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Comment by MikeKusold | Hacker News Reader

The tech world badly needs the equivalent of the NRA. We need to routinely be grading politician voting records [1] on privacy focused bills. If a politician votes against privacy, then they should be forced to fear a highly contested re-election.

If it works for guns and the tea-party, then why can't it work for tech?

[1] https://www.nrapvf.org/grades/

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The EFF is already the most reliable org fighting for our digital arms. As far as comparison to the NRA, I suggest GOA[1] is a better model. The NRA is only a fair weather friend of the 2nd.

[1] http://www.gunowners.org/114hrat.htm

The EFF is probably as good as it gets for digital privacy issues, unless it becomes a widespread concern for millenials.[1] When you're a small minority like digital privacy activists are, using the legal system instead of the ballot box is your proper recourse, by design. Money would help, somewhat, too, but I'm not sure the tech companies with deep pockets actually support the digital privacy agenda in more than a tepid way.

[1] Which I doubt. Eventually, you'll have millenial senators. But I am guessing they will still care more about terrorism, chinese hacking, etc, than electronic privacy.

Somewhat perversely, Chinese hacking largely _is_ a privacy issue, just not individual privacy. The reason why Chinese hackers in particular are of concern is (1) they seem to engage in substantially higher levels of corporate espionage and (2) are outside of jurisdictions where such things can be appropriately disincentivised / punished [Although there are some signs China might start playing ball as they develop more domestic proprietary information].

There's a data science hurdle -- can e.g. the Russian mob filter though mass hacked email and facebook accounts to find blackmail material that has reasonably good returns with minimal personal time investment -- before the two become one and the same. If we end the decade before we have public conversations about (modulo details) an email from yourself saying 'send money here or we will forward this email to your employer/spouse', I would be surprised. Until then, people only have privacy because there's no economic incentive to shatter it. There are no rules. Yet.

> unless it becomes a widespread concern for millenials

Why do you think millenials don't care about privacy?

This news is #2 on the Reddit homepage right now, and did you not see Reddit explode (and blackout) over SOPA, either?

Not for this stuff. The EFF has no lobbyists in Washington DC, in fact doesn't even have an office in Washington DC. What they do, they do well: Litigating in court. But don't give them money to influence Congress.

But the EFF sided with Greenpeace, which IMO makes me question their sanity

> If it works for guns and the tea-party, then why can't it work for tech?

Because a viable critical mass of people are willing to be single-issue voters when it comes to guns. And that's the case because gun ownership is deeply ingrained into the culture of many parts of the country.

Neither is true for electronic privacy.

I remember being somewhat surprised by the regional success of the various Pirate Parties, which seem to be close to single-issue parties, at least if you consider the constellation of things around copyright/privacy/patents to be one issue. In fact their main problem seemed to be that they tried to turn into more than single-issue parties, at which point they collapsed into in-fighting because they didn't agree on anything else. But it suggests that, at least in some regions, there's a significant minority of people willing to single-issue vote on those issues. The U.S. so far doesn't seem to be one of them, but I'm not 100% confident that an organization rating candidates on EFF issues in a scorecard-style way couldn't have at least some influence, if it got enough recognition/PR, even if obviously not as big as the NRA's.

That doesn't work in a system like in the United States where we directly vote for a candidate who needs 50.1% of the vote. In most (all?) if the European countries where the pirate party has experienced success, 15% of the vote equals ~15% of the representation. In the US 15% gets you 0% representation.

> That doesn't work in a system like in the United States where we directly vote for a candidate who needs 50.1% of the vote.

First, 50.1% (or 51% or 50% + 1, more common alternative descriptions) is an inaccurate description of the requirement in a majority/runoff election, "greater than 50%" is correct (since votes are always in whole numbers, 50% + 0.5 would also be a correct minimum threshold.)

Second, many single-winner elections in the US are plurality rather than majority/runoff, for which the threshold is actually "greater than any other candidate" not "greater than 50%".

Third, the system used for elections is subject to change (in many states, through citizen initiative, so the "but the incumbents will never vote for it" objection doesn't apply), so, "it doesn't work in the existing electoral system" isn't really a reason something won't work, just a reason why making it workable also involves advocating for change in the electoral system.

You know what I meant on the 50.1 thing, so I'm not going to get into that.

I'm not saying the system we have now is the best one or that it can't be changed. I was just responding to the parent's question of whether a small single issue party could gain traction in the US like the Pirate Party has in other places. Our current system makes that nearly impossible at the national level.

There is only one obvious issue that could get the masses to fight the anti-privacy bills - the one they usually come bundled with, i.e. copyright. Most people will start to care when you deny them their pirated Game of Thrones or threaten to actually put them to jail for that House of Cards download. Obviously, this is something EFF can't get behind.

Incidentally, what started the huge European movement against SOPA was, AFAIR unrelated, coincidence - the FBI riding Megaupload. Most popular video streaming sites (which were using Megavideo as a video source) suddenly stopped working and the population of Poland went to the streets to fight against SOPA, realizing that the thing is serious. It's amazing how much activism you can get by depriving someone of the next episode of their favourite show.

The NRA is a good model for EFF in that the EFF really needs to grow their rank and file membership. Right now, not enough non-techie people care, or even know what EFF is. It is why what Snowden did was important (agree with it or not), because it pushed the tech privacy issues into mainstream awareness.

The reason for that lag is not some campaign which loses to the mainstream media, but a market driver. Think of all the people who were shocked after it was discovered that Samsung TVs could arbitrarily send background voice data back to a C&C. EFF done a good job there, but they always make it some rare thing. Parker Higgins' tweet about that seeped into the consumer space and Samsung probably suffered greatly, and the public were better off.

Now there are stories of Intel chipsets having all kinds of weirdness in them, and it is not sufficient to sit on the fence here. Things are changing

who is our Charleton Heston?

Pierre Omidyar perhaps, to go with the Lessig mention. He has the money and has put some of it where his mouth is.

Lawrence Lessig?

Edward Snowden from afar? Feels like he's involuntarily taken the torch from Aaron Schwartz.

More like John Oliver

We just need our own Waco or Ruby Ridge, I thought that would be Snowden but I guess I was wrong.

I've, for the past couple years, had an idea for a PAC specifically for tech issues. The PAC would also monitor and rate politicians stances on tech issues (I have a list of stances that would be part of the mission: net neutrality, privacy protections, data portability, and a few others). I've just never pushed very far with it.

You might like a pair of CNET columns I wrote 13 years ago calling for a PAC for tech issues:

http://www.cnet.com/news/is-it-time-for-a-geekpac/

http://www.cnet.com/news/perspective-dont-get-mad-get-even/

I interviewed Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform, for one of the columns; whether you agree or disagree with him, he's an able advocate for his issues. Here's what he said:

"One of the most important things the tech industry can do is a rating," Norquist says. "Every politician in this country wants to tell you that he's tech friendly...Pick 10 or 20 issues and give ratings. Then people who say they're tech friendly but they're not--there's a cost to that. You as a tech group don't have to advertise that. The candidate running against that person will promote it. It certainly puts the lie to some people running around who say they're tech friendly and don't have the records to back it up."

I also wrote some Perl code to scrape Thomas and create tech voting guides for Wired and CNET with an interactive Javascript map. Unfortunately I think the Wired one has died in a redesign, and the CNET one no longer works either. :( http://www.cnet.com/news/technology-voter-guide-2006-grading...

Push forward with it so the tech community can have a more full throated voice on issues involving the tech community. Politicians need to be afraid of losing elections.

Does there not already exist an organization that rates politicians on those issues? I would be very surprised.

I would also be very interested in this. Will do some research.

The hardest part is coming up with a thoughtful rubric.

I agree that we need some sort of "internet voters guide" or rating system for existing legislators. If the two of you (or others) would like to work on it, shoot me an email (in profile). This is the sort of thing Taskforce.is would love to work on I think.

> The tech world badly needs the equivalent of the NRA.

The NRA -- as a lobbying organization -- is a single-issue lobbying organization with an incredibly straightforward mission.

"The tech world" isn't an issue like "gun rights", and can't support an NRA-like organization. A more specific privacy-oriented viewpoint with the kind of simplicity and clarity that the NRA's mission has might -- but it would have only limited correlation to the "tech world" in its support.

Privacy is a resonably coherent subject, especially in the context of telco/internet regs. It's also a coherent area of constitutional law (bill of rights).

The "tech world" just seems like a straw man and easily falls down, for the obvious reasons.

Please don't conflate tech and privacy. From a tech perspective, there are very useful and interesting public safety projects that can come from interdepartmental data.

>privacy focused bills

How much tech revenue depends on spying on people and then selling advertisements? I have no idea, but it seems like a lot.

At worst, I'll get annoying advertisements for burqas. Don't see how these are comparable.

You mean like the EFF...

EFF is a 501(c)(3) organization, which isn't permitted to support or oppose candidates in an election. EFF can take a position on proposed legislation, but not on political candidates.

The EFF is too splintered for this goal. They do fantastic work in courts, but they don't currently have the resources to lobby successfully.

They began to start grading politicians, but it has since been neglected: https://standagainstspying.org/

That said, they are currently our best option. You can support them by donating ( https://supporters.eff.org/donate ) and setting them as your Amazon Smile charity.

Go even further and be a GOA, perhaps in addition to an NRA equivalent just to push the Overton window.

The NRA's power comes from its perfect political triangularity with a certain, vital voting bloc. There is no equivalent for digital rights.

Because ordinary voters care about "safety" than privacy.

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According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rifle_Association#Fin... the NRA receives the majority of its funding from small donors. I don't know what you consider "unbelievable", but it seems like the lack of corporate support wouldn't stop an organization like the NRA.

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