Crowdfunded billboards appear in districts of lawmakers who voted to gut Internet privacy and allow ISPs to sell consumer data

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, May 3, 2017
Contact: Evan Greer, 978-852-6457, press@fightforthefuture.org

“You Betrayed Us” billboards unveiled today targeting Congress members Blackburn, Flake, Rutherford, and Heller

Today Internet activists unleashed billboards in the districts of lawmakers who take large contributions from the telecom industry and voted in March to slash Internet privacy protections, allowing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon to collect and sell their customer’s personal information without permission.

The billboards were organized by Fight for the Future, a leading anti-censorship and digital rights organization, and paid for through hundreds of small donations collected through a crowdfunding page.

See photos of some of the billboards here: http://imgur.com/a/jgdhJ

“Congress voting to gut Internet privacy was one of the most blatant displays of corruption in recent history,” said Tiffiniy Cheng, co-founder of Fight for the Future, “They might think that they’ve gotten away with it, but they’re wrong. These billboards are just the latest example of the growing public backlash to these attacks on our Internet freedom and privacy.”

“Members of Congress who help monopolies get richer while undermining our online privacy and attacking net neutrality will soon see that they can’t hide from the public on these issues,” she added, “Everyone who drives by one of these billboards will know exactly how much money these lawmakers took in exchange for selling off their basic right to use the web safely, and handing their most personal information to advertisers.”

By using the CRA to gut the FCC broadband privacy rules, these lawmakers voted to allow Internet Service Providers to:

Monitor and sell customer’s location data, search history, app usage, and browsing habits to advertisers without your permission
Hijack customer’s search results, redirecting their traffic to paying third parties
Insert ads into web pages that would otherwise not have them

Fight for the Future was instrumental in the massive grassroots campaign that successfully pushed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enact the strongest net neutrality protections in US. history last year. They built the page BattleForTheNet.com, which was responsible for more than ¼ of all the net neutrality comments received by the FCC during its feedback process, and were behind the Internet Slowdown protest, which was supported by more than 40,000 websites including some of the largest on the Web like Kickstarter, Etsy, Netflix, and Tumblr.

The group also helped take the fight for net neutrality into the streets with creative protest campaigns like Occupy the FCC and the nationwide Internet Emergency protests.

Fight for the Future is best known for their role in the massive online protests against SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and continues to organize many of the largest protests in the history of the Internet. Over the summer, they organized the high profile Rock Against the TPP tour featuring many celebrities and well known musicians. Learn more at FightFortheFuture.org

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