Canadian organizations join campaign to protest NSA Internet surveillance

TORONTO – Canadian organizations have joined forces with American counterparts, including Internet giant Mozilla, to launch a campaign protesting the U.S. government’s Internet surveillance program.

StopWatching.Us calls on citizens and organizations from across the globe to call on the National Security Agency (NSA) to provide a better explanation of what online data, communications and interactions are being monitored.

The Privacy and Access Council of Canada, a Canadian non-profit privacy advocate, has joined the campaign along with Canadian journalist and author Cory Doctorow.

Hacker culture and online activism expert Gabriella Coleman, who teaches at Montreal’s McGill University, is also recognized as one of the members of the campaign.

The coalition of organizations backing the campaign range from political organizations and individuals, to tech organizations from – mostly from the U.S.

“Last week, media reports emerged that the US government is requiring vast amounts of data from Internet and phone companies via top secret surveillance programs,” Alex Fowler, global privacy and public policy leader at Mozilla, wrote in a blog post Tuesday.

“The revelations, which confirm many of our worst fears, raise serious questions about individual privacy protections, checks on government power and court orders impacting some of the most popular Web services.”

Read More: US releases more details of controversial PRISM spying program

PRISM, a once top-secret program revealed last week by the Washington Post and The Guardian, suggested the NSA can track the activity of foreign nationals overseas who use services from companies such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple.

Experts say the program would give the NSA back-end access to these companies’ servers, where all user information is stored – meaning that private user data from Google Docs to Facebook chat logs could be accessed and read in real time.

What is PRISM? A cyber-surveillance explainer

The StopWatching.Us campaign website calls on those concerned to sign a letter addressed to the U.S. Congress that demands Congress reveal the full extent of the program.

It also asks Congress to form a committee dedicated to investigating the allegations and demands “legal reforms to rein in spying and that public officials responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance be held accountable for their actions.”