Monica Selby
Two years ago the largest Internet protest in history shut down upcoming regulations SOPA/PIPA. When 115,000 websites blacked out their pages, legislators took notice and removed support for the bills that would have vastly limited a free and open Internet.
Thanks to last year’s NSA revelations, people all over the world are realizing an even more imminent threat: surveillance.
It doesn’t take much digging to find evidence of current and potential government spying in our digital world. Just check the front page of Techmeme most days. Our webcams are compromised. Our computer’s microphones are hacked. And let’s not even get started on our phones.
But what can ya do? Silicon Valley has provided the technology. The government is more than willing to use it to their benefit. How can people really fight this?
“Since the first revelations last summer, hundreds of thousands of Internet users have come together online and offline to protest the NSA’s unconstitutional surveillance programs.” Josh Levy of Free Press said in a statement. “These programs attack our basic rights to connect and communicate in private, and strike at the foundations of democracy itself. Only a broad movement of activists, organizations and companies can convince Washington to restore these rights.”
Today, several Internet companies are attempting to do just that, including Nibletz. We join with others in our industry in urging you to contact your legislators and ask them to support the USA FREEDOM ACT.
It’s not just online, though. There are live events all over the world protesting the NSA policy of mass surveillance.
The Day We Fight Back is being held partially in honor of Aaron Swartz, the cofounder of Reddit who took his own life last January. Swartz was a driving force behind the SOPA/PIPA protests, and many of the organizers are calling on his memory to remind people of the importance of fighting surveillance.
“Today the greatest threat to a free Internet, and broader free society, is the National Security Agency’s mass spying regime. If Aaron were alive he’d be on the front lines, fighting back against these practices that undermine our ability to engage with each other as genuinely free human beings,” said Aaron’s Demand Progess cofounder David Segal.
Many people defend the NSA surveillance program by saying that it is protecting Americans from more acts of terrorism. But how much freedom are willing to give up in order to remain safe?
Benjamin Franklin famously said, “They who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Today is The Day We Fight Back.
