Wikipedia
is suing the NSA over surveillance programs that involve
tapping internet traffic en masse from communications infrastructure
in the U.S. in order to search it for intelligence purposes.
The lawsuit argues that this broad surveillance, revealed in
documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, violates
the USA First Amendment by chilling speech and the open exchange
of information, and that it also runs up against Fourth Amendment
privacy protections.
In an op-ed in today's New
York Times announcing the lawsuit, Wikipedia's co-founder,
Jimmy Wales, and Lila Tretikov, executive director of the Wikimedia
Foundation, cited the tens of thousands of volunteers who write
and edit Wikipedia entries around the world.
Many of those volunteer contributors, they note, "prefer
to work anonymously, especially those who work on controversial
issues or who live in countries with repressive governments."
The fear that the NSA could be collecting information on contributors,
and perhaps sharing that intelligence with other governments,
"stifles freedom of expression and the free exchange of
knowledge that Wikimedia was designed to enable."
TCP did a web search this day, up to 8am March 12, 2015 to
find any media outlet in Australia covering this massive story
but could find none...NONE!!! Every major media in the USA covered
it, UK media covered it, India covered it, The New Zealand Herald
covered it but so far no media in Australia.
As far as we know at time of uploading TCP is the exclusive source
in Australia of this very important story.
TCP reminds readers that Australia's internal spying regime is
at least as pervasive as that in the USA.
See wikipedia form more
and updates on this important case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_v._NSA
Also updates on:
www.theintercept.org |