Tomorrow, February 11th, on the eve of the anniversary of Aaron Swartz‘s death, the internet will be united in protest against mass surveillance. The movement, called The Day We Fight Back, has gathered over 5,300 websites to protest against the widespread data collection by the National Security Agency.
Bulk data collection has been under scrutiny ever since Edward Snowden leaked classified documents that proved the NSA was spying on its own citizens with things like PRISM and going as far as to collect data from mobile apps.
While the government has agreed to allow companies like Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft to disclose some information about the government requests they receive, companies are still fighting for more transparency. However, big names like Google and Microsoft are not on the list of sights that will be posting The Day We Fight Back banner and widgets on their sites tomorrow, which could make or break the effectiveness of the protest.
Still, The Day We Fight Back has a few big-name supporters like Mozilla, Reddit, Tumblr, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. These websites will post banners on their sites to urge visitors to call and email their Congresspersons to end mass surveillance. The protest will also leverage social media on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to get supporters to spread the word about the movement.
We’ve seen the internet come together in protest against and successfully defeat SOPA and PIPA but the topic of mass surveillance is another topic entirely. Neither SOPA or PIPA affected national security in the way mass surveillance does. President Obama has already come out in support for surveillance reform but it’s up to Congress to solidify measures for actual reform. The Obama Administration supports phone record mining but agrees that the government shouldn’t hold on to that information, which seems like an unresolvable situation.
Source: The Day We Fight Back
