2015-03-10 8:53 GMT+01:00 Michelle Paulson <mpaulson(a)wikimedia.org>rg>:
Hi All,
I’m writing to let you know that today the Wikimedia Foundation[1] is
filing suit against the National Security Agency
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency>, the Department
of
Justice <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Justice
,
and the U.S. Attorney General
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Attorney_General>[2] in order
to challenge certain mass surveillance practices carried out by the U.S.
government. We believe these practices are impinging the freedom to learn,
inquire, and explore on Wikimedia sites.
Since the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, we’ve heard concerns from the
community about privacy on Wikipedia. This lawsuit is a step towards
addressing the community's justified concerns. We believe that the
surveillance methods being employed by the NSA under the authority of the
FISA
Amendments Act
<
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978…
negatively impact our users' ability
and willingness to participate in our
projects. Today, we fight back.
An op-ed
<
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.ht…
by Lila and Jimmy about the lawsuit, and
Wikimedia's stance on government
surveillance, appeared in The New York Times this morning. Additionally, we
just published a blog post
<https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/03/10/wikimedia-v-nsa/> with more
information about the suit. (The post will also up on Meta for
translation).
Curious question, by the way: how controversial would you expect this move
to be domestically? From e.g. a Swedish perspective, the NSA is an
intelligence agency of a foreign power and the other mentioned
organizations are either largely uncontroversial and seen in a positive
light (Amnesty, PEN, HRW) or unknown, but will it affect how the WMF is
seen in the US?
//Johan Jönsson
--