Washington DC's Public Library Will Teach People How To Avoid the NSA

Jason Koebler writes Later this month, the Washington DC Public Library will teach residents how to use Tor as part of a 10 day series designed to shed light on government surveillance, transparency, and personal privacy. The series is called "Orwellian America," and it's quite subversive, considering that it's being held by a publicly funded entity mere minutes from a Congress and administration that allowed the NSA's surveillance programs to spin wildly out of control.

Comments

Thank your local librarian ...

[gstoddart]

A lot of people don't realize librarians have always been on the forefront of protecting out rights.

From fighting for censorship, to advocating for free speech, to stuff like this ... librarians tend to be people with a real understanding of our liberties, and why it's important to have them.

So, if you enjoy the right to read a book which someone found offensive, of the ability to access stuff without having to pay the publisher, or free and anonymous access to the interwebs ... hug your local librarian.

They or someone like them has probably done as much to maintain your freedoms as anybody else in the last few decades.

Showing the public how to undermine the surveillance crap ... well, that deserves applause in my book.

What libraries are for

[PopeRatzo]

Libraries are by design one of the safeguards against tyranny.

And we're only safe once the tools to subvert domestic NSA spying are so ubiquitous that a workshop like this one are no longer newsworthy. But I'm sure some future John McCain/Lyndsey Graham congressional asshat will decry "public funds being used to support terrorism" and the program will be cancelled.