Americans outraged by the federal government’s spying programs took to the streets on Independence Day for “Restore the Fourth” protests in an estimated 100 American cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Memphis and Miami, plus international cities such as London and Munich.
The “Restore the Fourth” national protest was named after the Fourth Amendment, which was intended to protect Americans against “unreasonable searches and seizures.”
The NSA’s PRISM online surveillance program was exposed by Edward Snowden only weeks ago. Americans soon learned that at least nine Internet companies reportedly submitted to government surveillance of their servers: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL and Apple.
“Restore the Fourth,” initially organized on Reddit, describes itself as “a non-partisan, unaffiliated group of concerned citizens who seek to strengthen the Fourth Amendment with respect to digital surveillance by the U.S. government.”
“The July 4th demonstrations seek to demand an end to the unconstitutional surveillance methods employed by the U.S. government and to ensure that all future government surveillance is constitutional, limited, and clearly defined,” the group explained.
“Restore the Fourth aims to ensure that the will of the people is reflected in the government of the United States of America. This movement intends to bring an end to twelve years of Fourth Amendment abuses, and demonstrate the need for a return to the Constitution. All Americans should stand with them in this cause to protect the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Reddit, Mozilla, EFF and more join July 4th anti-NSA protests
To protest the NSA spying program on Independence Day, dozens of top Web sites will display a Fourth Amendment banner, and thousands of people will participate in street protests across the country.
Dara Kerr by Dara Kerr July 3, 2013 4:03 PM PDT
The organization Restore the Fourth is organizing anti-NSA street protests across the U.S. (Credit: Screenshot by Dara Kerr/CNET)
Rallying around the Fourth of July holiday, several Web sites have come together to take part in a nationwide protest over the National Security Agency's surveillance program.
Organized by the nonprofit Fight for the Future, thousands of sites -- including some heavy-hitters like Mozilla, Reddit, WordPress.org, and 4chan -- will be staging online protests.
Rather than going black, like many sites did during the 2012 protests of Congress' Stop Online Privacy Act, or SOPA, these sites will prominently display a Fourth Amendment banner. The banner will quote the text of the amendment, which says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."
Additionally, site visitors will be asked to sign an online petition, e-mail Congress, or join street protests. A group called Restore the Fourth is organizing the street demonstrations in nearly 100 U.S. cities, including New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.
One of the major differences between the Fourth of July anti-NSA protests and the 2012 SOPA protests is the absence of top tech companies such as Google and Facebook. This may be because many of these companies -- including Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, Google, and Apple -- were alleged to be involved in the NSA PRISM scandal.
The NSA is one of the biggest surveillance and eavesdropping agencies in the U.S. and was where former CIA employee and whistle-blower Edward Snowden was working when he decided to leak some of the agency's top-secret documents to the press last month.
This document leak has led to the public finding out that the government has been working to spy on people via metadata from Internet companies and cellular records in two programs -- the 2015 Program and PRISM. The NSA and the Obama administration have said the goals of the surveillance programs is to track down foreign terrorists and terrorist threats.
However, since the leak, many politicians and tech leaders have come out opposing the secret programs, while digital-rights advocacy groups have questioned the full legality of PRISM and 2015.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation will be participating in both the Fourth of July Web protest and the street demonstrations. "We're glad to see the Restore the Fourth movement organizing protests across the country against unlawful NSA spying," EFF activism director Rainey Reitman said in a statement, "and we hope these protests push elected officials to respond to the American people's growing discontent with dragnet domestic surveillance."
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Snowden’s worst fear, by his own account, was that “nothing will change.”
Quoted Text
“People will see in the media all these disclosures, they’ll know the lengths the government is going to grant themselves powers, unilaterally, to create greater control over American society and global society,” he told The Guardian last month after he’d asked it to identify him as its source. “But they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things, to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.”
One month after the Guardian’s first story, which revealed an order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing the NSA to collect the phone records of every Verizon customer, there has been no public movement in Washington to stop the court from issuing another such order. Congress has no intelligence reform bill that would rein in the phone-tracking, or Internet monitoring, or cyberattack-planning, or any of the other secret government workings that Snowden’s disclosures have revealed.
Politico
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Snowden’s worst fear, by his own account, was that “nothing will change.”
Politico
I never expected change to come through the current elected government. The traitors sitting in congress were derilect in duty at the least, treasonous at worst. Of course they won't respond, that's admitting it. They will continue to deceive and lie and explain away. They dont want to do the perp walk. The more they stonewall the uglier the change will be.
nothing will change because the corporate LAME STREAM MEDIA has been told to be 'silent' on these government issues. And since the sheople believe the rhetorical lies spewed by the LAME STREAM MEDIA as TRUTH....the mindless brainwashed sheople will continue their belief in deception.
if the zionists have their way....and they usually do......they will make or break this present administration IF it doesn't continue to be their 'sock puppet'!!
perhaps snowden was a puppet for the zionists to give the obama administration a small taste of 'what's to come' if this administration doesn't let these zionists continue to pull the puppet strings!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
New York City Restore the Fourth rally "couldn't have gone better"
By Joe Kloc on July 04, 2013 Email
At noon Thursday, hundreds of New Yorkers gathered in Union Square to protest the National Security Agency’s controversial Internet spying program, PRISM, revealed last month by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The rally is part of a national movement called Restore the Fourth, which today launched more than 100 protests across the United States. The demonstrations are aimed at calling attention to what the group believes is an erosion of the Fourth Amendment by the NSA’s domestic surveillance activities.
The movement attracted everyone from socialists to veterans, many of whom toted signs like “Impeach Obama” and “I guess perjury isn’t a big deal to anyone anymore.” The latter is a reference to James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence who admitted giving false testimony to congress about the NSA’s domestic spying.
Still, the movement has yet to garner the widespread appeal of Occupy Wall Street. “This is still just the middle class,” protester Sandy English, 50, told the Daily Dot. English is an organizer for the Socialist Equality Party, which he explained was using social media in an attempt to get the working class to come out. “In the past few years there has been an explosion on Facebook of the working class,” he said.
As crowds gathered, Reverend Billy of the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir activist group—which equates the devil with “corporate commercialism”—spoke on local privacy issues like the New York Police Department’s controversial “Stop and Frisk” program. The program essentially gives police the authority to frisk anyone they suspect of a crime and has increased the number of searches more than three-fold in the last decade.
Around 12:40 the protesters began marching towards the federal courthouse chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, the NSA has got to go.”
“There was a time after 9/11 when there were no young people at these protests,” Donald, of Reverend Billy’s choir, said. “People are finally getting their balls back.” According to Donald, who has been an active protester in New York since 1965 and who participated in the Stonewall riots, the young make-up of the crowd was reminiscent of the Vietnam protests. Drawing a parallel between the draft and Internet rights, he observed that young people only protest when something personally affects them.
One protester, Randi Ryan, 60, said she came out on the 90-degree day not because she personally cared about her online privacy but because she believed the NSA, through programs like PRISM, which surveil American’s photos, emails, chats, and other online content, violate the Fourth Amendment: “I didn’t know you could do that. That’s our Bill or Rights,” she said. “Mind your own business.”
Around 2:30, the police-lined protest reached the federal courthouse and recited the Fourth Amendment. The organizers, who utilized the “people’s mic” of the Occupy Wall Street movement, explained that they wanted the protest to be peaceful and to disperse before there was any trouble. “This is not the end,” said Ben Doernberg, explaining that there would be another protest on August 4. Doernberg told everyone to email Restore the Fourth NYC to stay informed. “We know it’s ironic, but it’s a good way to keep in touch.”
After a speech by Reverend Billy and a chants of “Bush, Obama, same old drama” and “Snowden is a hero,” everyone disbanded.
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