Anti-Surveillance Activists Actually Would Like To Be Watched at Rally Saturday

Under the banner "Stop Watching Us," citizens protesting the National Security Agency's humongous, intrusive surveillance infrastructure will be taking to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where they will all likely be secretly photographed and identified with facial recognition software. Just kidding. The NSA already knows who they are.

Anyway, CNet has an interview has an interview with Rainey Reitman, activism director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation about the development of the rally:

Question: What is Stop Watching Us?

Reitman: Stop Watching Us is a coalition that came together right after the Snowden leaks began appearing earlier this summer. It's a coalition of more than 100 different organizations and companies from across the political spectrum, it's got everyone from EFF and ACLU to Reddit and Freedom Works.

Can you tell me a bit about the Stop Watching Us protest planned for this weekend?

Reitman: On Saturday, we are going to be gathering at noon at Columbus Circle and will march to the Capitol Reflecting Pool. It's going to be a historic protest against NSA mass surveillance. We are going to have speakers like Bruce Schneier and Representative Amash and Thomas Drake, as well as musicians like the indie-pop group Yacht. We are going to be delivering 570,000 petitions from people demanding an end to mass suspicion-less surveillance by the NSA.

Read the whole interview here. Reason TV will be in attendance at the rally on Saturday, so if you can't make it out (or if you're just afraid of who might be watching), we've got you covered.

Follow this story and more at Reason 24/7.

Spice up your blog or Website with Reason 24/7 news and Reason articles. You can get the widgets here. If you have a story that would be of interest to Reason's readers please let us know by emailing the 24/7 crew at [e-mail], or tweet us stories at @reason247.

Comments

[Hyperion]

Hey, pssttt... progressives, just don't be seen with any of those icky libertarian types. Cause, they don't like big government so much, you know, the type of big government that you love and that is so super paranoid that they start spying on and oppressing their own citizens?

[Suthenboy]

I am reminded of the morons who supported obamacare and are now complaining about having to pay for it.

[Hyperion]

You mean the same people who it has been impossible to convince that politicians only claim to care about them and give them free stuff with other peoples money, so that they can enjoy a lifetime job of power and money for doing nothing of value?

[Suthenboy]

Those are the ones.

[James Anderson Merritt]

Interesting. I see no evidence of live (or tape-replay) coverage of the rally on any of the three C-SPANs available carried by my cable system, anytime today. I wonder what's up with that?