From Demand Progress:
Tuesday was amazing. Working with scores of organizations, and thousands of sites, and hundreds of thousands of activists, we organized the largest online privacy protest ever.
Nearly 100,000 calls were placed to Congress on that day, melting the phone lines and making it clear that we will persist in the fight to end mass surveillance.
And please share them widely, so the whole world knows just how strong we are when we work together:
On Tuesday we sought to make a dent, while laying a foundation for escalation over the months to come: It was a tremendous success.
We demonstrated that civil society organizations, hundreds of thousands of activists, and major corporations are willing to bring coordinated pressure to bear on lawmakers.
Just a few highlights:
•Scores of organizations from across the political spectrum banded together.
•Thousands of sites urged their visitors to take action.
•Google formally endorsed the USA FREEDOM Act, which would end bulk data collection.
•Twitter tweeted to nearly 30 million people in support.
•Dozens of lawmakers issued statements of support.
•NSA acolyte Senator Dianne Feinstein was on the run from her own constituents.
We will persist, we will escalate, and we will win.
Please click here to check out the stats.
And please share them widely, so the whole world knows just how strong we are when we work together:
Onward.
-Demand Progress
Showing posts with label the day we fight back. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the day we fight back. Show all posts
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Join the protest to protect the net
From Demand Progress:
This Tuesday, February 11th, is The Day We Fight Back (against mass surveillance) -- and we need your help to make it as impactful as it can be.
Click here to learn more and to sign up to take part.
Then click here to share on Twitter and here to share on Facebook.
We understand the United States to be a democracy, founded upon a Constitution that affords us critical rights, and governed by the rule of law.
Yet for years, the NSA has exploited secret legal interpretations to undermine our privacy rights -- thus chilling speech and activism, and thereby threatening to subvert the very underpinnings of our democracy itself.
This Tuesday, February 11th, dozens of major websites and organizations are joining together to demand an end to mass spying.
They range from the left (sites like DailyKos) to right (the Koch Brothers' group FreedomWorks), with plenty in between. Together, they wield a tremendous amount of influence.
On Tuesday, February 11th, we are mobilizing thousands to call on Congress to:
1.Pass the USA FREEDOM Act, which would end the bulk collection of Americans' phone records and institute other key reforms.
2.Defeat the so-called FISA Improvements Act, which would entrench -- and potentially expand -- the spying.
3.Create additional privacy protections for non-Americans.
4.End the NSA's subversion of encryption and other data security measures.
We're reminding you about it today because we need your help to make Feb. 11th all that it can be. We have built a banner that people -- like you -- can post on websites they run, in order to encourage their visitors to take action on the 11th. Those banners will look like this:
Click here to visit TheDayWeFightBack.org and learn more. While you're there, please use the social media tools to spread word, and if you have a website, please install the banner code to make it appear on your site on Feb. 11th.
You might think this seems different from the way we usually fight for or against legislation, and you'd be right. But this sort of activism has proved particularly successful at defending the Internet against bad policies.
In particular, it is very similar to what worked during the fight against another bill that threatened to undermine our civil liberties: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would have instituted a new Internet censorship scheme. You might remember that thousands of websites mobilized their visitors to help defeat that legislation two years ago.
As in other major battles for Internet Freedom, we think an online uprising can work again now.
Click here to learn more and sign up your website to take part.
Then click here to share on Twitter and here to share on Facebook.
And we're not even that far from winning on at least one key front:
The USA FREEDOM Act has more than 100 bipartisan sponsors, including two powerful lead sponsors: Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who was the original author of the PATRIOT Act and is furious that it has been abused to spy on Americans en masse.
This summer an amendment that's very similar to parts of the USA FREEDOM Act failed to pass in the House of Representatives by just a handful of votes. Enough lawmakers now say they would have voted in support that it would pass if it came up for a vote today.
That's in large part because of the groundswell of grassroots energy that Demand Progress members like you brought to bear in support of the amendment.
Now it's time to move the ball forward once more.
Click here to learn more about this Tuesday's The Day We Fight Back, sign up your website to take part, and spread word to your friends.
If we persist, we will win this fight.
-Demand Progress
To join the protest
This Tuesday, February 11th, is The Day We Fight Back (against mass surveillance) -- and we need your help to make it as impactful as it can be.
Click here to learn more and to sign up to take part.
Then click here to share on Twitter and here to share on Facebook.
We understand the United States to be a democracy, founded upon a Constitution that affords us critical rights, and governed by the rule of law.
Yet for years, the NSA has exploited secret legal interpretations to undermine our privacy rights -- thus chilling speech and activism, and thereby threatening to subvert the very underpinnings of our democracy itself.
This Tuesday, February 11th, dozens of major websites and organizations are joining together to demand an end to mass spying.
They range from the left (sites like DailyKos) to right (the Koch Brothers' group FreedomWorks), with plenty in between. Together, they wield a tremendous amount of influence.
On Tuesday, February 11th, we are mobilizing thousands to call on Congress to:
1.Pass the USA FREEDOM Act, which would end the bulk collection of Americans' phone records and institute other key reforms.
2.Defeat the so-called FISA Improvements Act, which would entrench -- and potentially expand -- the spying.
3.Create additional privacy protections for non-Americans.
4.End the NSA's subversion of encryption and other data security measures.
We're reminding you about it today because we need your help to make Feb. 11th all that it can be. We have built a banner that people -- like you -- can post on websites they run, in order to encourage their visitors to take action on the 11th. Those banners will look like this:
Click here to visit TheDayWeFightBack.org and learn more. While you're there, please use the social media tools to spread word, and if you have a website, please install the banner code to make it appear on your site on Feb. 11th.
You might think this seems different from the way we usually fight for or against legislation, and you'd be right. But this sort of activism has proved particularly successful at defending the Internet against bad policies.
In particular, it is very similar to what worked during the fight against another bill that threatened to undermine our civil liberties: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would have instituted a new Internet censorship scheme. You might remember that thousands of websites mobilized their visitors to help defeat that legislation two years ago.
As in other major battles for Internet Freedom, we think an online uprising can work again now.
Click here to learn more and sign up your website to take part.
Then click here to share on Twitter and here to share on Facebook.
And we're not even that far from winning on at least one key front:
The USA FREEDOM Act has more than 100 bipartisan sponsors, including two powerful lead sponsors: Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who was the original author of the PATRIOT Act and is furious that it has been abused to spy on Americans en masse.
This summer an amendment that's very similar to parts of the USA FREEDOM Act failed to pass in the House of Representatives by just a handful of votes. Enough lawmakers now say they would have voted in support that it would pass if it came up for a vote today.
That's in large part because of the groundswell of grassroots energy that Demand Progress members like you brought to bear in support of the amendment.
Now it's time to move the ball forward once more.
Click here to learn more about this Tuesday's The Day We Fight Back, sign up your website to take part, and spread word to your friends.
If we persist, we will win this fight.
-Demand Progress
To join the protest
Friday, January 10, 2014
We take back the internet
From Demand Progress:
In January 2012 we defeated the SOPA and PIPA censorship legislation with the largest Internet protest in history. A year ago this Saturday one of that movement's leaders, Demand Progress's cofounder Aaron Swartz, tragically passed away.
Today we face a different threat, one that undermines the Internet, and the notion that any of us live in a genuinely free society: mass surveillance.
We miss Aaron dearly. If he were alive, he'd be on the front lines, fighting against a world in which governments observe, collect, and analyze our every digital action.
Now, in honor of Aaron on the eve of the anniversary of his passing, and in celebration of the win against SOPA and PIPA that he helped make possible, we are announcing a day of protest against mass surveillance, to take place this February 11th.
We can think of no way that he'd rather be honored than one that might have such a positive impact on the world.
We're calling it, simply, The Day We Fight Back.
You can visit the hub website we're building to support this effort at TheDayWeFightBack.org. It'll let you know how to help.
Meanwhile, right now: Aaron's friend Cory Doctorow, the filmmaker Brian Knappenberger -- whose film about Aaron will premiere at Sundance this month -- and representatives from Demand Progress and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are on reddit to talk about Aaron and the work we will do to honor him -- and push back against the NSA -- over the next month.
Click here to join the chat, and vote it up to make sure it's seen by as many people as possible.
As was often the case, Aaron said it best: “[We defeated SOPA] because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it. They did whatever they could think of to do.”
In the last 6 months we’ve seen that government agencies, namely the NSA and GCHQ and others, have broken laws and twisted legal interpretations to create an infrastructure of mass surveillance of all of us online.
This creates a dark form of censorship, of course, as people become afraid to speak freely-- and it’s one that undermines our security and our right to privacy as well. As users of the Internet, we have a responsibility to defend its freedom.
With SOPA, we had a clear goal: defeat a specific bill. In this case, we have to take a first step. We have some promising bills (like the USA Freedom Act) and terrible ones (the FISA Improvements Act). But we need our legislators to hear from people who love the Internet that we won’t stand by and let it be turned into a giant tool for mass surveillance. We need to push them to have the courage to support comprehensive reform. The kind of courage Aaron showed us all.
So today, on the eve of the anniversary of Aaron’s passing, we’d like to ask you to join us in stepping up to the plate once again in defense of a free, open and secure internet, where no one has to watch over their shoulder for big brother.
In memory of Aaron, and looking back to the successes of the SOPA campaign, we’d like to ask you to join us in a month of action, culminating in a day of action on February 11th. Here's what we need you to do today:
1) Visit TheDayWeFightBack.org to join in the activism.
2) And click here to join us, Cory Doctorow, Brian Knappenberger, and EFF to talk about Aaron and the activism we're going to undertake to honor him.
In solidarity,
Demand Progress
In January 2012 we defeated the SOPA and PIPA censorship legislation with the largest Internet protest in history. A year ago this Saturday one of that movement's leaders, Demand Progress's cofounder Aaron Swartz, tragically passed away.
Today we face a different threat, one that undermines the Internet, and the notion that any of us live in a genuinely free society: mass surveillance.
We miss Aaron dearly. If he were alive, he'd be on the front lines, fighting against a world in which governments observe, collect, and analyze our every digital action.
Now, in honor of Aaron on the eve of the anniversary of his passing, and in celebration of the win against SOPA and PIPA that he helped make possible, we are announcing a day of protest against mass surveillance, to take place this February 11th.
We can think of no way that he'd rather be honored than one that might have such a positive impact on the world.
We're calling it, simply, The Day We Fight Back.
You can visit the hub website we're building to support this effort at TheDayWeFightBack.org. It'll let you know how to help.
Meanwhile, right now: Aaron's friend Cory Doctorow, the filmmaker Brian Knappenberger -- whose film about Aaron will premiere at Sundance this month -- and representatives from Demand Progress and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are on reddit to talk about Aaron and the work we will do to honor him -- and push back against the NSA -- over the next month.
Click here to join the chat, and vote it up to make sure it's seen by as many people as possible.
As was often the case, Aaron said it best: “[We defeated SOPA] because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it. They did whatever they could think of to do.”
In the last 6 months we’ve seen that government agencies, namely the NSA and GCHQ and others, have broken laws and twisted legal interpretations to create an infrastructure of mass surveillance of all of us online.
This creates a dark form of censorship, of course, as people become afraid to speak freely-- and it’s one that undermines our security and our right to privacy as well. As users of the Internet, we have a responsibility to defend its freedom.
With SOPA, we had a clear goal: defeat a specific bill. In this case, we have to take a first step. We have some promising bills (like the USA Freedom Act) and terrible ones (the FISA Improvements Act). But we need our legislators to hear from people who love the Internet that we won’t stand by and let it be turned into a giant tool for mass surveillance. We need to push them to have the courage to support comprehensive reform. The kind of courage Aaron showed us all.
So today, on the eve of the anniversary of Aaron’s passing, we’d like to ask you to join us in stepping up to the plate once again in defense of a free, open and secure internet, where no one has to watch over their shoulder for big brother.
In memory of Aaron, and looking back to the successes of the SOPA campaign, we’d like to ask you to join us in a month of action, culminating in a day of action on February 11th. Here's what we need you to do today:
1) Visit TheDayWeFightBack.org to join in the activism.
2) And click here to join us, Cory Doctorow, Brian Knappenberger, and EFF to talk about Aaron and the activism we're going to undertake to honor him.
In solidarity,
Demand Progress
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