Stop Watching Us

[Stefan Arentz]

I love the new https://optin.stopwatching.us/ initiative but I am a bit sad it is so US centric.

I understand it is mainly targeted at the NSA and the warrantless spying on US citizens, but as a foreigner I would still like to add my name to the list. Specially since the same thing is happening in my country of origin (Holland) and where i live now (Canada).

Are other countries going to be considered for this campaign?

S.

[Leo McArdle]

On 11/06/13 16:05, Stefan Arentz wrote:
> I am a bit sad it is so US centric.

Initially I, too, was bemused at how US-centric it seemed to be, not
just because this has been directly linked to activities by GCHQ which
affect me as a British citizen.

Upon closer reading of the letter, and a reinterpretation of what I see
to be the very badly written first sentence: "which reveal secret spying
by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet
activity of people in the United States" (I now take that to mean the
spying of the NSA in the US of the Internet activity of people, rather
than the spying of the Internet activity of people residing in the US),
it seems to address the concerns of all people.

> I understand it is mainly targeted at the NSA and the warrantless spying on US citizens

It's partially targeted at that, but also at whatever PRISM is (nobody
seems quite sure what it is: is it a backdoor in the services mentioned?
is it a method of requesting information from the services by court
order? is it a method of filtering packets, from wiretaps, to those
services for further inspection?) without explicitly mentioning it.
Confusingly, the revelations about wiretaps on Verizon customers and
PRISM were pretty close together, and many news outlets have been
confusing the two.

> Are other countries going to be considered for this campaign?
>
> S.
>

> _______________________________________________
> governance mailing list
> gover...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance

So, to get to my point, it should concern you as a non-US citizen
because a ridiculous amount of traffic travels through the US from
non-US citizens, particularly to the services mentioned in the leaked
slides. And, because there is real evidence that this information has
been shared with foreign intelligence agencies (like GCHQ, as I
mentioned earlier), possibly circumventing the judicial process in those
countries (in a 'you spy on our citizens and we'll spy on yours' sort-of
way).

Furthermore, the letter is being sent to the US Congress because they,
as far as I am aware, are the people who have (or at least should have)
oversight on the NSA, and the power to demand that they stop infringing
on our civil liberties.

Then again, this is just my reading of the letter and accompanying
blogpost. It's entirely possible I could have got completely the wrong
end of the stick.

~Leo

[David Tenser]

On 2013-06-11 17:05, Stefan Arentz wrote:
> I love the new https://optin.stopwatching.us/ initiative but I am a bit sad it is so US centric.
>
> I understand it is mainly targeted at the NSA and the warrantless spying on US citizens, but as a foreigner I would still like to add my name to the list. Specially since the same thing is happening in my country of origin (Holland) and where i live now (Canada).
>

> Are other countries going to be considered for this campaign?
>

I just added my name to it anyway, using my Swedish address. :)

- David

[afo...@mozilla.com]

Thanks for starting this thread, Stefan. The StopWatching.Us campaign will begin to switch in the next day or so to being more international in scope. We intentionally started in the US as the initial focus of action has been the US Congress. Stay tuned for updates. In the meantime, thanks for your support!

[he...@deepwebguides.com]

We should be proactive. Google "How to Defeat the NSA and Other Snoopers"

[strazd...@gmail.com]

While i am not agaisnt your cause, i find it kind of ironic, that google, the company who argued in courts that "if you do nothing wrong you got nothing to hide" and admited on slpying on wireless networks during street view mapping is supporting a cause that would force itself to stop its activities. kind of like shooting yourself in the foot.