Internet Fights Back Against Mass-Surveillance

February 11, 2014 was suppose to go down in history as a victory for internet freedom... but was it?

Websites such as Reddit, Mozilla, and Tumblr, among 6,000 others, participated in an online protest event known as "The Day We Fight Back".
The goal was in part to help pass a federal bill which intends to severely limit the kinds of surveillance programs that were kept secret from the public until recently.

The affiliated websites urged their U.S. visitors to contact their congressmen in support of the bill and non U.S. to sign a petition against the use of mass surveillance worldwide. Global spotlight has been on the U.S. since the Snowden leaks and the issues of privacy are being discussed more than ever before.

Unfortunately, the protest did not garner the same type of attention or effectiveness as the SOPA blackout of 2012. A number comparison shows the stark difference. 75,000 websites participated during the 2012 protest compared to just the 6,000 for this event. 10 million signatures were collected in some type of  petition for the protest of SOPA while an estimated 200,000 signed the petition for The Day We Fight Back. Big names such as Microsoft and Google did join the protest, but did little to get the public aware of the event like they did in 2012.

Still, even with the success of the protest up for debate, the message they wanted to send is still clear. "The hope is that we'll be able ... demonstrate that there's going to be ongoing public pressure until these reforms are instituted," says David Segal of Demand Progress, an activist organization heading the protest.

I believe it is always better to do something than to watch from the sides and say nothing. To me this seems a good step in the right direction towards an open discussion in the legal and ethical concerns of mass-surveillance programs. The reality is privacy today is nothing like it was in the past. Anything you do or say on the internet is forever recorded and could come back later in life. Public awareness needs to be well informed with these issues so we don't slide into some sort of 1984 dystopia. The internet has shown it can speak loud, but it may not have been enough this time.

Related Article: The Internet Flexes Political Muscle With Anti-NSA Protest