Wikipedia wants the government to stop spying on its staff and users—and is taken them to court over it.
The company filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the NSA’s internet surveillance program, “Upstream.” In a blog post, they argue that intruding into the lives of their customers threatens the free speech model upon which their business thrives:
Their lawsuit claims that the NSA’s surveillance exceeds the authority granted to them by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and violates the First and Fourth Amendments. And since one of the NSA documents turned over by Edward Snowden features Wikipedia as a surveillance target, they believe they have standing to sue.
In a New York Times op-ed, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia Foundation executive director Lila Tretikov write, “The harm to Wikimedia and the hundreds of millions of people who visit our websites is clear: Pervasive surveillance has a chilling effect. It stifles freedom of expression and the free exchange of knowledge that Wikimedia was designed to enable.”
The American Civil Liberties Union will represent Wikipedia in the lawsuit. Several other lawsuits against the NSA are currently awaiting decisions.
“Wikipedia is founded on the freedoms of expression, inquiry, and information,” Tretikov said in a statement. “By violating our users’ privacy, the NSA is threatening the intellectual freedom that is central to people’s ability to create and understand knowledge.”
