Internet Defense League

History

The Internet Defense League site is a creation of the Fight for the Future nonprofit, a group noted for its participation in the anti-SOPA protests of 2011, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The IDL officially launched on 19 July 2012. It held launch events in San Francisco, New York City, Washington, D.C., London, and Ulaanbaatar.

The IDL received early support from the Mozilla Foundation, WordPress, Reddit, the Cheezburger Network, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, OpenCongress, Grooveshark, Imgur, Fark, the Tor Project, La Quadrature du Net, and the Center for Democracy and Technology. Wikipedia considered joining the IDL. At launch, it received endorsements from members of U.S. Congress, including Darrell Issa, Ron Wyden, and Jerry Moran.

The IDL opposes CISPA, and in 2013, the IDL was active in organizing against it. Over thirty thousand websites joined their call to oppose it. After the death of Aaron Swartz, they also supported reforming the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

In July 2013, they organized the "Restore the Fourth" campaign, in reference to the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to protest government surveillance. Thousands of websites participated in the event. They called for laws governing surveillance to be amended, and for Internet users to contact members of U.S. Congress to investigate NSA surveillance programs. They also called for websites to publish the full text of the fourth amendment. In 2015, the organization again protested NSA surveillance.