FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 16, 2014

Contact: Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK Co-founder, (415) 235-6517, medea@codepink.org

    Alli McCracken, CODEPINK Organizer, (860) 575-5692, alli@codepink.org

CODEPINK to Stage Protest Outside of President’s NSA Reform Speech

When: Friday, January 17, 2014, 10:00 am

Where: Outside of the Justice Department, Constitution Ave entrance, between 9th and 10th  

Washington, DC –– At 10:00 am on Friday, Jan 17, CODEPINK and other civil liberties activists will be outside of the Justice Department while President Obama addresses the nation about NSA surveillance reforms. Demonstrators will call on President Obama to rein in the out-of-control spy industry that is using billions American tax dollars to violate civil liberties instead of putting that money into funding human needs. Activists will wear giant STOP SPYING glasses and have large signs, and will be available for interviews before the President’s speech.

“Though President Obama is scheduled to lay out reforms for the NSA spying program, we have little reason to believe they will be sufficient of implemented ,” said CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin. “The intelligence agencies in the US are totally out of control–– from mass dragnet spying, to killing by remote control–– and it’s time for transparency and accountability from the institutions that claim to be operating in the name of national security.”

“Despite pledging to stop Bush era abuses, President Obama has repeatedly chosen to leave the NSA free to monitor the American people en masse,” said Shahid Buttar, Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. “More than any other issue, his administration's complicity in mass surveillance will come to define its legacy -- unless the president chooses to finally support reforms like the USA FREEDOM Act, which would end bulk collection, and start a longer process needed to remove the officials caught lying to Congress, and fix the broken secret FISA court process.”

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