Reset the Net

A coalition of nearly two-dozen tech companies and civil liberties groups is launching a new fight against mass internet surveillance, hoping to battle the NSA in much the same way online campaigners pushed back on bad piracy legislation in 2012. The new coalition, organized by Fight for the Future, is planning a Reset the Net day of action on June 5, the anniversary of the date the first Edward Snowden story broke detailing the government’s PRISM program, based on documents leaked by the former NSA contractor. “Government spies have a weakness: they can hack anybody, but they can’t hack everybody,” the organizers behind the Reset the Net movement say in the video on the site. “Folks like the NSA depend on collecting insecure data from tapped fiber. They depend on our mistakes, mistakes we developers can fix.” To that end, the groups are calling on developers to add at least one NSA resistant feature to mobile apps, and on websites to add security features like SSL (Secure Socket Layer), HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), and Perfect Forward Secrecy to better secure the communication of users.