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The Day We Fight Back

460 points by sinak 13y ago

shocks 13y ago
Great idea, but does it have to be so American? We're getting spied on over here in the UK too.
sethbannon 13y ago
It's long past time that we channel our outrage into political action on this issue.
- melling 13y ago
  Excellent. What's the definition of insanity? Here's the Reddit discussion. Have at it! http://www.reddit.com/r/thedaywefightback/ http://www.reddit.com/r/thedaywefightback/
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  Everyone will just re-elect the same congressmen and senators who got us here. Because theirs is different, of course.
  - mcherm 13y ago
    If it is your intention to assume that nothing can get any better so we should just sit back and do nothing, then would you do me a favor? Would you please start doing nothing BEFORE posting the "it's all hopeless" comment. From your point of view it won't make any difference, but from the point of view of those of us who think that one can (on the whole) make (slow) progress by speaking up and taking action it will make a difference.
pekk 13y ago
I am probably the only person who is bothered that this sounds like a deniable call to violent action. "BE CREATIVE" edit: to be clearer - the issue is that we have left violent action open as an option and it isn't hard for a few people to take that option. Is this what we want politics to be?
- gtirloni 13y ago
  Probably. Edit since parent updated: "Be creative" is just too broad and if you want to imply the authors are saying "be violent if you want" then it's what YOU are implying, not them. Besides, I have yet to see a Internet protest that turned out violent because of the protesters. Not in a large scale at least. So reading "be violent" where it says "be creative" is a long stretch (thus my initial response). Now, if the authors should be liable if anything violent happens because they did not add "please don't be violent", then this a whole different (and larger) discussion about all the crazy things happening in the judicial system (that would allow someone to be sued). At the end, people are liable for their own acts. Let's leave this discussion for when/if they actually are explicit about using violence, instead of trying to read between the lines so early (and with so little information to base it on).
- aaronem 13y ago
  You're probably the only person who is bothered, because you are probably the only person who can see anything remotely resembling a "call to violent action" in something as milquetoast as the nonsense we're discussing.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    I see what the GP is talking about though, and would probably explain it as "fight" being used as a malapropism, not as a rallying ethic. That is, calling something "fighting" which is pretty much the furthest thing from it, rather than exhorting people to fight in whatever way they deem fit.
gtirloni 13y ago
If I got this right, we fight back by changing our avatars and putting banners on our blogs. Is that it?
- aaronem 13y ago
  Well, when socially networked narcissism is the order of the day in general, why expect anything else? I'm not particularly concerned about the Black Chamber doing what the Black Chamber does, but if I were, I'd certainly hope to see those who shared that concern aiming a little higher than merely to say "I'm agin' it!"
- dijit 13y ago
  yeah! the arm chair politics of Kony 2012 and all those missing children on facebook. in reality we need to make people sick to their stomachs and use fear tactics the same way US politics does. Documentaries, advertising, real life examples, sense of urgency. I mean, we can just follow the doctrines of propoganda set before us daily :D it's the masses that have power, not the community of hacker news.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Well, it's a start. However, I agree that it's far more of a branding exercise than an agenda, not dissimilar to professional activists organizing a crowd and then handing out a bunch of preprinted signs to the people that arrive. I don't blame the organizers for this; it's symptomatic of how internet culture works (bootstrap a meme, leverage resulting audience attention) and of the difficulties of organizing in a representative democracy context. The ideal would be some model legislative proposals or some sort of nominally nonpartisan congressional committee with teeth along the lines of the Church committee in the 1970s (but even that ran into significant opposition at the time, being accused of treason and so on by the usual self-appointed superpatriots. The basic problem is threefold. 1. The United States has a strong economic and strategic interest in preserving the international status quo or moving it in a more liberal direction (qua trade, promulgation of legal mutualism and so forth). Naturally, maintaining this position is going to involve extensive intelligence-gathering activities. 2. While this is often denigrated as a form of neo-colonialism, there's a fair degree of evidence that it results in better overall outcomes globally; were it to withdraw and leave a power vacuum, that space would be occupied by less scrupulous actors. Although the EU is second to the US in economic power (or even first by some measures) the EU is ineffective at projecting power and less able to provide security to its allies, both practically and politically (consider the rather milquetoast response to the protests in Ukraine, for example). For examples of the alternative, consider the autocratic and cynically populist governance of the Russian Federation or the relative opacity of Chinese jurisprudence. 3. Given the ever-lower barriers to collection and aggregation of data resulting from technology, private actors are able to accumulate and leverage huge pools of data, from Facebook to credit bureaux and consumer intelligence brokers such as Axciom. Until people are willing tolerate limits on private sector activity (and thus financial opportunity) similar to those resulting from EU data protection laws or the like, it's simply not realistic to expect that government should limit itself to technological capabilities that are less than the private sector or even abstain from aggregating publicly available data. This would just result in a a different kind of power vacuum. For all its faults, government is procedurally accountable to the citizenry, whereas private entities are accountable only to shareholders, and shareholdings are fungible in a way that citizenship is not. As I've said a few times before, I think the US needs a movement for a privacy amendment to the constitution that spells out the scope and limitations of individual's control over their personal information, as opposed to the hand-wavey and contentious judicial interpretations we operate under at present. Putting this in place is a decade-long project, at minimum.
ironchief 13y ago
What are the specific goals and modes of action for this protest? (e.g. laws to pass, laws to vote against, people to fire etc.)
- donotsurveil 13y ago
  Apparently it's post a banner on a website, register on facebook, google+ and twitter to post there that you are against surveillance. A nice attempt at sorting out people through self-selection who are to be put on a special surveillance list.
  - flurpitude 13y ago
    Well, if you're politically opposed to the NSA's surveillance they probably already know, so it won't make much difference whether you've revealed support for this campaign. The bigger problem is that the campaign seems entirely vacuous. What exactly are we doing to fight back? Complaining a little bit online? The NSA must be running scared.
redthrowaway 13y ago
Feb 11th is after the SOTU, where Obama will announce what will in effect be the only changes we're likely to see. Any attempt to influence policy should come before that.
- sinak 13y ago
  We did consider this very, very carefully. Our conclusion was that any reforms that Obama announces are very unlikely to result in meaningful change, and that legislation will still be necessary. Had we set the date before the SOTU, our activism would have concluded with no way to respond to his proposals.
  - fuqua 13y ago
    So, what's your plan re: pushing legislation? Have you identified who in Congress will serve as a champion for your cause? Are there any lists of specific demands that any good legislation would address? Changing your avatar on Facebook, Twitter, or G+ won't sway anyone.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    If your activism is planned to conclude on a date certain, whether before or after the SOTU, its not going to do anything. What you really want is to create an ongoing movement both with a visible effect early enough to influence others reaction to what is announced in the SOTU, and which continues so as to itself respond to whatever is proposed in the SOTU.
jheriko 13y ago
Hmmm this is all well and good, but what do we expect NSA and GCHQ to do instead? I don't especially like them or what they do, but we need them... I'm also surprised at the massive backlash and the revelatory nature of the Snowden leaks... I was expecting that NSA and GCHQ would engage in precisely these kinds of activities - its exactly what they are there for - I am surprised that anyone ever had any different expectations, but clearly a large majority did. Are we suggesting that society has come far enough that we can do without espionage altogether?
- Nursie 13y ago
  We don't expect, need or want them to go anywhere near as far as they do. This was not done with our mandate and in a democratic society it damn well needs it. They are there to keep an eye on suspected bad guys, not to watch us all constantly. What they can do is fire 75% of their staff and stick to the rules.
- sp332 13y ago
  More-specific investigations to uncover actual threats, real court oversight, and making sure that protections written into law are enforced during data collection.
  - gaius 13y ago
    If GCHQ and the NSA were actually dedicated to securing our networks that would be a start, e.g. helping businesses and individuals migrate to SELinux or something.
- gaius 13y ago
  It's a valid question: DO we still need things left over from the Cold War? BAOR no longer exists for example. Pretty soon we'll have no tank regiments. And in the US, as posted on here the other day, the FBI is responsible for national security now.
niuzeta 13y ago
No, it's not fighting back. Making clever memes online to earn a chuckle or two might help spreading awareness, but in reality changing an online avatar and posting memes online won't affect much in real life. What I find strange is that(Please correct me on this one) there just doesn't seem to be a political group of technologist who lobby(the original meaning) against politicians. In truth, technology-related policies should be consulted and heard by people who use and develop the said technologies. What's worse about this retaliation is that anyone participating it would have an illusion of having done something without actually having done anything(i.e., impact). At the end of the day, you might walk home feeling good about yourself for having fought for a cause, but some harsh reality check needs to be done. Addendum: As per the second paragraph, refer to one of the replies on this comment(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7038058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7038058): > An abbreviated list of groups who do that: EFF, Public Knowledge, Demand Progress, Engine Advocacy, CDT, OTI, Free Press. Many of these have multiple registered lobbyists walking the halls of Congress and taking meetings. I stand corrected.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  a political group of technologist who lobby(the original meaning) against politicians Excuse my pedantry, but I think the need is not so much to lobby against politicians (which is to implicitly reject the concept of a polity and go for an everyone-for-themselves model instead), but to lobby against competing interests. In short, technologists need to lobby for their interests more effectively, which will mean doing a better job of articulating what our interests are, and why others should accept some crimping of their interests for the greater good. One recent and good example of this is the observation that compromising privacy limits our ability to export hardware and software and thus comes at an economic cost to taxpayers.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- salient 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure EFF, DemandProgress and the like are doing exactly that. Or are you saying they should form a Super PAC? But in that case, it won't exactly be "traditional lobbying", would it? It would be just paying politicians to do what they're asking them. I don't know whether that would be good or bad given the current corrupt lobbying system that the government has gotten accustomed to, but at least we should call it what it is before we dive in.
wanda 13y ago
I would "fight back" but I have a job. Who am I kidding? I would not fight back even if I did have the time. Even if this were not horseshit. I would be dicking around with golang and flagging banal questions on StackExchange.
- angersock 13y ago
  I appreciate your candor, sir/madam.
jlgaddis 13y ago
Yay, slacktivism! ----- edit: I wrote the above because there was no clear "call to action" other than changing one's Facebook profile picture (seriously?) but, according to the "Open Letter" [0], I guess we're all supposed to call our legislators that day. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037532
- trustfundbaby 13y ago
  I thought so too, but the big banner has a way to find and call your political representative about the issue. I'm just worried that the American populace isn't sufficiently interested in the issue to do anything about it. Now if the top 100 sites in the US shut down for a day in protest ...
  - gtirloni 13y ago
    To be honest, I had to go back to the website and read it again so I would notice the suggestion to call the legislators. I think my brain has been trained (based on hard evidence) to ignore that option as ineffective (unfortunately).
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    > Now if the top 100 sites in the US shut down for a day in protest ... ... we'd call them hypocritical.
- jcfrei 13y ago
  My first thought was that it is a prank by 4chan to collect email addresses.
herbig 13y ago
"If Aaron were alive, he'd be on the front lines, fighting against a world in which governments observe, collect, and analyze our every digital action." While government surveillance and open access are both information issues, we definitely should not be construing what he would or wouldn't believe about revelations that were made after his death. If we're taking a literal interpretation of his Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, he may well be on the front lines fighting for a world with zero privacy from anyone.
- coldpie 13y ago
  I think the emphasis on Aaron is really a mistake. I follow this news relatively closely, reading HN every day, and I don't really see how Aaron's abusive prosecutors tie in to the NSA stuff. The spying scandals are bad enough on their own. Adding Aaron's death into the mix just muddles the message and confuses people who are less informed.
  - gaius 13y ago
    Indeed, it muddies the issue. I am anti-NSA-spying but I am also anti-stealing-IP... I should point out that I don't think Aaron should have been hounded to his death (tho' equally if he were mentally ill, anything could have pushed him over the edge). But that doesn't make what he did right. It has for 20 years baffled me that people can demand respect for the GPL et al but be happy to ride roughshod over anyone else's licenses.
    - sinak2 13y ago
      This project was originally suggested by David Segal, Aaron's co-founder at Demand Progress, back in November. We'd been waiting for the right date to actually build and launch it, and David suggested that using Aaron's passing was likely the best marker, particularly since he and Brian Knappenberger had just uncovered some footage of Aaron talking about the need for a "moment of activism" around state surveillance (which'll be released soon). I can definitely understand the skepticism, but from my understanding it was definitely an issue he cared about.
    - 13y ago
nhangen 13y ago
Am I the only one bothered by how many people are invoking Aaron's ghost? The intent might be pure, but it really bugs me when people speak for the dead. And let's not forget, Aaron didn't pass away, he committed suicide. Case related stressors may have caused this, but it's also not right to make him the poster child for every anti-government/anti NSA campaign on the Internet.
- wbsun 13y ago
  May God bless him! Amen.
- Joeboy 13y ago
  http://likerka.eu/eng/f/lah_che.jpg http://likerka.eu/eng/f/lah_che.jpg
- l33tbro 13y ago
  Aaron was a pretty beautiful dude who had a clarity and pureness of intent to ensuring that information be as free as possible. That Aaron suffered mental illness, and the assumption that his legacy carry less value because he took his own life is kind of gross and disrespectful. Mental illness is stigmatized enough in our communities, and given a lot of the talk of HN users own depression issues, I'm surprised to see statements like this here. Movements like this are part of Aaron's legacy. We know not the will of the dead. We can, however, celebrate the value and contribution of their lives. His was extraordinary (though all too short). What is so wrong with continuing the work he was so passionate about?
  - nhangen 13y ago
    I don't believe his legacy should carry less value at all. If anything, I'm trying to defend his legacy so organizations like this will stop putting words and actions in his mouth/body. I find this campaign to be in bad taste and on the brink of classlessness, despite the fact that I believe in the cause.
- j_baker 13y ago
  Meh. I see where you're coming from on this, but we as a society do this kind of thing all the time. Do you think Martin Luther King Jr would have approved of every anti-racism campaign that's used his name? Do you think he would have approved of having his birthday used to celebrate anti-racism? Who knows? Either way, as long as his image is being used to do something good, it's kind of a moot point. My issue with this is that his image isn't being used to do something good. It's being used as a means of getting people to post messages so they can feel like they're doing something good rather than actually doing something good.
return0 13y ago
Yeah, let's fight online surveillance through facebook, google and the other NSA-approved social media. How about instead we save some energy and invest it in better encryption and security?
- wbsun 13y ago
  You ask some computer-politicians to do real research and tech-work? NO WAY!
- l33tbro 13y ago
  Or do both!
- systematical 13y ago
  So facebook and google are now "NSA-approved" how can I get my products and services NSA approved?
  - return0 13y ago
    You can't. It's an invite-only elite club.
pinaceae 13y ago
as a non-US citizen this won't change anything for me. "free society" here should be really re-worded to "free US society". as long as there is a intelligence apparatus in the US at all, spying on the rest of the world will continue. by definition. the NSA is monitoring all internet traffic as it would be really hard to know beforehand if it only pertains to US citizens. not sure what exactly you're trying to achieve here. the NSA either monitors facebook or it doesn't.
- adiEFF 13y ago
  This is a broader movement. We're pushing for principles that extend beyond the US border, as best outlined here: https://en.necessaryandproportionate.org/text https://en.necessaryandproportionate.org/text
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- rmc 13y ago
  The US Constitual protection for privacy only applies to US citizens. Would US citizens be willing to amend it to make it apply to everyone.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    Some things in the constitution apply only to citizens, most don't. When it says person, it means person, not citizen. Educating people that this prevalent view is false would already go a long way.
    - rmc 13y ago
      Not quite that clear. There is an (sort of) exemption to the US 4th Amendement warrent requirement for " surveillance is conducted to obtain foreign intelligence for national security purposes and is directed against foreign powers or agents of foreign powers reasonably believed to be located outside the United States"
elchief 13y ago
How about companies pledge to never hire NSA staff? Close the accounts of and ban surveillance supporters and their families?
wnevets 13y ago
If I join this wont they go out of their way to spy on me?
- Joeboy 13y ago
  I sincerely doubt they give a shit.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  Yes. And if you don't join it, they'll also go out of their way to spy on you.
carlosdp 13y ago
You lost me at "(and [spying on] everyone else too)". Spying on other countries is what the NSA is built to do, and it's for good reason. Every country does it, that's how geopolitics work. The issue people have here is spying on US Citizens, which is not what they're supposed to be doing.
- l33tbro 13y ago
  Poppycock. Give me some "good reasons" why spying on the private lives of citizens of ally countries is not an act of terrorism?
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Give me some "good reasons" why spying on the private lives of citizens of ally countries is not an act of terrorism? Because terrorism is the use of violence or threat of violence directed at civilian populations or otherwise outside the generally accepted norms of warfare to effect political change, and spying, while it may support the use or threat of violence, is, in and of itself, neither the use nor threat of violence.
    - marcosdumay 13y ago
      Well, is blackmail a kind of violence? (honest question)
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        Doesn't really matter, because as with violence (or “other forms of violence”, if you prefer), spying isn’t blackmail, even if it might be used to support blackmail.
        marcosdumay 13y ago
        Spying is as good a "threat of blackmail" as one can get.
pdfcollect 13y ago
Hopefully someday we can use this to help: http://bit.ly/blibonline http://bit.ly/blibonline
jsumrall 13y ago
You lost me by leading with a big picture of Aaron.
jsumrall 13y ago
You lost me by leading with a big picture of Aaron.
terabytest 13y ago
To me this looks pretty much like Don Quixote's fight against windmills. Pointless, and won't really accomplish anything. Do you think the NSA, or whoever else for that matter, would actually care about people changing their profile picture or blacking out their website for a day? I believe protest doesn't accomplish much, specifically if done in a frivolous way. This is extremely frivolous.
- themodelplumber 13y ago
  > Do you think the NSA, or whoever else for that matter, would actually care What made you think that's the point of this? This isn't about convincing the NSA of anything.
  - terabytest 13y ago
    This sentence from the page pretty much hints at that: > Today we face a different threat, one that undermines the Internet, and the notion that any of us live in a genuinely free society: mass surveillance. Let's not forget that the NSA revelations are at the base of the mass surveillance outrage.
    - vidarh 13y ago
      Clearly part of addressing mass surveillance would be to get changes at the NSA, but they are not the ones we need to make listen. Politicians are. US politicians who support and fund the NSA or doesn't voice their opposition. Politicians all over the world who allow their own surveillance organizations to be complicit, or who are not putting enough pressure on the US government to make it a foreign policy problem instead of merely a small nuisance. And the large parts of the public who are not yet aware, or not aware enough to care. The NSA is at the very end of a very long list of targets, each one of which may help put pressure on and/or have some power over the next target on the list.
j_baker 13y ago
It's nice to see that important national issues have been reduced to social media campaigns. It's going to take more than Twitter messages and Reddit comments to take down the NSA though. Something tells me that Aaron would be pissed that they're using his name this way. Aaron got arrested for actually fighting for openness, not tweeting about how he supports openness. If you want to fight the NSA, write your member of Congress. Join a protest. Leak info about what the government is doing. But please don't just post messages to your Facebook so you can feel like you're doing something.
deleted 13y ago
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ilaksh 13y ago
To me its obvious that the current paradigm with a central government that has a monopoly on force and businesses competing against each other with a mandate to increase profits is outdated. I think we need to experiment with rethinking fundamental societal structures in a way that incorporates our current science and technology.
riffraff 13y ago
I'm on a shitty airport connection and I tried to load the page 3 times before I was able to read content. Just saying.
donotsurveil 13y ago
Calling upon what a dead person would have done if not dead is something I have a hard time getting behind. But using facebook, google + and twitter to fight back against surveillance made it clear that this whole initiative is a joke and a bad poorly executed one. I wish those guys luck in trying to push against government surveillance towards private for profit transnational corporations' surveillance, but there is no way I would support this kind of initiative. Either you fight against surveillance or you don't, but fighting some form of surveillance and promoting another is not fight against surveillance.
callcongressnow 13y ago
[reposting this from another comment for visibility] Ever since the NSA business leaked, I've been thinking about this problem. It took me a few months to wrap my head around all the crazy stuff that's been going on but I've started building some systems that I think might have a chance of helping out. "Call Congress Now"- using Twilio, you can call Congress folk from your browser (for free). http://www.callcongressnow.org/ http://www.callcongressnow.org/ Here are some Congress people who some consider are doing some shady stuff: http://www.callcongressnow.org/profile/F000062 http://www.callcongressnow.org/profile/F000062 http://www.callcongressnow.org/profile/L000174 http://www.callcongressnow.org/profile/L000174 But it's pretty hard to get the word out about websites like that. In a sense, nobody passively cares enough to call Congress. Only when the Congress folks do something that brings about outrage do people care enough to really pick up the phone (or click the twilio button, as it were). So I built the /u/CongressionalHound, a bot on reddit that hunts for mentions of current sitting members of Congress in submitted articles and displays information about them in the comments: http://www.reddit.com/user/CongressionalHound/comments/ http://www.reddit.com/user/CongressionalHound/comments/ If you are a mod and want me to run the bot on your subreddit, PM the bot and I'll have it saunter on over and get to work. Slowly putting the bot on subreddits that give me permission or invite me to. My hope is that when articles about the NSA, or Obamacare, or the shutdown, or or or any big political issue comes up, that the bot will channel people towards getting in touch with their representatives and senators and effectively voicing their opinions. Both of these are prototypes and there are major known bugs in both, but I think they can serve as examples of systems that could help citizens better impact their government through the power of the internet.
- bendoernberg 13y ago
  That bot is amazing!
  - callcongressnow 13y ago
    Thank you! It's actually really dumb. Like, it's piping out to Readability and then just searching for capitalized pairs of words and then pounding a hash-map for look ups of Congress folks. MVP or something right? https://github.com/zmaril/CongressionalHound https://github.com/zmaril/CongressionalHound
tmsh 13y ago
You need a law or a bill. And then the protest (and ensuing momentum if companies are incentivized to blackout their sites because it's strongly in their interests) pushes the lever for lawmakers.
Zarathust 13y ago
I'm so angry I put a banner on my website. While I greatly support the cause, I doubt the effects this "online protest" will have.
deleted 13y ago
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whatevsbro 13y ago
So, something like this: People: "Stop spying on us!" NSA: "Well, we kind of want to, but if you insist.." People: "Alright then, cool." (NSA calmly continues doing whatever they damn well please) Here's an alternative version: People: "Stop spying on us!" NSA: "Fuck you, peasants." People: "No, fuck you! We'll write to some thoroughly corrupt sociopaths and they'll stop your spying because they care about our well-being!!" NSA: "Good luck with that." (NSA calmly continues doing whatever they damn well please) The actual problem is the existence of the NSA and governments in the first place. They're not accountable to us for anything they do, until there's a revolution, and then the cycle just starts over. The real solution is to stop believing that anyone has the right to rule anyone else.
- tstactplsignore 13y ago
  >The actual problem is the existence of the NSA >and governments That escalated quickly.
  - whatevsbro 13y ago
    Sure, but it's true. Think about it for a moment. They operate in complete secrecy behind the scenes. You have no power over them, but they have massive power over you. Clearly, neither the NSA nor the government are accountable to you or people in general because you simply have no recourse against any injustice they commit against you. If the government imprisons you without due process, for example, you're effectively supposed to complain about it to the very same government, which will then.. punish itself? In what alternate universe is this a good arrangement?
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      >They operate in complete secrecy behind the scenes. You have no power over them, but they have massive power over you. We vote these people into office. We have the power. The government is people - just people we've decided get extra power so they can get things done. Please, please, please don't ever forget this. The moment you start thinking of the government as some impenetrable adversary, you've already lost. Being politically active is how change happens, not falling into the dems-vs-republicans-vs-whoever trap of "the other guy is bad". The government is us.
botolo 13y ago
I wonder whether they obtained proper license to use a frame from "The Big Lebowski" for their internet meme
mcgwiz 13y ago
Ironically, at the moment the link to their own Privacy Policy page is broken. (I notified them by email.) https://thedaywefightback.org/privacy.html https://thedaywefightback.org/privacy.html
Joeboy 13y ago
Let's try to be positive about this. Presumably the NSA's capacities are limited by its budget. Presumably its budget is limited by political considerations. Presumably a popular social networking campaign, however lame, will be impact on politicians' willingness to lavish funds upon it. I'd rather everybody involved set up and promoted GPG instead, but that probably isn't going to happen.
pron 13y ago
This is a worthy cause, but I find it ironic that the page has so many links to social networks that engage in spying on a scale comparable to that of the NSA. And while the NSA was probably just collecting the information we know that Google and Facebook actually use it. Saying that those services give you a choice not to use them is throwing sand in our face. We know that Facebook and maybe Google, too, collect information about people not using their services. They also track their users' behavior when they're not expecting it. Worst of all is the fact that most people don't fully grasp the deal those companies offer: they give you free services in exchange for your private information. This reminds me of that recent South Park episode where Cartman goes to investigate the NSA while tweeting his every thought[1]. This kind of fight requires serious thinking about privacy in this day and age. Sure, it's bad that a government spies on people, but it isn't any better that some of the world's most powerful corporations trick people into being spied on and into becoming unknowing informants on their friends. This is a very serious and very broad issue. Let's not make it just about the NSA. [1]: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s17e01-let-go-let-gov http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s17e01-let-go-...
ripaaron 13y ago
"The Day We Fight Back" and there's facebook like-button on the page. The hypocrisy is overwhelming.
pistle 13y ago
KonyLives2014.org
psi_rockin 13y ago
I'd prefer to see "The Day We Fight Back" be used to promote mass adoption of stronger security measures and encryption.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  And some alternative to centralized social networks.
noonespecial 13y ago
You know what would be better than putting a banner on a site and tweeting your "outrage"? Giving a buck to the EFF. Or two. Do that other stuff if it makes you feel better, but if you want to make a difference, call a congressman, and give a pittance to people who specialize in doing the same.
vinhboy 13y ago
People always ask, why can't the progressives make their own Tea Party -- If you read through the responses on this page you'll have your answer. So much doubt and skepticism about everything... It's funny all these people putting down "social networking", when most of us here work for companies who pay a shit ton of money to advertise and gain traction on "social networks". Then, on top of that, there are many of us here working to build more and improve social networking. You bitch about how the media is corrupting the public's mind, yet you scoff at organizations that tries to use the media to rally for support of meaningful causes.... Every. Single. Time. Someone wants to do something positive, you guys just come and shit all over it. I think the true slacktivism is people who bitch about slacktivism and offers no other solutions.
- guelo 13y ago
  this isn't a "progressive" issue, it cuts across partisan lines.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    Not really. This is a left-versus-right issue. Unfortunately, most major party politicians are on the right wing of the spectrum.
- ivanca 13y ago
  Yeah, it's way easier to stand together when the members of a group just don't use their brain that much and don't doubt even the most stupid beliefs (e.g. Jesus was a white man) but here we doubt everything, and skepticism is good on an individual level but it's the worst social glue for a group.
calroc 13y ago
It bothers me that otherwise intelligent people are taking so long to realize that ubiquitous surveillance is never going away. I would have exterminated humanity in the 80's if it hadn't been for ubiquitous surveillance.
D9u 13y ago
We can't forget the corporate culpability in this matter...
bambax 13y ago
The often mentioned quote from B. Franklin (reproduced in the linked site) about "any society" giving up a little liberty for a little security and deserving neither is I think quite funny, because giving up liberty in exchange for security is the very definition of society. Society is not about liberty; it's about control, surveillance, obedience, in exchange from keeping aliens at bay. If everyone's my brother I don't need "society", because there are no aliens. On the other hand, if every brother is a potential or covert alien, then I need a very intense system of control. I'm not sure it's possible to have society without surveillance; they are sides of the same coin.
- knapp 13y ago
  I think it's quite funny because like so many quotation-on-image internet memes, it's not what Franklin actually wrote. This is the actual line: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=6&page=238a http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=6&p... Some other misattributed variations are here: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Misattributed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Misattribute...
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  Society is a bunch of people gathering togheter because they are happier that way. If everybody is your brother, you won't be any better living alone in a field. Yeah, other people always come with some kind of surveilance and disagreement, but that's a consequence, not the goal.
  - bambax 13y ago
    > Society is a bunch of people gathering together because they are happier that way. How is that? You're born in a given society (country) and usually you never change societies, so there's no choice involved.
    - marcosdumay 13y ago
znowi 13y ago
Unsurprisingly, none of the PRISM gang companies support this initiative.
BrandonMarc 13y ago
In January 2012 we defeated the SOPA and PIPA censorship legislation with the largest Internet protest in history. Funny ... no mention of CISPA, which interestingly was not heavily protested like SOPA and PIPA were, is reputed to be worse, and while initially passed in November 2011 was passed again in April 2013 after SOPA and PIPA were defeated. Thankfully, it never passed the Senate ... but I wouldn't call that a "win" compared to the victory over SOPA / PIPA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_Protection_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_...
Create 13y ago
We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world. This should not actually be a complicated inquiry. http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-thought-requires-free-media http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ciscosystemsrouteratcern.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ciscosystemsrouteratcern....
Create 13y ago
We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world. This should not actually be a complicated inquiry. http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-thought-requires-free-media http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ciscosystemsrouteratcern.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ciscosystemsrouteratcern.... Why would dead links help?
cdoxsey 13y ago
Meh. I wasn't all that surprised by the NSA revelations. I think Snowden is a traitor and the US government (like any government) has legitimate reasons to spy on people. The problem with this "movement" is that it fails to make an argument for its beliefs. It's just pure group-think. > Today we face a different threat, one that undermines the Internet, and the notion that any of us live in a genuinely free society: mass surveillance. An NSA data mining robot reading my facebook wall is no more a threat to my freedom than Google reading my gmail. The threat comes from the abuse of that information: that some politician (or Google employee) has it out for me and blackmails me (or something like that). Maybe I'll get upset when we have evidence of that happening a bunch. And though many people don't believe it anymore, there is in fact a real threat on the other side of this: there are actual terrorists in the world who want to kill Americans. Now here's something I can't figure out: the very people up in arms about the NSA spying on us think that it's a great idea for the government to know all the most intimate details of my life via a government-run single-payer healthcare system. Uncle Sam reading my latest tweet seems a whole lot less intrusive on my freedom than him telling me I must go to the doctor, get insurance, quit smoking, lose some weight, not eat or drink certain kinds of foods...
nathanb 13y ago
How in the world is this "fighting back"? Did I just skim over a paragraph somewhere on the site? All I see are banners, social media buttons, and a mask to put over your profile picture. Raising awareness is fine and good, but thanks to Ed Snowden (who fought back in a much more effective way than by changing his gravatar), we already know that the NSA are spying on everyone, everywhere. They stuck a Ben Franklin quote on there. It's a good quote. But where are the public officials running on a pro-surveillance platform? Whose door should we beat down while carrying our torches and pitchforks? That battle is lost several times a second when we voluntarily step into the body scanner at the airport that both the TSA and the terrorists know doesn't catch everything. I'm not ready to start a revolution. And I just don't feel like anything less than a revolution will do, at this point. The only thing I can do is leave -- and hope that my new home isn't doing the same thing or worse without having been caught yet. But this sucks. I hate feeling powerless. So I guess I'm off to post some witty anti-NSA propaganda to my Facebook page!
stefan_kendall 13y ago
Modifying websites is not "fighting back". Your time is wasted and meaningless and will not evoke change.

460 points by sinak 13y ago

shocks 13y ago

Great idea, but does it have to be so American? We're getting spied on over here in the UK too.

sethbannon 13y ago

It's long past time that we channel our outrage into political action on this issue.

melling 13y ago
Excellent. What's the definition of insanity? Here's the Reddit discussion. Have at it! http://www.reddit.com/r/thedaywefightback/ http://www.reddit.com/r/thedaywefightback/
waterlesscloud 13y ago
Everyone will just re-elect the same congressmen and senators who got us here. Because theirs is different, of course.
- mcherm 13y ago
  If it is your intention to assume that nothing can get any better so we should just sit back and do nothing, then would you do me a favor? Would you please start doing nothing BEFORE posting the "it's all hopeless" comment. From your point of view it won't make any difference, but from the point of view of those of us who think that one can (on the whole) make (slow) progress by speaking up and taking action it will make a difference.

pekk 13y ago

I am probably the only person who is bothered that this sounds like a deniable call to violent action. "BE CREATIVE" edit: to be clearer - the issue is that we have left violent action open as an option and it isn't hard for a few people to take that option. Is this what we want politics to be?

gtirloni 13y ago
Probably. Edit since parent updated: "Be creative" is just too broad and if you want to imply the authors are saying "be violent if you want" then it's what YOU are implying, not them. Besides, I have yet to see a Internet protest that turned out violent because of the protesters. Not in a large scale at least. So reading "be violent" where it says "be creative" is a long stretch (thus my initial response). Now, if the authors should be liable if anything violent happens because they did not add "please don't be violent", then this a whole different (and larger) discussion about all the crazy things happening in the judicial system (that would allow someone to be sued). At the end, people are liable for their own acts. Let's leave this discussion for when/if they actually are explicit about using violence, instead of trying to read between the lines so early (and with so little information to base it on).
aaronem 13y ago
You're probably the only person who is bothered, because you are probably the only person who can see anything remotely resembling a "call to violent action" in something as milquetoast as the nonsense we're discussing.
- rhizome 13y ago
  I see what the GP is talking about though, and would probably explain it as "fight" being used as a malapropism, not as a rallying ethic. That is, calling something "fighting" which is pretty much the furthest thing from it, rather than exhorting people to fight in whatever way they deem fit.

gtirloni 13y ago

If I got this right, we fight back by changing our avatars and putting banners on our blogs. Is that it?

aaronem 13y ago
Well, when socially networked narcissism is the order of the day in general, why expect anything else? I'm not particularly concerned about the Black Chamber doing what the Black Chamber does, but if I were, I'd certainly hope to see those who shared that concern aiming a little higher than merely to say "I'm agin' it!"
dijit 13y ago
yeah! the arm chair politics of Kony 2012 and all those missing children on facebook. in reality we need to make people sick to their stomachs and use fear tactics the same way US politics does. Documentaries, advertising, real life examples, sense of urgency. I mean, we can just follow the doctrines of propoganda set before us daily :D it's the masses that have power, not the community of hacker news.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Well, it's a start. However, I agree that it's far more of a branding exercise than an agenda, not dissimilar to professional activists organizing a crowd and then handing out a bunch of preprinted signs to the people that arrive. I don't blame the organizers for this; it's symptomatic of how internet culture works (bootstrap a meme, leverage resulting audience attention) and of the difficulties of organizing in a representative democracy context. The ideal would be some model legislative proposals or some sort of nominally nonpartisan congressional committee with teeth along the lines of the Church committee in the 1970s (but even that ran into significant opposition at the time, being accused of treason and so on by the usual self-appointed superpatriots. The basic problem is threefold. 1. The United States has a strong economic and strategic interest in preserving the international status quo or moving it in a more liberal direction (qua trade, promulgation of legal mutualism and so forth). Naturally, maintaining this position is going to involve extensive intelligence-gathering activities. 2. While this is often denigrated as a form of neo-colonialism, there's a fair degree of evidence that it results in better overall outcomes globally; were it to withdraw and leave a power vacuum, that space would be occupied by less scrupulous actors. Although the EU is second to the US in economic power (or even first by some measures) the EU is ineffective at projecting power and less able to provide security to its allies, both practically and politically (consider the rather milquetoast response to the protests in Ukraine, for example). For examples of the alternative, consider the autocratic and cynically populist governance of the Russian Federation or the relative opacity of Chinese jurisprudence. 3. Given the ever-lower barriers to collection and aggregation of data resulting from technology, private actors are able to accumulate and leverage huge pools of data, from Facebook to credit bureaux and consumer intelligence brokers such as Axciom. Until people are willing tolerate limits on private sector activity (and thus financial opportunity) similar to those resulting from EU data protection laws or the like, it's simply not realistic to expect that government should limit itself to technological capabilities that are less than the private sector or even abstain from aggregating publicly available data. This would just result in a a different kind of power vacuum. For all its faults, government is procedurally accountable to the citizenry, whereas private entities are accountable only to shareholders, and shareholdings are fungible in a way that citizenship is not. As I've said a few times before, I think the US needs a movement for a privacy amendment to the constitution that spells out the scope and limitations of individual's control over their personal information, as opposed to the hand-wavey and contentious judicial interpretations we operate under at present. Putting this in place is a decade-long project, at minimum.

ironchief 13y ago

What are the specific goals and modes of action for this protest? (e.g. laws to pass, laws to vote against, people to fire etc.)

donotsurveil 13y ago
Apparently it's post a banner on a website, register on facebook, google+ and twitter to post there that you are against surveillance. A nice attempt at sorting out people through self-selection who are to be put on a special surveillance list.
- flurpitude 13y ago
  Well, if you're politically opposed to the NSA's surveillance they probably already know, so it won't make much difference whether you've revealed support for this campaign. The bigger problem is that the campaign seems entirely vacuous. What exactly are we doing to fight back? Complaining a little bit online? The NSA must be running scared.

redthrowaway 13y ago

Feb 11th is after the SOTU, where Obama will announce what will in effect be the only changes we're likely to see. Any attempt to influence policy should come before that.

sinak 13y ago
We did consider this very, very carefully. Our conclusion was that any reforms that Obama announces are very unlikely to result in meaningful change, and that legislation will still be necessary. Had we set the date before the SOTU, our activism would have concluded with no way to respond to his proposals.
- fuqua 13y ago
  So, what's your plan re: pushing legislation? Have you identified who in Congress will serve as a champion for your cause? Are there any lists of specific demands that any good legislation would address? Changing your avatar on Facebook, Twitter, or G+ won't sway anyone.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  If your activism is planned to conclude on a date certain, whether before or after the SOTU, its not going to do anything. What you really want is to create an ongoing movement both with a visible effect early enough to influence others reaction to what is announced in the SOTU, and which continues so as to itself respond to whatever is proposed in the SOTU.

jheriko 13y ago

Hmmm this is all well and good, but what do we expect NSA and GCHQ to do instead? I don't especially like them or what they do, but we need them... I'm also surprised at the massive backlash and the revelatory nature of the Snowden leaks... I was expecting that NSA and GCHQ would engage in precisely these kinds of activities - its exactly what they are there for - I am surprised that anyone ever had any different expectations, but clearly a large majority did. Are we suggesting that society has come far enough that we can do without espionage altogether?

Nursie 13y ago
We don't expect, need or want them to go anywhere near as far as they do. This was not done with our mandate and in a democratic society it damn well needs it. They are there to keep an eye on suspected bad guys, not to watch us all constantly. What they can do is fire 75% of their staff and stick to the rules.
sp332 13y ago
More-specific investigations to uncover actual threats, real court oversight, and making sure that protections written into law are enforced during data collection.
- gaius 13y ago
  If GCHQ and the NSA were actually dedicated to securing our networks that would be a start, e.g. helping businesses and individuals migrate to SELinux or something.
gaius 13y ago
It's a valid question: DO we still need things left over from the Cold War? BAOR no longer exists for example. Pretty soon we'll have no tank regiments. And in the US, as posted on here the other day, the FBI is responsible for national security now.

niuzeta 13y ago

No, it's not fighting back. Making clever memes online to earn a chuckle or two might help spreading awareness, but in reality changing an online avatar and posting memes online won't affect much in real life. What I find strange is that(Please correct me on this one) there just doesn't seem to be a political group of technologist who lobby(the original meaning) against politicians. In truth, technology-related policies should be consulted and heard by people who use and develop the said technologies. What's worse about this retaliation is that anyone participating it would have an illusion of having done something without actually having done anything(i.e., impact). At the end of the day, you might walk home feeling good about yourself for having fought for a cause, but some harsh reality check needs to be done. Addendum: As per the second paragraph, refer to one of the replies on this comment(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7038058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7038058): > An abbreviated list of groups who do that: EFF, Public Knowledge, Demand Progress, Engine Advocacy, CDT, OTI, Free Press. Many of these have multiple registered lobbyists walking the halls of Congress and taking meetings. I stand corrected.

anigbrowl 13y ago
a political group of technologist who lobby(the original meaning) against politicians Excuse my pedantry, but I think the need is not so much to lobby against politicians (which is to implicitly reject the concept of a polity and go for an everyone-for-themselves model instead), but to lobby against competing interests. In short, technologists need to lobby for their interests more effectively, which will mean doing a better job of articulating what our interests are, and why others should accept some crimping of their interests for the greater good. One recent and good example of this is the observation that compromising privacy limits our ability to export hardware and software and thus comes at an economic cost to taxpayers.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
salient 13y ago
I'm pretty sure EFF, DemandProgress and the like are doing exactly that. Or are you saying they should form a Super PAC? But in that case, it won't exactly be "traditional lobbying", would it? It would be just paying politicians to do what they're asking them. I don't know whether that would be good or bad given the current corrupt lobbying system that the government has gotten accustomed to, but at least we should call it what it is before we dive in.

wanda 13y ago

I would "fight back" but I have a job. Who am I kidding? I would not fight back even if I did have the time. Even if this were not horseshit. I would be dicking around with golang and flagging banal questions on StackExchange.

angersock 13y ago
I appreciate your candor, sir/madam.

jlgaddis 13y ago

Yay, slacktivism! ----- edit: I wrote the above because there was no clear "call to action" other than changing one's Facebook profile picture (seriously?) but, according to the "Open Letter" [0], I guess we're all supposed to call our legislators that day. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037532

trustfundbaby 13y ago
I thought so too, but the big banner has a way to find and call your political representative about the issue. I'm just worried that the American populace isn't sufficiently interested in the issue to do anything about it. Now if the top 100 sites in the US shut down for a day in protest ...
- gtirloni 13y ago
  To be honest, I had to go back to the website and read it again so I would notice the suggestion to call the legislators. I think my brain has been trained (based on hard evidence) to ignore that option as ineffective (unfortunately).
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  > Now if the top 100 sites in the US shut down for a day in protest ... ... we'd call them hypocritical.
jcfrei 13y ago
My first thought was that it is a prank by 4chan to collect email addresses.

herbig 13y ago

"If Aaron were alive, he'd be on the front lines, fighting against a world in which governments observe, collect, and analyze our every digital action." While government surveillance and open access are both information issues, we definitely should not be construing what he would or wouldn't believe about revelations that were made after his death. If we're taking a literal interpretation of his Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, he may well be on the front lines fighting for a world with zero privacy from anyone.

coldpie 13y ago
I think the emphasis on Aaron is really a mistake. I follow this news relatively closely, reading HN every day, and I don't really see how Aaron's abusive prosecutors tie in to the NSA stuff. The spying scandals are bad enough on their own. Adding Aaron's death into the mix just muddles the message and confuses people who are less informed.
- gaius 13y ago
  Indeed, it muddies the issue. I am anti-NSA-spying but I am also anti-stealing-IP... I should point out that I don't think Aaron should have been hounded to his death (tho' equally if he were mentally ill, anything could have pushed him over the edge). But that doesn't make what he did right. It has for 20 years baffled me that people can demand respect for the GPL et al but be happy to ride roughshod over anyone else's licenses.
  - sinak2 13y ago
    This project was originally suggested by David Segal, Aaron's co-founder at Demand Progress, back in November. We'd been waiting for the right date to actually build and launch it, and David suggested that using Aaron's passing was likely the best marker, particularly since he and Brian Knappenberger had just uncovered some footage of Aaron talking about the need for a "moment of activism" around state surveillance (which'll be released soon). I can definitely understand the skepticism, but from my understanding it was definitely an issue he cared about.
  - 13y ago

nhangen 13y ago

Am I the only one bothered by how many people are invoking Aaron's ghost? The intent might be pure, but it really bugs me when people speak for the dead. And let's not forget, Aaron didn't pass away, he committed suicide. Case related stressors may have caused this, but it's also not right to make him the poster child for every anti-government/anti NSA campaign on the Internet.

wbsun 13y ago
May God bless him! Amen.
Joeboy 13y ago
http://likerka.eu/eng/f/lah_che.jpg http://likerka.eu/eng/f/lah_che.jpg
l33tbro 13y ago
Aaron was a pretty beautiful dude who had a clarity and pureness of intent to ensuring that information be as free as possible. That Aaron suffered mental illness, and the assumption that his legacy carry less value because he took his own life is kind of gross and disrespectful. Mental illness is stigmatized enough in our communities, and given a lot of the talk of HN users own depression issues, I'm surprised to see statements like this here. Movements like this are part of Aaron's legacy. We know not the will of the dead. We can, however, celebrate the value and contribution of their lives. His was extraordinary (though all too short). What is so wrong with continuing the work he was so passionate about?
- nhangen 13y ago
  I don't believe his legacy should carry less value at all. If anything, I'm trying to defend his legacy so organizations like this will stop putting words and actions in his mouth/body. I find this campaign to be in bad taste and on the brink of classlessness, despite the fact that I believe in the cause.
j_baker 13y ago
Meh. I see where you're coming from on this, but we as a society do this kind of thing all the time. Do you think Martin Luther King Jr would have approved of every anti-racism campaign that's used his name? Do you think he would have approved of having his birthday used to celebrate anti-racism? Who knows? Either way, as long as his image is being used to do something good, it's kind of a moot point. My issue with this is that his image isn't being used to do something good. It's being used as a means of getting people to post messages so they can feel like they're doing something good rather than actually doing something good.

return0 13y ago

Yeah, let's fight online surveillance through facebook, google and the other NSA-approved social media. How about instead we save some energy and invest it in better encryption and security?

wbsun 13y ago
You ask some computer-politicians to do real research and tech-work? NO WAY!
l33tbro 13y ago
Or do both!
systematical 13y ago
So facebook and google are now "NSA-approved" how can I get my products and services NSA approved?
- return0 13y ago
  You can't. It's an invite-only elite club.

pinaceae 13y ago

as a non-US citizen this won't change anything for me. "free society" here should be really re-worded to "free US society". as long as there is a intelligence apparatus in the US at all, spying on the rest of the world will continue. by definition. the NSA is monitoring all internet traffic as it would be really hard to know beforehand if it only pertains to US citizens. not sure what exactly you're trying to achieve here. the NSA either monitors facebook or it doesn't.

adiEFF 13y ago
This is a broader movement. We're pushing for principles that extend beyond the US border, as best outlined here: https://en.necessaryandproportionate.org/text https://en.necessaryandproportionate.org/text
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
rmc 13y ago
The US Constitual protection for privacy only applies to US citizens. Would US citizens be willing to amend it to make it apply to everyone.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Some things in the constitution apply only to citizens, most don't. When it says person, it means person, not citizen. Educating people that this prevalent view is false would already go a long way.
  - rmc 13y ago
    Not quite that clear. There is an (sort of) exemption to the US 4th Amendement warrent requirement for " surveillance is conducted to obtain foreign intelligence for national security purposes and is directed against foreign powers or agents of foreign powers reasonably believed to be located outside the United States"

elchief 13y ago

How about companies pledge to never hire NSA staff? Close the accounts of and ban surveillance supporters and their families?

wnevets 13y ago

If I join this wont they go out of their way to spy on me?

Joeboy 13y ago
I sincerely doubt they give a shit.
marcosdumay 13y ago
Yes. And if you don't join it, they'll also go out of their way to spy on you.

carlosdp 13y ago

You lost me at "(and [spying on] everyone else too)". Spying on other countries is what the NSA is built to do, and it's for good reason. Every country does it, that's how geopolitics work. The issue people have here is spying on US Citizens, which is not what they're supposed to be doing.

l33tbro 13y ago
Poppycock. Give me some "good reasons" why spying on the private lives of citizens of ally countries is not an act of terrorism?
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Give me some "good reasons" why spying on the private lives of citizens of ally countries is not an act of terrorism? Because terrorism is the use of violence or threat of violence directed at civilian populations or otherwise outside the generally accepted norms of warfare to effect political change, and spying, while it may support the use or threat of violence, is, in and of itself, neither the use nor threat of violence.
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Well, is blackmail a kind of violence? (honest question)
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      Doesn't really matter, because as with violence (or “other forms of violence”, if you prefer), spying isn’t blackmail, even if it might be used to support blackmail.
      - marcosdumay 13y ago
        Spying is as good a "threat of blackmail" as one can get.

pdfcollect 13y ago

Hopefully someday we can use this to help: http://bit.ly/blibonline http://bit.ly/blibonline

jsumrall 13y ago

You lost me by leading with a big picture of Aaron.

jsumrall 13y ago

You lost me by leading with a big picture of Aaron.

terabytest 13y ago

To me this looks pretty much like Don Quixote's fight against windmills. Pointless, and won't really accomplish anything. Do you think the NSA, or whoever else for that matter, would actually care about people changing their profile picture or blacking out their website for a day? I believe protest doesn't accomplish much, specifically if done in a frivolous way. This is extremely frivolous.

themodelplumber 13y ago
> Do you think the NSA, or whoever else for that matter, would actually care What made you think that's the point of this? This isn't about convincing the NSA of anything.
- terabytest 13y ago
  This sentence from the page pretty much hints at that: > Today we face a different threat, one that undermines the Internet, and the notion that any of us live in a genuinely free society: mass surveillance. Let's not forget that the NSA revelations are at the base of the mass surveillance outrage.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    Clearly part of addressing mass surveillance would be to get changes at the NSA, but they are not the ones we need to make listen. Politicians are. US politicians who support and fund the NSA or doesn't voice their opposition. Politicians all over the world who allow their own surveillance organizations to be complicit, or who are not putting enough pressure on the US government to make it a foreign policy problem instead of merely a small nuisance. And the large parts of the public who are not yet aware, or not aware enough to care. The NSA is at the very end of a very long list of targets, each one of which may help put pressure on and/or have some power over the next target on the list.

j_baker 13y ago

It's nice to see that important national issues have been reduced to social media campaigns. It's going to take more than Twitter messages and Reddit comments to take down the NSA though. Something tells me that Aaron would be pissed that they're using his name this way. Aaron got arrested for actually fighting for openness, not tweeting about how he supports openness. If you want to fight the NSA, write your member of Congress. Join a protest. Leak info about what the government is doing. But please don't just post messages to your Facebook so you can feel like you're doing something.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ilaksh 13y ago

To me its obvious that the current paradigm with a central government that has a monopoly on force and businesses competing against each other with a mandate to increase profits is outdated. I think we need to experiment with rethinking fundamental societal structures in a way that incorporates our current science and technology.

riffraff 13y ago

I'm on a shitty airport connection and I tried to load the page 3 times before I was able to read content. Just saying.

donotsurveil 13y ago

Calling upon what a dead person would have done if not dead is something I have a hard time getting behind. But using facebook, google + and twitter to fight back against surveillance made it clear that this whole initiative is a joke and a bad poorly executed one. I wish those guys luck in trying to push against government surveillance towards private for profit transnational corporations' surveillance, but there is no way I would support this kind of initiative. Either you fight against surveillance or you don't, but fighting some form of surveillance and promoting another is not fight against surveillance.

callcongressnow 13y ago

[reposting this from another comment for visibility] Ever since the NSA business leaked, I've been thinking about this problem. It took me a few months to wrap my head around all the crazy stuff that's been going on but I've started building some systems that I think might have a chance of helping out. "Call Congress Now"- using Twilio, you can call Congress folk from your browser (for free). http://www.callcongressnow.org/ http://www.callcongressnow.org/ Here are some Congress people who some consider are doing some shady stuff: http://www.callcongressnow.org/profile/F000062 http://www.callcongressnow.org/profile/F000062 http://www.callcongressnow.org/profile/L000174 http://www.callcongressnow.org/profile/L000174 But it's pretty hard to get the word out about websites like that. In a sense, nobody passively cares enough to call Congress. Only when the Congress folks do something that brings about outrage do people care enough to really pick up the phone (or click the twilio button, as it were). So I built the /u/CongressionalHound, a bot on reddit that hunts for mentions of current sitting members of Congress in submitted articles and displays information about them in the comments: http://www.reddit.com/user/CongressionalHound/comments/ http://www.reddit.com/user/CongressionalHound/comments/ If you are a mod and want me to run the bot on your subreddit, PM the bot and I'll have it saunter on over and get to work. Slowly putting the bot on subreddits that give me permission or invite me to. My hope is that when articles about the NSA, or Obamacare, or the shutdown, or or or any big political issue comes up, that the bot will channel people towards getting in touch with their representatives and senators and effectively voicing their opinions. Both of these are prototypes and there are major known bugs in both, but I think they can serve as examples of systems that could help citizens better impact their government through the power of the internet.

bendoernberg 13y ago
That bot is amazing!
- callcongressnow 13y ago
  Thank you! It's actually really dumb. Like, it's piping out to Readability and then just searching for capitalized pairs of words and then pounding a hash-map for look ups of Congress folks. MVP or something right? https://github.com/zmaril/CongressionalHound https://github.com/zmaril/CongressionalHound

tmsh 13y ago

You need a law or a bill. And then the protest (and ensuing momentum if companies are incentivized to blackout their sites because it's strongly in their interests) pushes the lever for lawmakers.

Zarathust 13y ago

I'm so angry I put a banner on my website. While I greatly support the cause, I doubt the effects this "online protest" will have.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

whatevsbro 13y ago

So, something like this: People: "Stop spying on us!" NSA: "Well, we kind of want to, but if you insist.." People: "Alright then, cool." (NSA calmly continues doing whatever they damn well please) Here's an alternative version: People: "Stop spying on us!" NSA: "Fuck you, peasants." People: "No, fuck you! We'll write to some thoroughly corrupt sociopaths and they'll stop your spying because they care about our well-being!!" NSA: "Good luck with that." (NSA calmly continues doing whatever they damn well please) The actual problem is the existence of the NSA and governments in the first place. They're not accountable to us for anything they do, until there's a revolution, and then the cycle just starts over. The real solution is to stop believing that anyone has the right to rule anyone else.

tstactplsignore 13y ago
>The actual problem is the existence of the NSA >and governments That escalated quickly.
- whatevsbro 13y ago
  Sure, but it's true. Think about it for a moment. They operate in complete secrecy behind the scenes. You have no power over them, but they have massive power over you. Clearly, neither the NSA nor the government are accountable to you or people in general because you simply have no recourse against any injustice they commit against you. If the government imprisons you without due process, for example, you're effectively supposed to complain about it to the very same government, which will then.. punish itself? In what alternate universe is this a good arrangement?
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    >They operate in complete secrecy behind the scenes. You have no power over them, but they have massive power over you. We vote these people into office. We have the power. The government is people - just people we've decided get extra power so they can get things done. Please, please, please don't ever forget this. The moment you start thinking of the government as some impenetrable adversary, you've already lost. Being politically active is how change happens, not falling into the dems-vs-republicans-vs-whoever trap of "the other guy is bad". The government is us.

botolo 13y ago

I wonder whether they obtained proper license to use a frame from "The Big Lebowski" for their internet meme

mcgwiz 13y ago

Ironically, at the moment the link to their own Privacy Policy page is broken. (I notified them by email.) https://thedaywefightback.org/privacy.html https://thedaywefightback.org/privacy.html

Joeboy 13y ago

Let's try to be positive about this. Presumably the NSA's capacities are limited by its budget. Presumably its budget is limited by political considerations. Presumably a popular social networking campaign, however lame, will be impact on politicians' willingness to lavish funds upon it. I'd rather everybody involved set up and promoted GPG instead, but that probably isn't going to happen.

pron 13y ago

This is a worthy cause, but I find it ironic that the page has so many links to social networks that engage in spying on a scale comparable to that of the NSA. And while the NSA was probably just collecting the information we know that Google and Facebook actually use it. Saying that those services give you a choice not to use them is throwing sand in our face. We know that Facebook and maybe Google, too, collect information about people not using their services. They also track their users' behavior when they're not expecting it. Worst of all is the fact that most people don't fully grasp the deal those companies offer: they give you free services in exchange for your private information. This reminds me of that recent South Park episode where Cartman goes to investigate the NSA while tweeting his every thought[1]. This kind of fight requires serious thinking about privacy in this day and age. Sure, it's bad that a government spies on people, but it isn't any better that some of the world's most powerful corporations trick people into being spied on and into becoming unknowing informants on their friends. This is a very serious and very broad issue. Let's not make it just about the NSA. [1]: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s17e01-let-go-let-gov http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s17e01-let-go-...

ripaaron 13y ago

"The Day We Fight Back" and there's facebook like-button on the page. The hypocrisy is overwhelming.

pistle 13y ago

KonyLives2014.org

psi_rockin 13y ago

I'd prefer to see "The Day We Fight Back" be used to promote mass adoption of stronger security measures and encryption.

marcosdumay 13y ago
And some alternative to centralized social networks.

noonespecial 13y ago

You know what would be better than putting a banner on a site and tweeting your "outrage"? Giving a buck to the EFF. Or two. Do that other stuff if it makes you feel better, but if you want to make a difference, call a congressman, and give a pittance to people who specialize in doing the same.

vinhboy 13y ago

People always ask, why can't the progressives make their own Tea Party -- If you read through the responses on this page you'll have your answer. So much doubt and skepticism about everything... It's funny all these people putting down "social networking", when most of us here work for companies who pay a shit ton of money to advertise and gain traction on "social networks". Then, on top of that, there are many of us here working to build more and improve social networking. You bitch about how the media is corrupting the public's mind, yet you scoff at organizations that tries to use the media to rally for support of meaningful causes.... Every. Single. Time. Someone wants to do something positive, you guys just come and shit all over it. I think the true slacktivism is people who bitch about slacktivism and offers no other solutions.

guelo 13y ago
this isn't a "progressive" issue, it cuts across partisan lines.
- betterunix 13y ago
  Not really. This is a left-versus-right issue. Unfortunately, most major party politicians are on the right wing of the spectrum.
ivanca 13y ago
Yeah, it's way easier to stand together when the members of a group just don't use their brain that much and don't doubt even the most stupid beliefs (e.g. Jesus was a white man) but here we doubt everything, and skepticism is good on an individual level but it's the worst social glue for a group.

calroc 13y ago

It bothers me that otherwise intelligent people are taking so long to realize that ubiquitous surveillance is never going away. I would have exterminated humanity in the 80's if it hadn't been for ubiquitous surveillance.

D9u 13y ago

We can't forget the corporate culpability in this matter...

bambax 13y ago

The often mentioned quote from B. Franklin (reproduced in the linked site) about "any society" giving up a little liberty for a little security and deserving neither is I think quite funny, because giving up liberty in exchange for security is the very definition of society. Society is not about liberty; it's about control, surveillance, obedience, in exchange from keeping aliens at bay. If everyone's my brother I don't need "society", because there are no aliens. On the other hand, if every brother is a potential or covert alien, then I need a very intense system of control. I'm not sure it's possible to have society without surveillance; they are sides of the same coin.

knapp 13y ago
I think it's quite funny because like so many quotation-on-image internet memes, it's not what Franklin actually wrote. This is the actual line: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=6&page=238a http://franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=6&p... Some other misattributed variations are here: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Misattributed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#Misattribute...
marcosdumay 13y ago
Society is a bunch of people gathering togheter because they are happier that way. If everybody is your brother, you won't be any better living alone in a field. Yeah, other people always come with some kind of surveilance and disagreement, but that's a consequence, not the goal.
- bambax 13y ago
  > Society is a bunch of people gathering together because they are happier that way. How is that? You're born in a given society (country) and usually you never change societies, so there's no choice involved.
  - marcosdumay 13y ago

znowi 13y ago

Unsurprisingly, none of the PRISM gang companies support this initiative.

BrandonMarc 13y ago

In January 2012 we defeated the SOPA and PIPA censorship legislation with the largest Internet protest in history. Funny ... no mention of CISPA, which interestingly was not heavily protested like SOPA and PIPA were, is reputed to be worse, and while initially passed in November 2011 was passed again in April 2013 after SOPA and PIPA were defeated. Thankfully, it never passed the Senate ... but I wouldn't call that a "win" compared to the victory over SOPA / PIPA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_Protection_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_...

Create 13y ago

We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world. This should not actually be a complicated inquiry. http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-thought-requires-free-media http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ciscosystemsrouteratcern.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ciscosystemsrouteratcern....

Create 13y ago

cdoxsey 13y ago

Meh. I wasn't all that surprised by the NSA revelations. I think Snowden is a traitor and the US government (like any government) has legitimate reasons to spy on people. The problem with this "movement" is that it fails to make an argument for its beliefs. It's just pure group-think. > Today we face a different threat, one that undermines the Internet, and the notion that any of us live in a genuinely free society: mass surveillance. An NSA data mining robot reading my facebook wall is no more a threat to my freedom than Google reading my gmail. The threat comes from the abuse of that information: that some politician (or Google employee) has it out for me and blackmails me (or something like that). Maybe I'll get upset when we have evidence of that happening a bunch. And though many people don't believe it anymore, there is in fact a real threat on the other side of this: there are actual terrorists in the world who want to kill Americans. Now here's something I can't figure out: the very people up in arms about the NSA spying on us think that it's a great idea for the government to know all the most intimate details of my life via a government-run single-payer healthcare system. Uncle Sam reading my latest tweet seems a whole lot less intrusive on my freedom than him telling me I must go to the doctor, get insurance, quit smoking, lose some weight, not eat or drink certain kinds of foods...

nathanb 13y ago

How in the world is this "fighting back"? Did I just skim over a paragraph somewhere on the site? All I see are banners, social media buttons, and a mask to put over your profile picture. Raising awareness is fine and good, but thanks to Ed Snowden (who fought back in a much more effective way than by changing his gravatar), we already know that the NSA are spying on everyone, everywhere. They stuck a Ben Franklin quote on there. It's a good quote. But where are the public officials running on a pro-surveillance platform? Whose door should we beat down while carrying our torches and pitchforks? That battle is lost several times a second when we voluntarily step into the body scanner at the airport that both the TSA and the terrorists know doesn't catch everything. I'm not ready to start a revolution. And I just don't feel like anything less than a revolution will do, at this point. The only thing I can do is leave -- and hope that my new home isn't doing the same thing or worse without having been caught yet. But this sucks. I hate feeling powerless. So I guess I'm off to post some witty anti-NSA propaganda to my Facebook page!

stefan_kendall 13y ago

Modifying websites is not "fighting back". Your time is wasted and meaningless and will not evoke change.