TURKISH riot police are using water cannons and tear gas to quell a demonstration in Istanbul protesting new laws tightening government control of the internet. BBC News reports demonstrators threw fireworks and stones at police cordoning off Taksim Square, the city's main square. The president is under pressure not to ratify the legislation. Read More!
Thousands of websites on Tuesday will take a stand against government surveillance by plastering protests across their home pages. Tech companies and civil liberties organizations are hoping the demonstration, called The Day We Fight Back, will replicate their success in defeating the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) in 2012. This time activists are focusing their energy on supporting the USA Freedom Act, which would end or curtail many of the most controversial surveillance programs at the National Security Agency and elsewhere. “The idea is to really harness the outrage of the Internet community in speaking out in one big voice on Feb. 11,” said Rainey Reitman, the director of activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The protest comes nearly a month after President Obama announced a handful of changes to the embattled spy agency’s most controversial practices. Critics said the changes weren’t nearly enough. Read More!
Tomorrow the Internet Puts Collective Foot Down to Say "No" to Mass Surveillance
Just over two years after the successful action against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), Internet companies are banding together once again to protest mass surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA). The Day We Fight Back was announced January 10, the eve of Aaron Swartz's death, and will take place February 11. More than 5,000 websites will participate tomorrow in a concerted effort to get people to tell Congress to protest mass surveillance, oppose the FISA Improvements Act and support the USA Freedom Act. The Day We Fight Back is an even more ambitious campaign than Stop SOPA; participants are not trying to stop legislation, they're trying to pass it, no small feat in today's political climate. April Glaser, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the organizations behind The Day We Fight Back, called this fight a “different beast” entirely. In a phone interview with techPresident, Glaser explained why The Day We Fight Back is a much bigger task than the SOPA strike. “This is not stopping one bill,” she said. “It's stopping an agency.” With SOPA and PIPA, activists knew that if they did not act in some way that the bills were in imminent danger of passing. Glaser explained that NSA surveillance is also at a turning point, not in a legislative way—it's not on the brink of passing—but there is momentum. Read More!
Over 5,000 websites signed up for "The Day We Fight Back" protest against mass spying
Over 5,000 websites have now signed up to join in a previously announced online protest against mass spying operations such as the ones that have been conducted by the National Security Agency. The effort is called "The Day We Fight Back" and will begin on Tuesday, February 11th. DuckDuckGo, Imgur and the Yahoo-owned Tumblr are among the major sites that have joined this effort, working with previously announced sites like Mozilla and Reddit and groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union. All of these companies will post banners on their pages Tuesday, urging people to call or email their members of the U.S. Congress and ask them to support laws that curtail online surveillance by government agencies. This new protest is being made in the spirit of the ones that were launched in January 2012, when many websites, including Wikipedia, went "dark" for one day. Read More!
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