MEDIA ADVISORY: Anti-CISA groups plan protest outside Capitol Building tomorrow night with light up signs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 21, 1015
On site contact: press@fightforthefuture.org
WHAT: Nerds, activists, gamers, and civil liberties proponents who oppose CISA, the controversial cyber surveillance bill currently on the Senate floor, will protest outside the Capitol Building tomorrow holding glowing light up signs that read “NO CISA.”
WHEN: Thursday, October, 22nd from 6:30pm – 7:30pm
WHERE: East side of U.S. Capitol Building, gather at NE 1st Street and East Capitol.
WHO: the protest is being organized by Fight for the Future, Defending Dissent Foundation & Bill of Rights Defense Committee, CODEPINK, Restore the Fourth, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Access, and concerned residents from Washington, DC.
VISUALS: Protesters holding large, light up signs reading “NO CISA” with Capitol building in background. (See example from a previous protest here.)
CONTACT: press@fightforthefuture.org
Fight for the Future will have high-resolution photos available for use by press after the event. CTO Jeff Lyon will be available for media interviews at the protest.
Background:
Fight for the Future and a coalition of other advocacy groups have lead a series of high profile campaigns sparking massive public outrage against the bill. Earlier this year they launched Operation: #FaxBigBrother, generating more than 6 million faxes to Senate offices lambasting CISA with the message that “Congress is stuck in 1984.” They also launched a legislative “scoreboard” that grades every member of Congress on their recent surveillance voting record and encourages visitors to contact their lawmakers to oppose CISA.
The grassroots campaigns have sparked an avalanche of opposition from the tech industry as well. Over the weekend Twitter, Yelp, reddit, and Wikipedia weighed in against CISA. Last week, CCIA, an industry association representing tech giants Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Sprint, and others, also issued a statement slamming the bill. Mozilla, imgur, WordPress, Craigslist, Namecheap, and hundreds of other companies have opposed CISA and similar information sharing legislation in the past.
Last month, the Business Software Alliance, which represents Apple, Microsoft, and other major tech companies, clarified that it does not support any of the three information sharing bills before Congress after Fight for the Future ran a public campaign called YouBetrayedUs that spurred a flurry of angry emails from consumers targeting companies that signed a BSA letter that appeared to support CISA. The group also initiated a boycott of Heroku, the webhosting service owned by Salesforce, which prompted Salesforce’s CEO to take to twitter condemning the BSA letter and saying his company opposes CISA.
The group continued to make headlines by calling for the CEO of Experian to resign over his company’s support for CISA after a devastating hack exposed the private data of 15 million T-Mobile customers. Just yesterday, following a viral AP story about Hillary Clinton’s cybersecurity failings as Secretary of State, Fight for the Future launched a petition calling for her to state her position on CISA, noting that her opponent Bernie Sanders opposes the bill.
Fight for the Future and a large coalition of other groups are watching CISA’s progress closely and are preparing for a final showdown on the Senate floor. Senators that expect to maintain their constuents trust would do well to take note of the rising level of opposition to this toxic legislation, which is now only supported by a few self-interested corporations and lawmakers who have a track record of voting to expand and maintain unpopular government surveillance programs.
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Fight for the Future is a grassroots advocacy group with more than 1.4 million members that fights to protect the Internet as a powerful platform for freedom of expression and social change. They’re best known for organizing the massive online protests against SOPA, for net neutrality, and against government surveillance. Learn more at https://www.fightforthefuture.org and https://www.twitter.com/fightfortheftr