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Comment by metadatabad | Hacker News Reader

I remember someone from here posting about how the user contacted Feinstein and got the most boilerplate response possible. They honestly do not care about the citizens at this point.

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If you want them to care, stop by their offices and have a really rational talk with their staffers and the representative. If you can explain things with stories (for example, where a backdoor was used to crack ___ resulting in very personal damage to ____), you will change minds. Get 20-30 tech leaders to go meet with Feinstein and discuss how this will affect them. If she won't budge at that point, then maybe y'all need to vote for someone else. Encryption is easy to explain: if the good guys can use the backdoor, the bad guys will use the backdoor, to. The cops don't get keys to your car, safe, or home for the exact same reason.

You're assuming good faith in elected representatives and their staff.

I wonder if anyone in the last decade has _ever_ walked into their rep's office, talked to them, and changed their vote on a key issue. I really doubt it.

I have. Multiple times, but not every time. Reps get close to zero direct interaction with constituents. It's usually filtered by a group with an agenda (petitions, campaigns). When you go as a citizen and talk (not scream or debate) about an issue that really matters, you will get their ear. You may not get the vote you want, but you will be take seriously, and the staff and rep will discuss what you are bringing to them. If you have 2-3 people approach your rep with the same problem it will have the same effect as a petition with thousands of signatures.

Perusing /r/politics, all I see is astroturfing, and it garners tens of thousands of upvotes.

The age of true democratic participation is over. Politicians have no need to care about the ordinary constituent to win elections.

They just need to win over the elite, and know how to deliver their scripts.

Actually, reality is counterintuitive. Being in congress is a terrible job where you do not even have time to read 1/2 of the bills you are going to vote on this week. So you count on others to help you. Mostly this is staffers, interns and lobbyists because those are the people who show up and help. If you as a citizen want to make change, then all you have to do is show up, in person and have a friendly conversation with the rep or even just with their staffers. Come with easy to understand stories, and be able to rationally talk about the other side. E.g. I realize that law enforcement has a strong story about encryption, but there is a reason we don't require home, car and safe buyers to give law enforcement a master key. Yes, some bad cops might steal, but what is worrisome is that the bad guys might get the the kes. That's exactly what they are asking for here: a master key.

For more information about how to interact and influence your government (it is, after all, made up of us, at least in the US -- and in other places too, but I'm American so I focus on that), check out Take Back Your Government[0] by Robert Heinlein.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Back_Your_Government

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