Dozens of Civil-Rights and Civil-Liberties Groups Launch 'Solidarity Over Surveillance' to Fight Corporate and Government Spying

WASHINGTON — On Thursday, a broad coalition of grassroots, civil-rights and press-freedom groups launched Solidarity Over Surveillance, an organizing-and-advocacy initiative designed to engage individuals, communities and organizations in the fight against corporate and government-sponsored surveillance.

Learn more at www.SolidarityOverSurveillance.com   

‍The effort, which Free Press and the Disinfo Defense League organized, will work to stop data brokers from selling sensitive user information to law enforcement; protect dissent, privacy and anonymity in an age of AI-powered surveillance; empower people to use open-records requests to expose local and state governments’ surveillance partnerships; help mobilize local resistance to the construction of extractive data centers; and challenge the government’s weaponization of domestic-terrorism powers.

According to organizers, the goal of the #SOS coalition is to resist the inevitability of AI and surveillance everywhere. In addition to Free Press and the Disinfo Defense League, groups that are part of the initiative are 18 Million Rising, The AJA Project, America’s Voice, Common Cause, the Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, Fight for the Future, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Georgia Working Families Power, GLAAD, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, the Library Freedom Project, Muslim Advocates, the NAACP, Nexus of Privacy, NHMC, Onyx Impact, Reporters Without Borders, the Southern Center for Human Rights, the Sparrow Project, UCLA’s Center on Resilience & Digital Justice, UltraVioletAction, UnidosUS and VotoLatino.

As the initiative unfolds, partners throughout the country will convene a number of online webinars and real-world trainings to educate people about surveillance in their communities and ways to stop government purchase of our sensitive data. The project will also call out leaders whose racist and xenophobic ideals have fueled the U.S. surveillance state.

“Watch any sci-fi movie or read any dystopian novel and it’s the same story: An all-encompassing state brutalizes the masses by monitoring them nonstop and suppressing dissent. That’s the future we’re dangerously close to now,” said Nora Benavidez, Free Press’ senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights. “Agencies like the Department of Homeland Security team up with local police departments to buy sensitive data about people without warrants and create dossiers about dissenting communities and activists. Meanwhile, AI companies market spyware as crime-prevention tools. But in reality, this authoritarian-tech billionaire compact is designed to manipulate and muzzle us. That’s why we launched the #SOS campaign: Our government should not be spying on us, plain and simple, and Big Tech should not be chasing profits at the expense of our freedoms.”

“This moment in technology represents yet another inflection point in a fraught history that has enabled the entrenchment of the surveillance state and the advancement of authoritarian power,” said Jaime Longoria, senior research manager of Disinfo Defense League. “These systems must not go unchallenged — regardless of who wields them.”