Image: Twitter/David Lifferth
One way to announce a new campaign against NSA surveillance, I suppose, is to fly a gigantic blimp over the NSA’s most important data center. That’s exactly what the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace did this morning, turning the tables on government mass surveillance.
Parker Higgins, an EFF activist, hopped in a Greenpeace-owned blimp and flew it over NSA’s sprawling, million square-foot, $1.5 billion Utah Data Center. He and some Greenpeace activists flew for about an hour, according to David Pomerantz of Greenpeace.
Videos by VICE
“We flew for just over an hour, which is what we had scheduled, and landed as planned,” Pomerantz told me in an email. “We haven’t heard anything from any government agencies to my knowledge.”
As I heard about the stunt, I was on the phone with the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Greg Nojeim, a lawyer who works on NSA surveillance issues. He hadn’t heard about the stunt beforehand, but asked me, “Is it armed? That’s very interesting.”
Here’s what it looks like:
And here’s Parker and a Greenpeace pilot taking a selfie.
According to EFF, the group is launching a new campaign to grade Congress on its NSA surveillance reform thus far. We’re guessing it’s not going to fare well, especially considering that the USA Freedom Act, the reform bill the House of Representatives just passed, got completely gutted.
