A diverse coalition of activists, under the banner of Stop Watching Us, protested against the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance.
Hundreds of demonstrators marched from Washington DC’s Columbus Circle and Union Station Plaza area to Capitol as high profile whistleblowers, activists and political leaders joined in voicing their privacy concerns in public.
Since disclosures by American whistleblower Edward Snowden, who worked as a private contractor for the NSA, reports of mass surveillance have drawn sharp criticism and protests from advocacy groups and civil liberties and freedom rights bodies.
The rally also coincided with 12th anniversary of the signing of the USA Patriot Act.
“We’ll be handing more than a half-million petitions to Congress to remind them that they work for us — and we won’t tolerate mass surveillance any longer,” the coalition said on its website.
The demonstration was sponsored by an unusually broad coalition of right and left groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Green Party, Color of Change and Daily Kos to the Libertarian Party, Freedom Works and Young Americans for Liberty.
This week, the international outrage hit headlines as Snowden’s more revelations about the NSA wiretapping said it spied on 35 world leaders.
According to reports, leaders in France, Italy, Spain and Brazil have protested the surveillance, and Germany is sending an intelligence team to Washington to discuss the issue.
