In an interview with HuffPost Live on Tuesday, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales discussed changing American attitudes toward hacking and mass surveillance and expressed optimism about the lawsuit he helped bring against the government.
Earlier this year, the Wikimedia Foundation, which Wales chairs, and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the National Security Agency. The suit, Wales explained, objects to the spy agency's use of "upstream surveillance" methods, which Wales described as "collecting data on almost everybody's Internet usage in a really wholesale manner."
"We just think that's completely inappropriate and a violation of the First and Fourth Amendment [sic] and exceeds statutory authority," Wales told HuffPost Live. "So we've partnered with the ACLU to do this as a civil rights lawsuit. And, who knows, we might get a landmark decision."