All right.
Well, so talk about that again.
It's Michael Bolden from the Tenth Amendment Center and offnow.org.
What if you just really got somebody fired up and they really want to take part in this?
What would you have them do?
Well, I mean, we could we can send them to the Web site.
They go to offnow.org.
There's steps that you can take either on a state level, working to get legislation introduced on a state level, on a local level, even in your city, county or town, working to get resolutions passed in your locality.
You need to do some hard on the ground organizing, setting aside differences with with people that may have political viewpoints that are different than you and say, you know what?
All this 50 percent, 50 percent arguing that goes on in our world today, that kind of stuff.
We'll save that for later and work on this together because these types of coalitions are what's absolutely necessary to get things done.
You know, and I'm the worst about that.
I really admire the way that you do this.
I kind of just hide behind my microphone and complain all day.
But you really are great at organizing this thing.
And I guess it's just it's not my skill, but I could see it.
Right.
Especially on an issue like that.
That's like this.
That's such a big deal right now where.
Right.
You just break out your telephone.
You look up the leadership of every political group in town of any description.
Right.
Gays for tree conservation and right wingers for banning everybody else's church and whatever the hell.
And just call them all up and get everybody on board for this, no matter what their differences on anything else.
That's exactly what you do.
And that's how we were effectively able to get the bill here in California.
A.B. three fifty one rejecting NDA indefinite detention introduced by a Tea Party Republican in the House and a progressive San Francisco Democrat in the Senate.
Got it introduced, passed by almost a shutout margin and then even signed by Jerry Brown.
It's a narrow victory, but it shows that the strategy actually works.
This is a testing ground to see if we could do bigger things.
And we know that it can happen.
And it shouldn't just happen in California of all places.
This should be happening all over the country.
Set aside your differences locally.
Worry about some of the minor disputes later on and focus on this type of a big picture.
I mean, whether it's NSA or something else, I mean, I think this strategy should be applied to whatever is important to each person.
But for those of us who are very concerned about the NSA surveillance, let's let's get to work and start.
Let's start looking at our neighbors as neighbors rather than enemies.
It's the politicians who are the enemies.
Right.
And, you know, for every grassroots group of the left, the right, whatever, what do any of them have to lose for signing up for this?
Right.
You know, to oppose what the NSA is doing.
I mean, it seems like it's a political winner for everybody.
What's not to like about it?
I can't think of anything.
I mean, there are people on the right, though.
There's the standard neocons from the right that don't like the work of the 10th Amendment Center.
Two old Bush administration officials went to the Wall Street Journal sometime last year to call it the those are real people.
I mean, that's just in D.C.
And the think tanks, whatever, out here in the real country where the 300 million live, regular Republicans, like I was saying, even Warhawk type Republicans, I think, would like to see some a little bit of scaling back.
The deal was never you're supposed to go to war against me.
They cry, you know?
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, I could see that.
I think average people, when you present the issue to them and you present the problems and you say, here's a potential solution, here's an actual strategy that can get something done.
No, we don't find too many people so far that don't see this as powerful.
And in fact, I've been surprised at the amount of people at off now dot org that have been visiting the site and sending emails from places like Australia and Germany and elsewhere.
I think especially asking about resources.
We had some emails from Australia recently saying, wow, we never.
This is amazing.
Can you give us more information?
And of course, it's all there on the website.
But that to me says that, you know, this is just a very basic strategy that people really get.
And of course, with something as powerful as NSA, it's nice to have a straightforward way to push back.
And mind you, this is only step one in a game of chess like this.
And this is really serious stuff.
We aren't advertising what might be the follow up when five or ten states pass this type of legislation in the next couple of years.
But there certainly has to be more.
Right.
Definitely a great start here.
And I don't usually do this, but if I may do a little bit of a call to action, this is kind of an emergency, you know, fight back while you still can before it's too late.
And then you can't even fight back anymore.
Kind of a thing off now dot org.
If you agree with that, turn it off.
The NSA killings.
He'll thank you very much.
Michael Bolden.
Appreciate it.
Thanks, Scott.
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