(Image source from: World Famous Writers Appeal Against NSA})

Not just Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook, but 500 prominent authors and writers across the globe, including five Nobel laureates are openly appealing the US government to call off NSA spying program for good.

The appeal called "A Stand For Democracy In The Digital Age" opposes all widespread 'mass surveillance' by governments and corporations, urging Barack Obama and other leaders to rein in internet surveillance.

The NSA surveillance is a systematic abuse of power, claim the writers, and an attack on 'a basic pillar of democracy... the inviolable integrity of the individual'.

‘In their thoughts and in their personal environments and communications all humans have the right to remain unobserved and unmolested,’ the appeal argues.

‘This fundamental human right has been rendered null and void through abuse of technological developments by states and corporations for mass surveillance purposes.

'Surveillance violates the private sphere and compromises freedom of thought and opinion. Mass surveillance treats every citizen as a potential suspect. It overturns one of our historical triumphs: the presumption of innocence.’

Among the ‘writers against mass surveillance’ from some 80 countries are the Nobel laureates like Orhan Pamuk, JM Coetzee, Elfriede Jelinek, Günter Grass and Tomas Tranströmer who have signed the appeal. Authors like Richard Ford, Sapphire, Umberto Eco, Yann Martel, Dave Eggers, Margaret Atwood, Colum McCann, Ian McEwan, and Don DeLillo have also inked the appeal.

The appeal comes in the wake of recent revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden who exposed all about the extensive and intrusive telephone and internet surveillance by the U.S. and its western allies.

AW: Suchorita Dutta Choudhury