Today, February 11th 2014, Thousands of Websites are Protesting Surveillance.

Today, February 11th, 2014 is The Day We Fight Back against mass surveillance

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The Facts

The NSA "has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world." — The New York Times

The NSA collected "almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks" in one month in 2013. — The Guardian

The NSA is collecting the content and metadata of emails, web activity, chats, social networks, and everything else as part of what it calls "upstream" collection. — The Washington Post

The NSA "is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans." — The Washington Post

The NSA "is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world." — The Washington Post

The NSA "is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country." — The New York Times

What we can do

Congress is considering two major bills.

The USA Freedom Act curtails NSA surveillance abuses.
The FISA Improvements Act attempts to legalize bulk data collection of phone records.

We need to tell Congress to pass the USA Freedom Act and amend it to make it even stronger.

USA Freedom Act

The USA Freedom Act (S. 1599) is a bipartisan bill introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI).

If passed, this bill would be a substantial improvement to America’s laws regarding mass surveillance.

It brings new levels of transparency to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court)
It introduces a special advocate to champion civil liberties in the FISA court
It appears to create new statutory limits on mass surveillance by the NSA.

However, this bill is a floor, not a ceiling. Here's how it could be improved:

It could clarify in plain language that bulk surveillance is illegal and prevent the FBI from issuing National Security Letters without prior review by a judge.
Include language to stop the NSA from undermining international encryption standards.
Have stronger language to protect the privacy of people outside of the United States.

The USA FREEDOM Act is one step in the right direction, with many more steps that need to follow.

FISA Improvements Act

The FISA Improvements Act, is a bill written by the intelligence community and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA).

If the FISA Improvements Act (S. 1631) were to pass:

It would codify the controversial bulk telephone records surveillance program of the NSA.
It would allow the NSA to continue to collect telephone records of hundreds of millions of Americans not suspected of any crime.
It would permit the NSA to restart the bulk collection of Internet communication records—an extremely invasive, secret program the government attempted under dubious legal ground but abandoned because it wasn't effective.

Take part

The SOPA and PIPA protests were successful because we all took part, as a community. As Aaron Swartz put it, everybody "made themselves the hero of their own story." We can set a date, but we need all of you, the users of the Internet, to make it a movement.

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See the live demos here: US version, international version. The banner changes automatically based on the locations of visitors.

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Tell the world you're taking part

Use the #stopthensa hashtag on Twitter to help spread the word!

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More things you can do

Attend an event in your area
Ask your representatives the tough questions
Write to your representative about NSA reform
Download The Day We Fight Back app on Google Play
Download the Reform The NSA app on iTunes

Today, February 11th, 2014 is The Day We Fight Back against mass surveillance

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