[6] The "digital protest" took place on February 11, 2014 with more than 6,000 participating websites,[3][4][8] which primarily took the form of webpage banner-advertisements that read, "Dear Internet, we're sick of complaining about the NSA.

"[14] Rainey Reitman, director of activism at the EFF, said, "The idea is to really harness the outrage of the Internet community in speaking out in one big voice on Feb.

"[9] In the United States, a main goal of the protest was to encourage passage of the USA Freedom Act, a bill that, among other purposes, sought to limit the NSA's collection of data transmitted through telephony.

"[15] Organizers compared the February protest with the SOPA protest two years prior, stating that today "we face a different threat, one that undermines the Internet and the notion that any of us live in a genuinely free society" — specifically, coordinated, international efforts, like the Five Eyes; and mass surveillance programs in general, such as the United States' PRISM, and the United Kingdom's Tempora.

[17] In the clip, the late activist comments on mass surveillance: "It is shocking to think that the accountability is so lax that they don't even have sort of basic statistics about how big the spying programme is.

Five months after Swartz's death, the scale of a vast global surveillance program would be revealed in great detail through the release of top-secret NSA documents by Edward Snowden.

[27][28] Many commentators viewed the prosecution, which could have imposed a devastating prison term for accessing information in bulk rather than one article at a time, as 'bullying' that ultimately lead to Swartz's death.

[35][36]In the clip, Swartz comments on mass surveillance, It is shocking to think that the accountability is so lax that they don't even have sort of basic statistics about how big the spying programme is.

Five months after Swartz's death, the scale of a vast global surveillance program would be revealed in great detail through the release of top-secret NSA documents by Edward Snowden.

"[65] Matt Simons, director of social and economic justice at ThoughtWorks, nevertheless said the coalition's support of The Day We Fight Back "rings a little hollow" because of the late date of its announcement and its member's past disclosure of their customers' data to the NSA.

[66] Groups supporting The Day We Fight Back include the EFF, the ACLU, Freedomworks,[60] Greenpeace, Demand Progress, Human Rights Watch, the Government Accountability Project,[67] Restore the Fourth, the Free Software Foundation, and Amnesty International.

[72] Joining tech companies and public figures, lawmakers voiced support using the online platform, including Tom Udall, Jerry Nadler, Rick Larsen, Ron Wyden, Raul M. Grijalva, Mike Honda, Mark Pocan, Alan Grayson, and Rand Paul.

[73] Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) posted: What I worry about is kids growing up in a society where they say 'if I send this email or if I visit this website, then somebody may think I'm a terrorist.

[74]As February 11 drew to a close, The New York Times posted a blog titled "The Day the Internet Didn't Fight Back," reporting that "the protest on Tuesday barely registered.

The eight major technology companies—Google, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL, Apple, Twitter, Yahoo and LinkedIn ... only participated Tuesday insofar as having a joint website flash the protest banner.