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 The banner of The Day We Fight Back | |
| Predecessor | Protests against SOPA and PIPA |
|---|---|
| Formation | January 10, 2014; 11 years ago (2014-01-10) |
| Legal status | ad hoc |
| Purpose | Digital privacy |
| Affiliations | Demand Progress, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Free Press organization, Reddit, Mozilla, and Boing Boing. |
| Website | thedaywefightback |
The Day We Fight Back is a planned protest against mass surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA). It is being scheduled for February 11, 2014. The protest is expected to take the form of webpage banner-advertisements urging viewers to contact their lawmakers over the issues surrounding cyber surveillance and a free Internet.
The Day We Fight Back was announced on January 10, 2014. It has been organized by David Segal, a Democratic member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives and the executive director of Demand Progress. Other groups involved in its promotion include digital rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, and Free Press, as well as social media website Reddit, Firefox producer Mozilla, collaborative blogging website Boing Boing, and populist advocacy group The Other 98%.
Background
February 11, 2014, the date the protest is scheduled, is a month after the one-year anniversary of the suicide of Aaron Swartz, the founder of Demand Progress. At the time of Swartz's death he was being prosecuted with fraud for downloading and distributing research articles from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
On the announcement of The Day We Fight Back on January 10, 2014, David Segal, the executive director of Demand Progress, said in a statement,
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.
The protest was promoted in a trailer for an upcoming documentary about Swartz, titled The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz. The trailer encouraged viewers to "join the fight against mass suspicionless surveillance" on February 11.
In the clip, the late activist comments on mass surveillance: "It is shocking to think that the accountability is so lax that they don't even have sort of basic statistics about how big the spying programme is. If the answer is, 'Oh, we're spying on so many people we can't possibly even count them,' then that's an awful lot of people." Five months after Swartz's death, the scale of a vast global surveillance program would be revealed in great detail through the release of top-secret NSA documents by Edward Snowden. The film follows director Brian Knappenberger's recent op-ed documentary for the New York Times called "Why Care About the NSA?".
References
- ^ Gross, Grant (January 10, 2014). "Advocacy groups plan day of protest against NSA surveillance". PC World. Retrieved January 14, 2014.
- ^ Rucke, Katie (January 14, 2014). "Activists Announce Day To 'Fight Back' Against NSA". MintPress News. Retrieved January 14, 2014.
- ^ Brown, Eric (January 14, 2014). "Reddit, Mozilla And Others To Protest NSA Spying, Honor Aaron Swartz On 'The Day We Fight Back'". International Business Times. Retrieved January 14, 2014.
- Yakowicz, Will (February 3, 2014). "Internet Activists Are Rallying Businesses to Protest NSA Spying". Inc.com.
- Pangburn, D.J. (January 13, 2014). "Internet Activists Look Back at Aaron Swartz's Life as 'The Day We Fight Back' Approaches". Vice. Motherboard. Retrieved January 15, 2014.
- "Privacy advocates announce day of protest against NSA spying". Help Net Security. January 13, 2014. Retrieved January 15, 2014.
- Zelman, Joanna (January 11, 2014). "Aaron Swartz Documentary Clip Reveals Activist's Thoughts On NSA, Pushes Day Of Action". The Huffington Post. Retrieved January 15, 2014.
- Pengelly, Martin (January 11, 2014). "Hacking of MIT website marks first anniversary of Aaron Swartz's death". The Guardian. Retrieved January 15, 2014.
- Knappenberger, Brian. "'Why Care About the N.S.A.?'". New York Times op-ed docs. NYT. Retrieved January 21, 2014.