Index on Censorship wants Europe’s leaders to place the issue of surveillance on the agenda for the European Council Summit. Our petition calling for this, backed by 39 organisations and thousands of individuals, was this week sent to Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė, who currently hold the Presidency of the Council of the EU,  and Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council.

Since the petition targets all 28 EU leaders, we wanted each of them to have their own copy. But as revelations continue to emerge about the scale to which electronic mass surveillance has been taking place, we didn’t think email would be the safest way to distribute it. Instead, we decided to send our intern Alice to deliver the petitions to embassies around London – the old fashioned way.

Marek Marczynski, Index’s Director of Campaigns and Policy, explains how mass surveillance infringes on your right to freedom of expression, and why we must oppose it.