Fighting CISPA: Blackout Announcement
While I currently see no particular reason to subscribe to certain conspiracy theories that have been floating around over the past few days, the immediate response to the event, as well as past experience, makes it clear that certain elements are now overjoyed at being able to use the tragedy of the Boston Marathon bombings as an excuse for an even further increase in unjustified surveillance and oppresive behavior, mainly in the United States but very probably elsewhere as well, so it’s all the more important to fight now and fight hard against any such measures, and CISPA is as good a start as any.
As such, seeing as the US House of Representatives passed the bill by a wide margin, I have decided to take part in the announced blackout scheduled for Monday, April 22. The entire site, not just the blog, will be blacked out for at least 24 hours, and probably 36 hours. The call to action sets the start time as 6 AM GMT, but I’m not going to set up an automated script and I’ll be asleep at that time, so at the moment I’m planning to start it at midnight GMT on Monday and most probably end it at noon GMT on Tuesday, seeing as I should be well awake by then.
Regardless of where you live, this bill will affect you, so I strongly encourage you to follow the developments and take action. In addition, if you have a site as well, I encourage you to join the blackout, and you could also join the Internet Defense League, if you haven’t done so already. This particular blackout is done on short notice and spearheaded by Anonymous, so the impact will most probably rely on many individuals doing their part more or less independently instead of large organizations and well-known sites taking up the banner.
