StopWatching.Us: Mozilla’s anti-surveillance campaign

Privacy and surveillance have been hot topics on the web and all media over the past week, and chances are it’s going to carry on. In a bid to force transparency from all parties involved, Mozilla has launched an anti-surveillance campaign urging the government to stop watching people.

The move follows the revelations by former contractor Edward Snowden that the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) has been secretly tracking individuals through its PRISM programme, allegedly with the help of major tech companies.

Following reports of PRISM, Mozilla was called on to move Persona servers outside the US to escape the NSA’ surveillance activity. According to the company that is not the best solution, and it argues that action is required from the law instead:

We don’t think that would help, and even if it did a bit, we think we can be much more productive by focusing on other areas. First, it’s not clear to us that other governments have any less intrusive surveillance activities. Second, as a US company, Mozilla is subject to US Laws, wherever we host our servers. Third, we’d rather not engage in an arms-race with US government agencies. We’d rather focus on efforts to change the law to respect user data wherever it lives.

Instead Mozilla is on a mission to change the law and increase transparency in government.

“Today Mozilla is launching StopWatching.Us — a campaign sponsored by a broad coalition of organizations from across the political and technical spectrum calling on citizens and organizations from around the world to demand a full accounting of the extent to which our online data, communications and interactions are being monitored,” said the company in a blogpost.

The campaign currently with 27 000 signatures “demand the US Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA’s spying programs”.

Whether enough people will back the campaign remains to be seen. Though as Cale Guthrie Weissman over at Pando Daily reckons, if Mozilla is able to get the backing of the implicated tech companies that are desperately trying to prove their innocence in the matter, perhaps it may gain more momentum.