Scoob's blog: "Wake Up!"

This Tuesday, February 11th, is The Day We Fight Back (against mass surveillance) -- and we need your help to make it as impactful as it can be.

Click here to learn more and to sign up to take part.

Then click here to Share on Twitter and here to Share on Facebook.

We understand the United States to be a democracy, founded upon a Constitution that affords us critical rights, and governed by the rule of law.

Yet for years, the NSA has exploited secret legal interpretations to undermine our privacy rights -- thus chilling speech and activism, and thereby threatening to subvert the very underpinnings of our democracy itself.

• This Tuesday, February 11th, dozens of major websites and organizations are joining together to demand an end to mass spying.

They range from the left (sites like DailyKos) to right (the Koch Brothers' group FreedomWorks), with plenty in between. Together, they wield a tremendous amount of influence.

On Tuesday, February 11th, we are mobilizing thousands to call on Congress to:

1. Pass the USA FREEDOM Act, which would end the bulk collection of Americans' phone records and institute other key reforms.
2. Defeat the so-called FISA Improvements Act, which would entrench -- and potentially expand -- the spying.
3. Create additional privacy protections for non-Americans.
4. End the NSA's subversion of encryption and other data security measures.

We're reminding you about it today because we need your help to make Feb. 11th all that it can be.  We have built a banner that people -- like you -- can post on websites they run, in order to encourage their visitors to take action on the 11th.  Those banners will look like this:

Click here to visit TheDayWeFightBack.org and learn more. While you're there, please use the social media tools to spread word, and if you have a website, please install the banner code to make it appear on your site on Feb. 11th.

You might think this seems different from the way we usually fight for or against legislation, and you'd be right.  But this sort of activism has proved particularly successful at defending the Internet against bad policies.

In particular, it is very similar to what worked during the fight against another bill that threatened to undermine our civil liberties: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which would have instituted a new Internet censorship scheme.  You might remember that thousands of websites mobilized their visitors to help defeat that legislation two years ago.

As in other major battles for Internet Freedom, we think an online uprising can work again now. 

1. Click here to learn more, spread word, and sign up your website to take part.
2. Then click here to Share on Twitter and here to Share on Facebook.

And we're not even that far from winning on at least one key front:

The USA FREEDOM Act has more than 100 bipartisan sponsors, including two powerful lead sponsors: Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who was the original author of the PATRIOT Act and is furious that it has been abused to spy on Americans en masse.  

This summer an amendment that's very similar to parts of the USA FREEDOM Act failed to pass in the House of Representatives by just a handful of votes. Enough lawmakers now say they would have voted in support that it would pass if it came up for a vote today.

That's in large part because of the groundswell of grassroots energy that Internet activists like you brought to bear in support of the amendment.

Now it's time to move the ball forward once more.

Click here to learn more about this Tuesday's The Day We Fight Back, sign up your website to take part, and spread word to your friends.

If we persist, we will win this fight.