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Some of the
web's biggest names have backed mass protests over internet surveillance
carried out by the US National Security Agency (NSA).
The Restore
the Fourth movement - referring to the US constitution's fourth amendment -
said it wants to end "unconstitutional surveillance".
Reddit,
Mozilla and Wordpress are among the big web names backing the action, due to
take place on Thursday.
Almost 100
events have been planned across the US.
An
interactive map detailing their locations has been published.
The site
quotes a line from the fourth amendment which pledges "the right of the
people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures".
As well as
the "real-world" protests, many influential websites plan to display
messages of protest on their homepages on Thursday, co-ordinated by a group
called the Internet Defence League (IDL).
Petition
The action
has taken inspiration from similar efforts that took place last year.
Wikipedia,
Google and others went "dark", or put black boxes over parts of their
pages, to show their disagreement with proposed anti-piracy measures being
discussed by US lawmakers.
 |
In pictures: Sopa protests
View a gallery of what happened the last time major web site's took co-ordinated protest action |
At the time
of writing, the site had amassed 536,559 signatures. Dissident Chinese artist
Ai Weiwei is listed as being among the petition's backers.
The demand
comes at a time when one top US intelligence official was forced to apologise
for telling Congress in March that the NSA did not have a policy of gathering
data on millions of Americans.
National
intelligence director James Clapper said in a letter to the Senate intelligence
committee that his answer had been "clearly erroneous"
.
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