The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which passed the House of Representatives this week, has drawn a lot of criticism from activist groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation for potentially undermining users’ online privacy. In particular, the EFF has said that the bill gives Internet companies the right “to monitor user actions and share data – including potentially sensitive user data – with the government without a warrant” and also “overrides existing privacy law, and grants broad immunities to participating companies.”
Hacker collective Anonymous this week called for a massive online protest against CISPA to occur on April 22nd through an “Internet Blackout Day” by asking “web developers and website owners to go dark” and to also “display a message as to why you are going dark, and encourage others to do the same.” The group’s call for an online blackout day echoes a similar protest that occurred last year against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in which Reddit and Wikipedia both went dark to protest the bill while Google blacked out its famous Google doodle to symbolize its opposition.
A video of Anonymous’s call for an Internet Blackout Day is posted below.
