The US Congress stopped its sessions last weekend without arranging any replacement for the Patriot Act, which will expire at midnight this Sunday.
From today 14000 websites (the number is constantly increasing) have started blocking access to Congress as a sign of protest.
The Patriot Act, and especially paragraph 215, grants unlimited authority to the National Security Agency (NSA) for conducting mass surveillance and collection of telephone call data.
The blackout was organized by a group called Fight for the Future. Members of the group (including sites like Reddit, Yelp, and the Consumer Electronics Association) have added a line of code to their websites that redirects any visitors using House or Senate IPs to a protest page.
“Congress: This is a blackout,” the protest page says. “We are blocking your access until you end mass surveillance laws.”
And continues:
“The real answer is to stop all agencies that conduct mass surveillance. Until you do, thousands of websites will block your access, and more will be added each day.”
The group is also running a campaign on Twitter and inviting people using the tag “#ifeelnaked” to post photos with little or no clothing.
The message they display is:
“Congress should be ashamed of the NSA's mass surveillance. It's like a porn movie search, online.”
If you have a website and wish to participate (it is a topic that concerns us all) you can do so using the code below (before the </HEAD> tag):
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.blackoutcongress.org/detect.js"></script>
If you need additional instructions you will find them at the following link
https://github.com/fightforthefuture/breakcongressinternet/blob/gh-pages/README.md
