We're four protesters with Restore the Fourth New York and we're in the office of a congressman that voted against the Amash Amendment. Ask us anything in the next ~40 minutes we expect we have before the police get here.

UPDATE: You can watch the first 15 minutes of our conversation with Rep. Meeks here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/36567623 (start at 7:15).

We are currently in the Congressman's conference room. We are told he is delaying his flight to DC to speak with us, and we will be meeting at approximately 3:30/4pm.

Our demand is that the congressman apologizes for his vote and agrees to support future bills ending bulk NSA data collection. How should we respond if he refuses? Should we stay and be arrested, or go home?

I completely support you guys, but remember that you are fighting for a resolution, not your pride. You won't be able to continue this from jail. Best of luck!

No one will be resisting arrest.

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Hey mate,

I'd be happy to answer that question for you.

Essentially, SSL/TLS are protocols that provide communication security and encryption for web addresses. SSL stands for 'Secure Socket Layer' and TLS stands for 'Transport Layer Security' - in layman's terms, they both (SSL being slightly older than TLS, but about as secure) encrypt data transmission by using two keys - a public key, and a private key. The public key actually encrypts the data being sent, and the private key decrypts it.

• Did Rep. Meeks let $15,000 from Defense Industry influence his Amash vote?

• When can we expect Rep. Meeks' statement indicating that he will be cosponsoring Rep. Rush Holt's upcoming legislation to repeal FISA and the Patriot Act?

Not sure.

I'm pretty sure that he won't be voting for their repeal, unless he gets enough constituency letters telling him to do so.

Do you guys have plans for more actions like this? Any in California SF Bay Area?

Yup, SF will have some pretty notable and insightful people doing a speaking engagement: www.restorethefourth.net/events

even if the amendment had passed, do you think obama would have veto´ed it ?

Sorry, Clarified.

Yes, but just as getting more votes brought more attention and political pressure to this issue, forcing the Senate to vote on it or better yet forcing Obama to veto it would have brought even more. Gotta go one step at a time. In less than two months ~48% of the House of Representatives voted to defund an NSA program. I think that's an impressive amount of political progress for that time frame.

I read in another thread that it would have been nearly impossible for him to veto it as he would have had to veto the entire DoD budget proposal rather than just the amendment itself.

Right, but then Congress would be in the same position if it refused to pass it again without Amash's amendment. It'd be a game of chicken. But with such a close vote the President would most likely win.

This congressman is a blathering baffoon. He is doing exactly what most politicians do. Refuse to answer any questions at all.

We felt similarly.

I didn't catch the beginning of the stream and I didn't see the end because it cut out, but were you able to ask about the money he received for voting the way he did?

No, we weren't.

Aw shit, you guys are at Rep. Meeks office? I totally should have came. I gave /u/NeutralityMentality a letter that I wrote to Rep. Meeks in response to his vote. I totally should have came to this. Don't have a question, but good luck guys!

We read it to him right before we left

You guys are the best.

It was actually the last thing we said.

But our camera cut out at 20 min, and we didn't catch it. Sorry!

Why this congressman?

Do you all have attorneys?

He voted against the Amash Amendment, is in NYC, and his largest campaign donor is AT&T

Most easily accessible.

The live stream isn't working for me.

How is it now?

Which congressman? What do you suspect you will be charged with?

Representative Gregory Meeks.

As for charges, who knows?

they agreed to leave because of all the time he gave them and all the attention this brought to his vote against the Bill of Rights

Oh fucking god, no they didn't, did they?

For fucks sake, that's not have you have a sit-in.

I was surprised too tbh.

keep up the good work, guys.

No questions, but just wanted to thank you guys for standing up for our rights. I support Restore the Fourth. Good luck, be safe, and don't condone violence!

No violence here!

What level is your Lockpicking skill?

Level 9000, but it wasn't necessary to begin with.

Why Meeks? Why not Pelosi? Much bigger target and according to reports she had a larger effect on the amendment not passing.

Airplane tickets are expensive.

Truth.

Is the 'restore the forth' movement going to appear more professional and 'average joe' than that of the Occupy movement which was part of its failure? By that I mean, are you guys going to dress in suits versus what the typical Occupy movement protester would wear, giving the appearance of being 'a dirty/jobless/drug smoking hippy' which didn't connect with the wider populace?

I can't speak for the movement as a whole on this, and would be against any type of advocating dress code for any type event, but in NYC it was agreed upon that we would appear professional for today's event for our goal to get attention.

"Six well-dressed intelligent protesters storm U.S. Representative's office" is a much better headline for awareness than "Six hippies storm U.S. Representative's office."

Which congressman's office?

Representative Gregory Meeks.

When or are you planning on protesting King's office?

We're not planning to do this currently.

How did you get into the congressman's office? Did you ninja your way in? Also, can you inform me what the amash amendment is since I don't know what it is.

It was an amendment to another, procedural bill that would have made that bill defund indiscriminate NSA surveillance of phone metadata.

You can learn more at http://www.defundthensa.com/

Just walked right in!

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It'd be quite irresponsible if the NYPD sprayed off tear gas in a Rep's office.

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A Whole New World -Madison Under the Sea -Sean

If anyone's confused by the formatting:

"A Whole New World" -Madison

"Under the Sea" -Sean

So what's the story? The protestors agreed to leave but did Meeks agree to change his stance on anything?

No.

In a way, we were politics'd. We were forced into a position where if we had stayed and gotten arrested, our arrest would have been spun so negatively that it would have been harmful for the movement.

We did get press, though, which was our main goal (our second goal being, avoid negative press): the Verge.

hmm...how long till you're in handcuffs? I support what you're doing btw :) just sayin..

We thought we'd be in handcuffs within the hour; instead, the representative decided to speak with us.

Go figure.

Why do you think Congress members are still voting in favor of the NSA's widespread surveillance of U.S. citizens?

Based on the conversation with Rep. Meeks, I believe that it has to do with how representatives can spin the story. Rep. Meeks said that his top priority is protecting the citizens of the United States, even though his oath says that his priority should be to uphold the Constitution (because sometimes laws are wrong). You can't negatively spin that, and so it's a very safe position to have as an elected official.

But that's my own personal belief; I'm not speaking for Restore the Fourth in this comment.

The only questions I can come up with are in the forms of "How Awesome is that?" and silly questions about duck-horses and horse-ducks. This is awesome, though.

In response to the duck/horse question: the group has agreed that its classified information.

What would you say to someone who was arguing that this is just the way the world is now? That in order to stop anyone (citizens included) from blowing up a train or setting off a car bomb in Times Square, this was the only way? Assuming several attacks have been stopped and the only injury caused to you was that the government knows what kind of porn you search for, would you say it was worth it?

No.

None of the above arguments refute the argument that the blanket surveillance of all Americans without specific and probable cause is against the 4th Amendment, which is part of Constitution, which is part of the supreme law of the land.

Will Representative Meeks even look you in the eye, or does he seem to have no conscience at all?

We have high hopes for Rep. Meeks response to our demands. We've not yet had the opportunity to look him the eye or ask him via telephone in regards to our call to defend the Fourth Amendment. We will not heed until we are given this opportunity. -Madison

So he is a good guy then! I had no complete idea as to who you were actually confronting concerning their Amash vote! Just wanted to hurry and ask a question before your ultimate tussle with security:) Thank you so much for taking action on behalf of your fellow RT4 Americans, and not sitting around vainly griping to each other thinking it will make a difference. Take care!

Well, he did vote against the Amash amendment.

But we did get to speak to him for 30 minutes; I'm not sure if that was just to get us out of the office peacefully without any bad press for them, or if it was due to the fact that he wanted to hear our opinion. I'm guessing the former.

What do you have against the Amash? Them seem right friendly people. Innit better to live and let live?

We aren't. We're against those against it.

Are you afraid of, when the police get there, getting drugs planted on you to trump up some charges?

This isn't a Dave Chappelle standup routine.

In all seriousness though, I don't think that'll be an issue -- even more so because the event is already fairly well publicized.

Just how stupid are you?

Very stupid, thanks for your question.

I'd like to reiterate /u/NeutralityMentality's sentiment that we are very, extremely stupid.

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Are you aware of how very brave you are? Hahaha

Irony.

He deleted his comment as I was typing up a lengthy reply, so I'll post it here instead so it doesn't go to waste.

His comments (quoted) and my responses underneath them:

• If you aren't a bunch of clueless morons, explain what you think happens in regards to SSL transactions (specifically, why is SSL considered secured). Then explain why you think it isn't secure. I suspect you won't, because I suspect none of you have even a minor mathematical understanding of encryption.

See my answer above in response to another question you asked, regarding what SSL/TLS is. As for why it isn't secure, well, it is secure. The only major security issues that have compromised the security of SSL have revolved around entities obtaining and forging certs.

• Are you aware that you are all technically illiterate and if you possessed even a minutiae of understanding about networks and Internet security, you wouldn't give a shit like the rest of us?

• How does it feel being an entirely irrelevant and roundly mocked pathetic organization that attracted dozens of people out of a country of 300 million+?

At final count reported by a number of mainstream media organizations including Fox, MSNBC, CNN and NBC, we had upwards of 10,000 protesters across the nation, with 800-1000 in NY, 500 in DC and 500 in SF. Not bad for a grassroots movement loosely organized in a short timespan over the internet.

• How do you feel now that Snowden's most outrageous allegations have been proven false (such as the NSA allegedly having "direct access", that was false, or the NSA allegedly wiretapping without a warrant, that was also false)?

Personally, I've always thought that Snowden's NSA revelations were innacurate and overblown, at least to an extent, simply because of the sheer logistics of collecting any large amounts of data aside from metadata. It has been said that the NSA is a decade ahead of the public sector in information technology - however, I find it hard to believe that they'd have both the server space and cooling required to store every form of data that has ever gone through America's data channels. However, this movement, while at the moment focused on eliminating and repealing NSA surveillance (something that is arguably very bad even if it's not on the level that was initially reported), is generally about overarching 4th amendment rights, specifically relating to privacy on the internet. And those issues, I believe, should be on the forefront of the collective consciousness, as they are issues that affect every person's natural rights.

• Are you aware of how very brave you are? Hahaha