Edward Snowden’s revelations confirmed fears that in the past might have seemed paranoid about the surveillance even ordinary people are subjected to. Under the guise of protecting the people, in particular the American NSA started spying even on American citizens and allies such as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Today the initiative “The day we fight back” intends to allow the people to have their voices heard in favor of privacy and freedom.

Benjamin Franklin stated that he who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security. Who knows what would he think of the current situation of the nation he helped found! Even the most influential American newspapers have published news about the NSA surveillance network that exists today, so extensive and sophisticated that it’s difficult for ordinary people to understand how invasive it’s become.

The contents of e-mails, web sites browsing, chats, activity on social networks and the contents of phone calls are regularly collected by the NSA. Actually, the intelligence services of other nations do the same things, maybe on a smaller scale because they have a lower budget. We’re talking about many billions of dollars spent, even in years of severe economic crisis, to spy on people.

They tell us that honest people have nothing to fear: all dictators use this argument but who watches the watchers? History shows that in these cases the abuses became worse and worse, freedom is eroded over time and eventually surveillance becomes a dictatorship.

The scandal has also caused tension between the U.S.A. and its allies. In December 2013, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel told President Barack Obama that the NSA’s tactics resemble those of Stasi, the notorious and ruthless security services of East Germany’s communist regime.

The U.S.A. and other countries whose intelligence services are engaged in massive surveillance operations are still officially democracies. This means that citizens can demand changes to this state of affairs. The initiative “The day we fight back” aims to encourage people to take action to change the situation.

A number of organizations ranging from the Mozilla Foundation to the social network Reddit, from Amnesty International to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and many others along with sites of common people support the initiative “The day we fight back”. This is not the time to be resigned to a negative situation, this is the time to raise our voices to defend our freedom.