Today, we join over 4,500 other websites in protesting the NSA’s total surveillance program.  It violates the Constitution, and it violates the rights you have as a human being to enjoy your life without a tyrannical government recording and storing your every move.  If you still don’t know about what’s going on, take a look:

• The NSA “has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world.” — The New York Times
• The NSA collected “almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks” in one month in 2013. — The Guardian

• The NSA is collecting the content and metadata of emails, web activity, chats, social networks, and everything else as part of what it calls “upstream” collection. — The Washington Post
• The NSA “is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans.” — The Washington Post
• The NSA “is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world.” — The Washington Post
• The NSA “is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans’ e-mail and text communications into and out of the country.” — The New York Times

Obama claims that he is creating reform; but here’s what the truth is about his reform.  As several security and electronic privacy experts explain, his “reform” is anything but.  The head of ThinkProgress wrote that “In a speech about reform, the President announced a policy of preservation. What it comes down to is this: The President wants data about every single American to be collected and retained. He wants to normalize practices that sparked mass outrage just last summer. We do not. That’s why we’ll push forward with The Day We Fight Back on February 11th, and push for passage of the USA Freedom Act.”

We may not agree with a single thing that ThinkProgress believes…but on this, we stand together.

The federal government is out of control.  These actions are not keeping us safe—but they are keeping us controlled, subservient, dependent.  Anything the government decides to criminalize, they already have a treasure trove of information against you if they’d like to use it.  The situation is grave, make no mistake—but we do not have to cower under the weight of tyranny.

Today, we are taking part in the Day We Fight Back protest.  Access, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Free Press, BoingBoing, Reddit, Mozilla, ThoughtWorks, and thousands of other sites are joining together to say that we do not accept our government surveilling us.  We are not subjects, we are not plebes, we are not ruled.  We are citizens of the United States of America, and we are free men.  We the People will not be silent.  It doesn’t matter if you are conservative or liberal, independent or libertarian—this affects you.  Whatever your flavor of politics, this requires your action.

Please take the time to send an email and make a call to your elected officials.  You can do so right from the banner; I do, however, advise not putting your real information in it.  (I also suggest you uncheck the box about signing up for more emails later.)  It takes 2 minutes.  Take the time.   It is, without a doubt, the most important call or email you’ll send all day.  Will it make them stop?  No.  Will it make Congress stop enabling it?  No.  But throughout history, Americans have chosen to fight, even in the face of incredible odds, even when there was seemingly no hope.  We must fight; we have no other choice.  Stand up for yourselves, your families, your liberty.  This is only the beginning.

“We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.” –Benjamin Franklin, on the signing of the Declaration of Independence