Reddit, Imgur and Boing Boing launch anti-NSA-surveillance campaign

Some of the world's largest websites are planning a coordinated day of action to oppose mass surveillance online. The sites, which include Reddit, Imgur and BoingBoing, will be taking part in the campaign, called "Reset the Net", in a number of ways.

Some will showing a splash screen to all users, reminiscent of the one used in the successful protests against Stop Online Privacy Act, or SOPA, the US copyright bill which many feared would damage the backbone of the Internet.

But rather than telling users to write to their electoral representatives, this protest will push more direct action, encouraging visitors to install privacy and encryption tools. Other sites have committed to improving their own privacy as part of the campaign, by enabling standards such as HTTPS, which prevents attackers from eavesdropping on visitors.

Such security standards are common in the world of ecommerce, but rarer for sites which don't think of themselves as holding sensitive information.

The campaign is being co-ordinated by Fight for the Future, whose co-founder Tiffiniy Cheng said "Now that we know how mass surveillance works, we know how to stop it. That’s why people all over the world are going to work together to use encryption everywhere and make it too hard for any government to conduct mass surveillance.