In light of secret government data collection programs, Mozilla, the creator of the web browser Firefox, has launched a website that it hopes will pressure Congress into taking action to end Internet surveillance programs such as the one operated by the National Security Agency.
The website, Stopwatching.us, was launched on Tuesday and contains a petition in the form of a letter, which calls on Congress “to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s and the FBI’s data collection programs.”
The petition has since garnered more than 100,000 signatures, 83 of those from organizations and companies across the political spectrum, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute and Reddit.
According to The Huffington Post, in addition to the online petition, organizers for the website partnered with the EFF to organize a day for people to call their representatives in an attempt to get Congress’ attention.
It’s an interesting move for The Mozilla Foundation to be at the forefront of the push back against the government’s surveillance programs, especially since they were not one of the nine companies — including Facebook, Apple, and Google — from which the U.S government was collecting data through PRISM.
Nevertheless, it’s a bold and warranted move for the California-based non-profit, which has a significant following, with an estimated 450 million people worldwide using their web browser Firefox.
“When users fear government surveillance… a free and open Web becomes untenable,” said Mozilla Privacy Chief Alex Fowler on a press call on Tuesday, according to Ars Technica. “We don’t want an Internet where everything we do is secretly tracked or logged by companies or governments.”
Mozilla seems confident that if the petition gains enough support, there is a good chance that there will be a real impact on such government surveillance programs. They pointed to similar protests that have occurred in the past, such as those against the anti-privacy bills, SOPA and PIPA, both of which were stopped.
