Unsurprising. I wish that mass surveillance didn't have complicit bipartisan support, but people in power only ever seem interested in expanding it.
Interestingly, there was a three-month extension of the three Patriot Act provisions, included in a House resolution to prevent a government shutdown. It's bad that these things are linked in the same resolution to begin with, and it leads to an unnecessarily hard choice for politicians. Even someone wary of mass surveillance can't just say no to keeping the government open. Often, this is how a lot of this stuff gets passed.
Why are the two disparate things so often tied together in the first place? Similarly today, we see Republicans tying together the repeal of section 230 with the extra stimulus money demanded by the president. It really makes no logical sense why these things are bundled together as one bill, either.
It makes perfect logical sense for a majority-government party which wants to quash scrutiny from the opposition, while also ensuring support from its own dissenters.
There are lots of people like this, but they are either apolitical, apathetic, hopeless, don't want to get their hands dirty, think politics is beneath them, that their resistance would be ineffectual, or they are too busy with other things.
That has to change.
So, while I don't think I'm any of those things you list, and I've often thought that I would love to run for office some day, just glancing at the paperwork required to show up to the race is typically enough to turn me off of the idea for a while.
Things like organizing, volunteering your time and expertise to political organizations you support, protesting, documenting and reporting on abuses, or doing something that many HN readers are in a rather privileged position of affording to do: donate significant amounts of money to the organizations whose work they support.
On top of that, and more to the point, most of those things come with the same basic cost- you won't make it past the front door anywhere without answering nosy questions that end up on record somewhere. Even donations aren't private; consider e.g. campaign finance law. I think the only thing on your list you can just show up to is protests, and those can come with severe costs in the end, too.
The general rule of thumb I've come to is that most people who do not want to end up documented on some unexpected corner of the internet would be well advised to stay as far away from government or politics as they possibly can. Hence the irony: anyone who wants to work on fixing society's privacy problem- or anything else for that matter- at essentially any level will first have to throw away their own. This is a great reason to stay home, instead.
(As a side note under "volunteering your expertise", I don't think I've ever seen any organization I cared about express need for e.g. volunteer developers. It seems to be an all but useless skill for fixing these sorts of problems.)
Even if true, and I don't think it always is (as there's often a "power behind the throne", and many such powers prefer to run things from behind the scenes rather be in the public eye, partially for the reasons mentioned earlier in the thread), elected officials rarely run campaigns on their own -- they need a staff and lots of feet on the ground, and they also need competent advisors during the campaign and after they get elected. Though the ultimate deciding power may lie in the elected official (for those officials who aren't puppets), the smart ones listen to their advisors, so the advisors wield great power in how and what they advise. This doesn't even mention the power of various gatekeepers that can prevent or facilitate access to the official or are delegated power themselves, or are appointed by the elected official. In all of these ways one can affect change without holding elected office.
Even when you can't directly influence an elected official you still have power in selecting which official to support.
Given the scope of human experience now encompassed by "politics", that's not sustainable.
Or as someone else once put it:
"130. Technology advances with great rapidity and threatens freedom at many different points at the same time (crowding, rules and regulations, increasing dependence of individuals on large organizations, propaganda and other psychological techniques, genetic engineering, invasion of privacy through surveillance devices and computers, etc.). To hold back any ONE of the threats to freedom would require a long and difficult social struggle. Those who want to protect freedom are overwhelmed by the sheer number of new attacks and the rapidity with which they develop, hence they become apathetic and no longer resist. To fight each of the threats separately would be futile. Success can be hoped for only by fighting the technological system as a whole; but that is revolution, not reform."
The choice is between doing nothing and doing what you can within your limited, fallible, human means.
Even the giants of history have failed to fix everything, but even small people have managed to make a difference.
The problem is that too many people capable of making a difference don't even try.
What? Vote? Write letters? Bitch on the internet? All that does is make people feel better about the system as it rolls over them.
The system has more power over our lives than at any other time in history because people act in the ways the system permits them to act. I don't have the answers, but for sure it isn't going to be more of the same.
Except crime rates are at their lowest points in decades[0].
[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/amer...
Where, exactly, did I say we shouldn't "support lowering crime rates?"
[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/take...
From the link[0] I posted previously"
"Lastly, we turn to another place where crime and violence spiked in 2015: Baltimore. This year, Baltimore’s story continues to be a mixed one. The total number of crimes reported in the city fell by almost 6 percent compared to 2018 (through the last week of November), with violent crime falling by about 2.5 percent. Robbery, burglary, theft, and auto theft decreased modestly, while reported rape fell dramatically — with law enforcement documenting nearly 26 percent fewer offenses."
As I said, crime is down in Baltimore. Continuing to say say "crime is up in Baltimore" doesn't make it true.
[0] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/take...
No: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore
> Continuing to say say "crime is up in Baltimore" doesn't make it true.
I could say the same.
During prohibition the national murder rate was incredibly high. When alcohol was legalized suddenly the murder rate plummeted.
You see, when you take a popular substance and make sale/distribution illegal, you create an opportunity for those willing to take the risk to get rich making and selling said substance.
But the problem with getting rich that way is now you have a bullseye on your back. your place of business is loaded with cash and valuable substances. It’s hard to put cash in banks without risking arrest, and you can’t call the police if someone threatens or steals from you. But you can easily afford your own guns, and your own security.
And when someone tries to kill you or steal from you or rat you out, you just kill them. After all, the prison sentences for trafficking are just as bad as the ones for murder, so you won’t be making things worse for yourself.
And the good news is you have plenty of money to pay others to do lots of crimes to protect your business and markets. Enough to buy your own corrupt cops even. Not only will they top you off, but they’ll be happy to no knock raid your competitors.
All of this is equally true for pimps (why hire willing sex workers when unwilling are cheaper? After all you going to jail either way, make no money while the sin shines), and bookies, and gambling operations, etc, etc, etc.
https://www.baltimorepolice.org/sites/default/files/General%...