Crowdfunding ORG's campaign to fight the UK government's mass surveillance

For two successive Parliaments, the UK Tory party has been trying to pass the most extensive mass-spying bill in the western world. It's called the Snoopers Charter, and after the Paris attacks, it came back with a vengeance.

The UK Open Rights Group is crowdfunding £20,000 to fight back against the government's massive PR offensive in support of the bill. While the government will be spending a lot more tax money than a mere £20K to promote spying on everyone, all the time, ORG has a huge advantage: it doesn't have to lie to make its case. Britons have soundly, roundly rejected the Snoopers Charter before. They will do so again, if we can remind them of what's really at stake here:

What does the Bill mean?

The police, security services and even organisations like HMRC can hack your phone or computer. This can be done on a mass scale by the intelligence agencies who can hack people and organisations who are not under suspicion in order to try to get to their targets.

ISPs will be forced to keep a record of the apps we use and the websites we visit. It doesn't matter whether you are suspected of a crime or not – all of our data will be linked together so it can be searched and analysed by the police. Other organisations like the Food Standards Agency can also analyse this data.

The security services can continue tapping hundreds of underground cables to scoop up and snoop on our communications in real time.

The security services can access and analyse databases of personal information about millions of people who are not suspected of any crime. These include things like the phone book, the electoral roll or for example, a database of everyone going to an event.

Campaign against Mass Surveillance in the UK [Open Rights Group/Indiegogo]

(Disclosure: I am proud to have co-founded the Open Rights Group and to volunteer on its advisory council)