“Hold tight wait till the party’s over
Hold tight We’re in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way
Burning down the house”— David Byrne, Talking Heads
Two bills to “reform” the American Panopticon are currently moving their way through the House. One, drafted by the supporters of the N.S.A. has the inside track.
The other, The U.S. Freedom Act, drafted by “critics,” has been stalled but is now moving again. Marcy Wheeler suggests it may be moving in the wrong direction.
Meanwhile a number of tech and civil liberties organizations have decided not to wait. They’ve banded together to promote mass resistance to mass surveillance beginning with a campaign to Reset the Net.
According to the organizers
We can’t stop targeted attacks, but we *can* stop mass surveillance, by building proven security into the everyday Internet.
On June 5, the anniversary of the first Edward Snowden story on the N.S.A. PRISM program, Reset the Net is calling on all users to pledge to try and share N.S.A. resistant privacy tools.
Note to Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. workers: Your employers, who have not spoken or acted much like bold “innovators” or “problem solvers” when it comes to government spying, have yet to sign on to the campaign. Wired notes the impact they had in joining the grassroots to stop SOPA in 2012.
For more on Reset the Net, see the video above and this story from Wired.
And for those who wish to imagine a much more comprehensive “reset” of the internet, check out this thought piece by David Byrne, formerly of the Talking Heads.
