It’s not simply apathy, and personally I think one of the most dangerous things is for American’s to blame ourselves for lack of change when the system is prett

It’s not simply apathy, and personally I think one of the most dangerous things is for American’s to blame ourselves for lack of change when the system is pretty much designed to minimize civil unrest. The biggest issue is simply comfort. Most HNers work for pretty cool companies, but even then how many would face repercussions if they took the day off to burn tires in the street? Also this type of serious protest you discuss does happen for just a day, but maybe weeks (or longer). Many HNers would definitely face employment concerns if they took weeks off to protest, and most people outside the tech community would be fired/seriously repremanded as the employer/employee balance of power is extremely imbalanced right now. The surveillance state is, imho, one of the greatest existential threats to individual freedom in the history of the US, but for anyone looking at the risk calculus it’s still a future threat: today you have tons of food, entertainment, a place to live and most people don’t actually feel the affects of the shrinking limitations on freedom (in fact the only people who do are those who are fighting against this changes, another point in favor of not protesting from the pov of risk). So the calculus of pleasure means for most people protest is more painful than the current state of things. But there’s also the pain factor. Most Americans are aware of the incarceration rate of the US. We’re also aware of the terrible conditions in US prisons. We know the fate that became Manning, can only imagine what will happen to Snowden and under the current administration US citizens have even been targeted for assassination (no due process involved). Not only is there a threat of reduced pleasure to consider, you really, really don’t want to face punishment at the hands of the US government. Finally there’s the completely uninteresting but real problem of geolocation: The US is a huge country, where are we going to meet? Even in DC today most protester are actually hired to protest, they aren’t concerned citizens but paid by a group of concerned citizens to protest in a formulaic and safe way. Assaults on American freedoms are being extracted in such a brilliant way that pleasure/pain calculus won’t sway in favor of massive protest and unrest until the government has such power that such protests can be squashed before their inception (this is exactly why the surveillance state is so dangerous). But please don’t turn your anger inward or towards other Americans: learn about tools that can fight the surveillance state (legal and technical), start small community discussion about these topics, and continue to fund organizations that are fighting for your rights in these domain. And yes keep being angry on HN, everyone who up or down votes your comment at least has to think about what is being said.