Mozilla, EFF and 84 more companies and organizations united against NSA espionage

    A coalition of Internet companies and public organizations signed an open letter to the Obama administration calling for an audit of the powers that the American intelligence services have in terms of mass surveillance of the civilian population.

    Signatories to the open letter urge Congress to create a commission like the Church Commission , formed after the Watergate scandal in the 70s to study FBI and CIA intelligence operations. Its purpose is to check whether the scouts really use only legitimate methods, do not exceed their authority, hiding crimes behind the stamp of secrecy.

    Another goal of the open letter is to stimulate reforms in the field of legislative protection of the rights and freedoms of citizens, guaranteed protection of the privacy of users.

    Congress is required to immediately stop the population surveillance program and provide a full public report on data collection mechanisms by the NSA and the FBI. In addition, Congress must immediately and publicly:

    1. Initiate reforms in section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act to make it clear and rigorously prohibit any U.S. resident from collecting data on Internet activity and telephone calls, and violations of this prohibition will be prosecuted.
    2. Create a special committee to investigate, report and disclose to the public the degree of espionage in the United States. The committee should make specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform that would effectively prevent unconstitutional surveillance of citizens in the future.
    3. Bring to justice officials who are guilty of organizing unconstitutional surveillance of the population.

    An open letter was signed by such well-known companies and organizations as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Free Software Foundation (Mozilla, Reddit, 4Chan, Internet Archive, DuckDuckGo, Greenpeace and the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU). By the way, ACLU with 500 thousand registered members is considered a very authoritative organization, and its participation has already helped to implement some changes in US constitutional law.

    The full text of the letter is available on the Stopwatching.us campaign website . This is a global petition that any Internet citizen can put a signature on.

    “The time has come for Congress to act. We are not happy with the small amendment to the PATRIOT Act, we need a full public report on how the United States uses sophisticated spy technology to spy on its own citizens, we require accountability by officials and a complete review of the law to ensure that this does not happen again never, ” says Mark Rumold, one of the full-time lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

    He is echoed by Alex Fowler, Mozilla’s director of privacy and politics: “Mozilla believes in an Internet where we don’t need to fear that every action we take is monitored, recorded and recorded by companies or governments. And we believe in a state whose actions are open, transparent and accountable.

    Full list of companies and organizations that have signed an open letter
    Access
    Advocacy for Principled Action in Government
    American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression
    American Civil Liberties Union
    American Civil Liberties Union of California
    American Library Association
    Amicus
    Association of Research Libraries
    Bill of Rights Defense Committee
    BoingBoing
    Breadpig
    Calyx Institute
    Canvas
    Center for Democracy and Technology
    Center for Digital Democracy
    Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights
    Center for Media and Democracy
    Center for Media Justice
    Competitive Enterprise Institute
    Consumer Action
    Consumer Watchdog
    CorpWatch
    CREDO Mobile
    Cyber ​​Privacy Project
    Daily Kos
    Defending Dissent Foundation
    Demand Progress
    Detroit Digital Justice Coalition
    Digital Fourth
    Downsize DC
    DuckDuckGo
    Electronic Frontier Foundation
    Entertainment Consumers Association
    Fight for the Future
    Floor64
    Foundation for Innovation and Internet Freedom
    4Chan
    Free Press
    Free Software Foundation
    Freedom of the Press Foundation
    FreedomWorks
    Friends of Privacy USA
    Get FISA Right
    Government Accountability Project
    Greenpeace USA
    Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA)
    Internet Archive
    isen.com, LLC
    Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
    Law Life Culture
    Liberty Coalition
    May First / People Link
    Media Alliance
    Media Mobilizing Project, Philadelphia
    Mozilla
    Namecheap
    National Coalition Against Censorship
    New Sanctuary Coalition of NYC
    Open Technology Institute
    OpenMedia.org
    Participatory Politics Foundation
    Patient Privacy Rights
    People for the American Way
    Personal Democracy Media
    PolitiHacks
    Privacy and Access Council of Canada
    Public Interest Advocacy Center (Ottawa, Canada)
    Public Knowledge
    Privacy Activism
    Privacy Camp
    Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
    Privacy Times
    Reddit
    Represent.us
    Rights Working Group
    Rocky Mountain Civil Liberties Association
    RootsAction.org
    Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic
    Sunlight Foundation
    Taxpayers Protection Alliance
    TechFreedom
    The AIDS Policy Project, Philadelphia
    TURN-The Utility Reform Network
    Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center
    William C. Velasquez Institute (WCVI)
    World Wide Web Foundation

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