User:Casademasa/Surveillance Protests

= Surveillance Protests = Surveillance Protests are a form of social protest against surveillance and in favor of maintaining an individual's right to privacy. As technology has advanced, governments and private entities around the world have developed an increased capacity to surveil the general populace. While this surveillance can be targeted toward key individuals of interest, it can also be applied indiscriminately to a population as a whole, referred to as mass surveillance. This type of mass surveillance has been studied by scholars as having a theoretical background in maintain social control of deviance. Mass surveillance is particularly concerning and unpopular among average citizens, especially in the United States where there is constitutional protection of privacy. Due to the rise of mass surveillance, many groups have mobilized social movements in order to challenge the surveillance of government and other entities, and to win back the right to privacy for everyday citizens. This issue rose in popularity in large part due to whistleblower Edward Snowden who leaked classified NSA documents that illustrated the extent to which the U.S. government was surveilling average citizens who had no connections to crime or illicit behavior. Many social movements against surveillance and in favor of privacy have emerged around the world in direct response to the Snowden's leaks, including "Stop Watching Us" in the United States. Other social movements in response to government surveillance have occurred in Germany, such as the Freedom not Fear or Freiheit statt Angst.

Mass Surveillance, Deterrence, and Panopticon
Mass surveillance can be seen as a form of maintaining social control over a populace. Mass surveillance is indiscriminate and affects the entire populace regardless of their affiliation to crime or subversive activity. This creates an environment where individuals are being surveilled but are unaware of the level of surveillance taking place. The origins of this idea can be traced back to Jeremy Bentham's panopticon, a prison design and framework for social control of deviance that allows a prison guard anonymity while surveilling prisoners therefore not allowing the prisoner to know when they are actually being watched or not. Due to this ambiguity, prisoners will begin to monitor themselves and discipline themselves due to the constant threat of uncertain surveillance. This is the idea behind mass surveillance, as individuals are unaware of the extent of surveillance or when it is taking place, so they will patrol themselves thus deterring illicit activity. However, according to Foucault, there are two possible outcomes to this type of surveillance. One is deterrence wherein the individual will become docile to the wants of the guard or institution of power, and will discipline themselves to not enact the unwanted behavior. This is likely to occur when individuals are isolated from others, and are unable to witness the surveillance taking place. The alternate outcome is resistance, where individuals will resist and fight against this surveillance and exertion of power; this is likely to occur when individuals are able to communicate and can actually see the surveillance taking place.

United States
The United States has participated in mass surveillance over many different decades for different political objectives. Contemporary surveillance was increased in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. This created the political conditions to pass surveillance legislation such as the Patriot Act, Protect America Act, and Total Information Awareness. There were not many public protests or popularized campaigns against this legislation, until the 2013 leak of private NSA and CIA documents by Edward Snowden that revealed that most major telecommunication companies were cooperating with the NSA to reveal the private phone calls and records of average Americans en masse. Additionally, a program called Dishfire allowed the NSA intercept 200 million text messages every day and can undermine self phone encryption. These leaks also revealed the NSA program XKeyscore which complies massive far reaching data about any internet users activity online, and allows the NSA to access this information without any warrant or permission.

"Stop Watching Us"
Stop Watching Us included a march of about 5000 people who rallied in Washington, DC against the NSA's excessive surveillance in wake of the Snowden leaks. This campaign sought to take advantage of the political moment that was revealed through the leaks, as many Americans had lost faith in the government and were disturbed by these revelations. Stop Watching US sought to expand the consciousness of the average Americans and mobilize them into action to stop the heavy use of surveillance. There were various satellite protests that occurred in cities outside of Washington DC. The protests were successful at mobilizing people's interest and investment in the issue, naming the problem of surveillance, and expanding the average American consciousness of regular mass surveillance. The mobilized group wrote letters to congress demanding that congress conduct an internal investigation of the federal government's spying practices.

"The Day We Fight Back"
The Day We Fight Back was an internet mobilization that called upon internet users to resist the widespread surveillance of internet activity as revealed by Snowden. The tactics used included the creation of viral political messaging memes, online banners, and campaigns to write to political representatives. One of the primary objectives of this day of online activism was to pass the USA Freedom Act which was proposed to reverse federal permissions of mass surveillance that were revealed in the Snowden leaks, and to reject the FISA improvements Act which was legislation that sought to restore public trust in the federal government by limiting the collection of data in bulk, and only allowing a storage time of up to 5 years. Many major companies such as Yahoo and Reddit supported the event by posting banners the movement's banners on their sites. The online movement had over 555,000 people send emails to their representatives in order to pass the act. The USA Freedom Act was eventually passed in 2015.

"Freiheit statt Angst (Freedom not Fear) "
Freiheit statt Angst was a march of thousands of individuals from over 30 cities in Germany who gathered in October, 2008 to protest mass data collection of citizens and increased surveillance in the country. This protest emergence was in response to the passage of the Data Retention Directive in 2006. This legislation obliged communications service providers to retain data about user communications for up to two years. The German advocacy group that played a key role in the organization of the march and challenging of this legislation was Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung or AK Vorrat (Working Group on Data Retention). In addition to the march, the movement also filed a constitutional complaint against the Data Retention Directive through the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. While this movement started in response to this specific legislation, it expanded to become a larger rallying cry throughout the EU about the importance of protecting the freedom and civil liberty of the right to privacy.