Meh, according to the article, NSA already has a water deal until 2021, which this bill is not attempting to change. I remember hearing about trying to cut off their water months ago; was an opportunity missed, or was it already too late then? How might they cut off the water sooner than 2021?
> “What’s noteworthy is no one on the panel said: ‘Hey, wait a minute, we can’t do this,'” he says. “They had some specific concerns about the language of the bill, but there was no outright opposition.”<p>That's pretty surprising given how incredibly conservative/Republican the state of Utah is. I'd be surprised if the bill passed (and if it was it would surely be caught up in litigation), but kudos to someone in such a conservative area recognizing that personal liberty is more important than security.
> The bill, H.B. 161, directs municipalities like Bluffdale to “refuse support to any federal agency which collects electronic data within this state.”<p>What about the IRS? Doesn't actually every government agency collect data?
It's a nice thought, but it'll never happen. It'll be a 'matter of national security', supporters will be branded 'terrorists' or other such nonsense.
"refuse to support any federal agency". Interesting -- so local law enforcement can still collect data, which I think is what people want. A lot of the strangeness of technology we experience isn't that something can be done, it's that lots of things can be done at massive scale.
I don't think this bill stands a snowball's chance in hell of passing with language like:<p><i>>“refuse support to any federal agency which collects electronic data within this state.”</i><p>Wikipedia has a huge list of U.S. federal agencies [0]. Can someone provide an example of a federal agency that <i>doesn't</i> collect data in Utah?<p>Skimming through the list, I would expect that nearly all of them <i>do</i> collect data in Utah.<p>(Admittedly, I didn't read the bill so it's quite possible that "support" and "data" are very specifically defined.)<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_agencies_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_agencies_in_th...</a>
<i>IN 2021</i>.<p>So even if they pass this next year, the NSA have six years to sue them and do whatever they like - i.e. ruin the lives of anyone who opposes them, and any legislators who voted in favour of this, and then maybe implant their own people, who'll vote that everyone from Utah is now an NSA-serf and must provide blood for cooling.<p>More effective would be a cunningly managed massive algal bloom upstream from their intakes, which would neatly clog all the things, and hopefully cause a large fire, localised entirely in their information nexus of doom.
If I were a UTAH politician pushing for this I would be very careful now,<p>You might just wake up one morning with a squad of armed policemen storming your house who will "find" child porn on your computer.
Hey, you guys didn't even want the Freedom act, this will not be passed. We all know how things go over there, across the pond, we saw House of Cards ;)