Many internet companies and organizations joined forces on Thursday to support live protests against the U.S. government's surveillance of internet activity. This Fourth of July, groups of concerned individuals took to the streets in dozens of cities across the United States in support of the Fourth Amendment. The "Restore the Fourth" campaign aims to end all forms of surveillance of digital communications by the United States government. The campaign calls particular attention to PRISM, a recently-revealed project of the National Security Agency that allows the government broad access to the Internet traffic and other electronic communications of many users.

For the online protest part, "The Internet Defense League," a network of more than 30,000 websites and internet users whose goal is to protest attempts to curtail the freedom of the Web, offered webmasters the option (code) to include banners or badges supporting the protest in their websites.

Websites including Reddit, Boing Boing and Mozilla supported a campaign in cities across the United States.

"The Fourth of July reminds us as Americans of the freedoms and rights all citizens of our country are guaranteed by our Constitution. Among those is freedom of speech, often exercised in protests of various kinds," NSA said in a statement on the July demonstrations. "NSA does not object to any lawful, peaceful protest. NSA and its employees work diligently and lawfully every day, around the clock, to protect the nation and its people."