Mozilla and 86 Groups want the NSA to Stop Watching US

stop watching us

Are you upset over the recent revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been running a wide scale domestic surveillance program on American citizens?  You are not alone as 86 groups, organizations, and websites recently launched StopWatching.US.  Quite simply put they want the NSA and the government to Stop Watching US.

The initiative is being spearheaded by Mozilla, along with support from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Reddit, FreedomWorks, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Internet Archive, NameCheap, 4Chan, and countless other well known web entities and groups.  The website aims to tell our elected members of Congress we don't like the fact the NSA has been monitoring every phone call placed in the United States.  Visitors of the site sign their name, email, address, and ZIP and an email is automatically sent to your two Senators and Congressman that represents your district.

The message seems to have resonated with many people since at the time I wrote this post Stop Watching US has 150,000 signatures.  (Yes, I was one of those signatures.)  That means there have been generated 450,000 emails to Congress from the petition.  Since the Stop Watching US initiative and website was only launched a few days ago on June 10th, that is pretty impressive.  I can only imagine that as more people start to learn about the initiative and petition it will rack up several million signatures and generate many more emails to Congress by the end of the month.  The Mozilla FireFox startpage now has a link to StopWatching.US  to encourage signatures.

What I find interesting is that the message is strong and clear across party lines.  It is not everyday that you see groups like the ACLU, MoveOn and numerous other liberal organizations backing something along with FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy group.  It's clear a lot of people feel uneasy and they want their voice to be heard.

Do you want the government to Stop Watching US too?  Then I encourage you to sign the petition and please share with your friends, family, and anyone you know that cares about privacy and reining in government surveillance which has clearly gotten out of hand.

To keep updated with the Stop Watching US intitivat you can follow the Stop Watching US Twitter feed.  I would also encourage you to sign-up for updates from the EFF.

Here is the open letter to Congress;

Dear Members of Congress,

We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.

The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by an intelligence contractor showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.

Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other “identifying information” for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.

This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens' right to speak and associate anonymously, guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, and protect their right to privacy.

We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA's and the FBI's data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:

  1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;
  2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;
  3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Source – Electronic Frontier Foundation DeepLinks Blog]

Penguin 2.0 part of Google Algorithm Updates in 2013

Google has released some details via it's GoogleWebmasterHelp Youtube channel about some major Google Algorithm Updates that will be taking place in 2013.  The big news that Matt Cutts revealed is that Google is releasing Penguin 2.0 in an effort to continue to cut-out Blackhat and spammy link building tactics from search engine results.

What should we expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google?
Matt Cutts, Mountain View

From what I can tell that was said in the video Penguin 2.0 will most likely go deeper than the original Penguin update Google made to it's search algorithm last April.  That means if you using duplicate content without linking to the original source, using automated link building software, basically any BlackHat link building tactics or whatever your websites will likely get harder hit this time around.  “This one is a little more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0” commented Cutts in the video. “We expect it to go a little deeper and have a little bit more of an impact than the original version of Penguin.”

penguin 2.0

The other change that webmasters and sites owners should be aware if is that Google doesn't want sponsored posts or paid advertisements passing on PageRank to sites that have paid for links.  This violates Google's quality guidelines and I have a feeling that the Penguin 2.0 and the next set of Google Algorithm updates might make sponsored posts harder to rank.  It is possible i fewer companies will want to pay for links if there is no PageRank or traffic benefit for doing so.  You could always keep it secret though.

Google will also be providing more tools to webmasters that have hacked sites.  “We hope in the next few months to roll out a next generation of hack sites detection that is even more comprehensive.”  Cutts also said that Google will be working on communicating to webmasters so they know when their sites have been hacked sooner.  It seems they will accomplish this by having more comprehensive info in Google's Webmaster Tools and a “One stop shop” as Cutts puts it, so when someone realizes they have been hacked they can go get the resources they need to clean it their site.

It also seems authority sites with great content will be getting a boost from Penguin 2.0 and the next Google Algorithm updates happening in 2013.  Google wants to serve up sites with content, “According to the algorithms, might be a little more appropriate for users.”  So authority sites in certain areas, like medical or travel, could be seeing a spike in traffic for certain keywords in the coming months.

Some websites that might have gotten unfairly hit by the Google Panda update back in February and April 2011 might get a reconsideration.  Since Google Panda affected roughly 12% of search engine rankings, there are probably a lot of sites that were unfairly hit.  Most were not hit unfairly however.

A possibly change will be that Google will have less site clustering on search engine result pages.  “Once you've seen a cluster of results one site, you'd be less likely to see the more results from that site as you go deeper into the next page of Google search results.”  said Cutts.  It sounds like this change is not definite but will likely be something that Google will roll-out.

Matt Cutts explicitly states in the video people should take what is said, “With a grain of salt.”  Google could move resources around and decide to make different updates to it's search engine if the need arises.  It sounds like for the most part a lot of these plans will be rolling out over next few months in 2013.

What was most surprising in the video was actually nothing that was said by Matt Cutts, but he is wearing a Firefox T-shirt! 🙂  I noticed it immediately and I assume the Google execs and Chrome team probably were not too happy about it.  Most likely they didn't know until the video went up.  Google is a pretty cool place to work if they allow employees to wear T-shirts that represent competitors products.  (I am writing this blog post using Firefox by the way.)

Anyway, bottom line is if you were affected by Penguin or Panda and still do BlackHat link building techniques, Google is coming for you.  If you just have a simple blog or website and are not engaging in shady practices you should be fine as long as you have a good SEO gameplan with great content for users.

Matt Cutts did announce on his personal blog that Penguin 2.0 officially rolled out on May 22, 2013.  About 2.3% of English language and US based queries have been affected at this point.

What are your thoughts about the Penguin 2.0 and Google Algorithm Updates for 2013?  Please leave a comment below and let me know how you interrupted the video if you are a webmaster, Search Engine Optimizer, or just think I am plain wrong.  Hopefully that isn't the case though.

Catch me on Twitter @AdamYamada … if you can!