Anonymous and Others Call for an Internet Black Out on Monday April 22 2013

Sunday, 21 April 2013 20:06

Anonymous and Others Call for an Internet Black Out on Monday April 22 2013

Written by Sean Kalinich

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As we wrote earlier today the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act has passed through the US House of Representatives. This is not an act that anyone, other than the corporations that lobbied for it, wants. CISPA brings nothing to the table that agencies already do not have, or cannot get with the right requests to the courts. Instead it removes many (almost all) individual rights and turns your private data into a commodity that can be passed around without any legal recourse.

To combat this groups like Fight for the Future, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have asked websites to remind everyone how dangerous CISPA is and that we all need to work together to stop it. One group that has also reached out is Anonymous. Now to most people this will not be a surprise (it was not to us), but what is surprising is to find out that one of the companies that is supporting CISPA, but opposed SOPA is Google.

In fact Google has pushed for this for many reasons. As many of you might have read Google has come under fire for violations of Privacy laws in the EU and here in the US. Pushing CISPA and seeing it pass would be very good for Google on many levels although it might turn out bad for them. You see on April 22nd 2013 when internet sites go dark again and Google is not one of them it will look conspicuous, just like it will if Google does put up a black banner over their logo like they did over SOPA.

We are fairly confident that Anonymous and others will be sure to make people aware that companies like Facebook, Google. Microsoft, Yahoo and many others are working to get this bill passed and to make sure that your personal data is a tradable commodity. This can have an impact on the number of users that each service has. How many people do you think will stick with Google or Facebook when they find out that both companies want to be able to trade their personal information with other companies as well as the Federal Government? My guess is that this will have a fairly significant impact on membership.

So on Monday April 22nd 2013 (tomorrow as of this writing) we expect to go dark in at least some form as we strongly oppose any bill that removes your right to privacy and considering that CISPA goes even further than that we will continue to oppose it in any way that we can.

Below are links that you can use to join the effort and also to reach out to your state senators to let them know how you feel about this. We have also added the Call from Anonymous so you can hear their take on things as well. Now we wonder what other tricks Anonymous might have up their sleeves for the 22nd…

Fight for the Future
Electronic Frontier Foundation