Thursday, June 5, 2014: Online Liberty Campaign “Reset The Net”

(From the President’s Corner section in Volume 19, No. 9 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!)

Fed up with government surveillance spoiling the freedom and fun of the Internet? You’re not alone. And now there’s something you can do about it.

“Don’t ask for your privacy. Take it back.” 

That’s the theme of Reset the Net — a new worldwide coalition of organizations, companies and tens of thousands of Internet users dedicated to preserving free speech and basic rights on the Internet.

They’re all pledging to “Reset The Net” on Thursday, June 5th, 2014 — the anniversary of the first NSA surveillance story revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden — by empowering Internet activists, companies and organizations to take simple steps to encrypt the web to shut out the government’s mass surveillance capabilities.

And you can join them.

Organizations — including some of the Internet’s largest and most influential — will participate by publicizing the effort, improving their own security and promoting free privacy tools to their followers.

Individual Internet users can act with Reset The Net in several important ways. Reset The Net will offer a free “privacy pack” of safe open-source software tools for easy encrypting of chat logs, email, phone calls and text messaging, as well as information on other ways to secure online life against intrusive surveillance.

” These super-easy encryption tools let you talk, chat, and text with pretty strong privacy,” says Reset The Net. “If everyone used them, that would go a long way to shutting down mass surveillance. So, be the first. And tell your friends. In the end, beating the NSA could be that simple.”

Reset The Net will offer supporters a splash screen they can run at their websites on June 5. These screens will reach millions with a call for privacy and a link to the privacy tools pack. You can also join the worldwide #ResetTheNet Twitter brigade to publicize the effort.

Information on these and other activities is at the Reset The Net website. Watch the short video on the home page to learn more.

“The NSA is exploiting weak links in Internet security to spy on the entire world, twisting the Internet we love into something it was never meant to be,” says Reset The Net. “We can’t stop targeted attacks, but we can stop mass surveillance, by building proven security into the everyday Internet.”

For more information — and more ideas on what you can do — watch the short ResetTheNet.org campaign video and visit ResetTheNet.org.

And remember the date: June 5th, 2014.