Stop Watching Us brings 85 organizations together to demand truth and transparency on PRISM

[steve2470]

https://optin.stopwatching.us/

http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/11/stop-watching-us-brings-85-organizations-together-to-demand-truth-and-transparency-on-prism/

A brand-new organization composed almost at light speed to oppose the broad surveillance activities of the NSA’s PRISM program is calling on Congress to stop spying on Americans and reveal the full truth.

“The revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights,” the organization’s open letter reads. “We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA’s spying programs.”

PRISM, of course, is the NSA’s big data surveillance program that snags data from massive U.S. Internet and communications companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. Apple and other companies accused of participation have denied the allegations – as has the NSA, previously – but those denials seem oddly similar and carefully constructed to truthfully tell a lie.

The 85 participating organizations include well-known companies and organizations such as Reddit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive, the Mozilla foundation, the World Wide Web Foundation, and the American Library Association. Concerned citizens who have added their names to the letter so far include author Cory Doctorow and Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian.

[Laelth]

1. Excellent. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[dipsydoodle]

2. And don't forget the EU

.

[midnight]

3. dipsydoodle would you mind elaborating a bit more for me... Sorry for not being able to

piece it together... thanks...

[dipsydoodle]

4. My understanding is that you no direct equivalent of the EU data protection act.

It doesn't matter how the information escaped or was captured from Google et al its very existence breaches EU data protection laws.

http://www.edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/edps/EDPS/Dataprotection

The fines the EU are capable of levying against companies who've breached the act would run into multi billions.

[midnight]

5. So EU has advanced understanding of privacy rights and they protect them regardless of

this third party excuse the U.S. is using?

[dipsydoodle]

6. It not so much a matter of advanced understanding of privacy rights.

From the link I gave you :

"The right to protection of personal data is a fundamental right. It is different from, but closely linked to, the right to respect for private and family life. This distinction is notably made in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights - which mentions the two rights separately, although next to each other in Articles 7 and 8."


The third party excuse don't wash because either the companies handed the information over volantarily or their security was insufficiently lax too allow its theft.