Hello Beautiful Riseup Users:
Are we still needing funding for the coming year? Yes! We have gotten $55,000 in donations, which is amazing. Thanks all, and please donate to Riseup today, if you can (
https://riseup.net/donate).
Since Riseup works to make secure and private communications, let's talk about one of the organizations we are fighting: the extremely well-funded National Security Agency (NSA), aka the shady, secretive United States spying program that Edward Snowden so excellently blew the whistle on.
Did you know the NSA has built a map of the entire world via the communication links of all email, chat, and financial transactions? This map tells a story to them about all of us. It knows who we know. It knows who our activist allies and relationships are.
And, as if that wasn't crappy enough, the NSA is trying to undermine the security of the internet as a whole by putting in back-doors and weakening encryption standards so that they can spy better. They spend $250,000,000 USD per year on this. This makes the entire internet less secure, and makes it easier for people, governments, and corporations to exploit, scam, and spy on each other.
While the NSA claims they are targeting terrorism, they have been targeting foreign politicians and companies, with evidence that this is happening particularly in Brazil and Mexico. This is plain old espionage and corporate spying. Terrorism is merely the justification for astounding encroachments on our civil liberties.
Last, we have to assume this is all the tip of an iceberg. We have to assume there are other spy agencies across the globe doing similar spy work that we don't know about (yet.)
What can we do about this? We can fight it legally, we can provide support for leakers and journalists, and we can invest in infrastructure (like Riseup) that is building alternative tools to fight the spooks.
Thanks, Love, and Rage,
The Riseup Birds
(
https://riseup.net/donate)
