Wikipedia to sue the N.S.A. and U.S. Department of Justice

The National Security Agency has long been in the public spotlight ever since Edward Snowden leaked the existence of government mass surveillance in 2013. Following this revelation, citizens and corporations were outraged at the idea of such a program. However, it is rather difficult (and to some, undesired) to implement the necessary change to correct a program that is so overreaching.

Now, however, the Wikimedia foundation sued the National Security Agency on Tuesday on the grounds that the NSA's mass surveillance program violates the privacy of citizens and makes individuals worldwide more fearful to share information with each other.

This lawsuit could be the push that privacy advocates have been looking for in their assault on government surveillance.

the plantiff includes the Wikimedia Foundation (who created Wikipedia, Wikiquote, etc.), Rutherford Institute, Amnesty International USA, The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and several other groups.

The group says that this new usage of surveillance ("upstream surveillance") harms them by causing individual or public faces to share sensitive information with their groups.

President Obama commented saying;

"We've been very clear about what constitutes a valid target of electronic surveillance. The act of innocuously updating or reading an online article does not fall into that category."

However, in contrast, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation said;

"By tapping the backbone of the Internet, the NSA is straining the backbone of democracy." 

The issue of overreaching mass surveillance is one that will not go away without the pressure of the public and knowledge bases like Wikimedia.

That's all I have to say today, but I'll be back tomorrow.

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that oyur very existence is an act of rebellion." -Albert Camus