You may have noticed a new banner at the bottom of the page. Today, we’re using the site to help protest NSA spying on innocent Americans, weakening of encryption standards, being generally creepy without oversight, and making the internet less fun and less useful. It’s all a part of a day of action to let legislators know that they should work on reforms. You are invited and encouraged to participate.
I’m mad that the NSA has taken something I love dearly, the web, and made it less trustworthy. I’m mad that they have scared people into “watching what they say” so they don’t “end up on a list”, while scooping up everything and putting us ALL on “the list”. I’m annoyed that they spend an enrmous amount of our money on these efforts. I’m particularly mad that the NSA is spying on innocent children as well as adults.
We rebelled against England and King George for similar reasons just over 200 years ago. The King was intercepting messages, searching through our things without warrants, and insisting that the government come live in your house, if necessary. We said no, and Egland lost the colonies. The US constitution was written to point out that we would not be like that, that we stood for something, and that privacy was as important as securely sharing information.
If you are mad, too, do something about it today. You can send messages or call members of Congress. Add some comments and discuss things here. Go out in the street with a sign. Make some noise, and have some fun.
(The banner will be up all day today. You can click in the corner of it to make it small.)
Calling
I just sent some emails and made some calls. The calling tool is really quite easy.
If you enter your phone number, an automated system calls you right back, then walks you through each of the calls, dialing for you and helping you get through them easily.
Leahy, of course, sponsors the USA Freedom Act. Sanders office said he hadn’t cosponsored it yet. Welch’s office said he was concerned about the NSA.
Another reminder
If you’d like, take that extra moment and tell some friends. You can use the Share feature on this (and any other) story to get the word out to your social media sites and email lists.
Here are a few reasons from the organizers:
“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
Congress can reign all this in. Tell them you’d like them to knock it off.
An early evening reminder…
An early evening reminder… keep the calls and emails going.