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Flood Washington with 1984

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79 pointsmmorearty32 comments

Should be "Brave New World", not 1984. Read Snowden's interview with New Yorker that's been posted here.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2013/06/edwa...

I read Brave New World a long time ago, but my memory of it does not include widespread surveillance; I am not sure it really fits this story well. Neither does 1984, of course; the leaker in this case is relatively low in the hierarchy of the government, and he is well-paid and lives in a beautiful place.

If anything, Minority Report is what we should send. The entire purpose of this program is to find terrorists before they commit their crimes. The surveillance is widespread (as it is in Minority Report). People live comfortable lives until they become targets, and becoming a target occurs without warning and can happen to anyone.

I think this will be the deciding moment whether it's 1984 or Brave New World. If Americans don't rise up in the streets and do something to change this, then I guess we'll have our answer, and I'd say that's a lot scarier than if it was 1984, because at least then there would be a slight glimmer of hope for overturning the government and changing things. But if it's Brave New World, then no one cares how authoritarian the country's leaders become and how much they abuse their power.

I'd say it's neither. Much of the power of the 1984 picture is the totalitarian state where everyone is afraid all the time, and that is not the image we have now.

But much of the picture in Brave New World is that there is no real need for hard repression as people simply don't rebel and are happy with their comfy lives.

The reality here would seems kind of in between (people mostly don't care _and_ the state is more scary).

At this moment, it seems a lot more like "Brazil" to me.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/‎

Oh the irony of using facebook to rally people for this.

You'd think this would help bring back individual websites and running your own smtp/pop3 setup.

Is it Ironic? If we are trying to send them a message I don't mind if they listen in on it.

Thanks for the (funny) vote of confidence.

- The OP

How many people do you think are capable of running their own mail server?

There is no irony here. People make the best use of the tools that they have to prevent a future where they wouldn't be able to use such tools because the government would ban/stop the protest.

By your logic, they should stop using their cellphones also and use carrier pigeons.

If they were using facebook to organize a boycott of facebook, then that would be ironic. This really isn't.

I think this campaign largely misses the more interesting problem, which is that we got to this point despite the fact that 1984 is a bestselling cornerstone of literature. It's been required reading in high schools for years and years.

Are the representatives on the receiving end of this campaign going to slap their heads and go "Oh golly, I never thought of that"?

There's no easy way to get through to people who think the benefits of ubiquitous surveillance outweigh the costs. They know 1984, and they don't see themselves in the role of big brother. Throwing this book at them isn't going to change that.

Edit: "There's no easy way" suggests that this is meant as a solution, which obviously isn't the campaigner's intention. What I mean is that I don't think this will have an impact other than to make the recipients think their constituents are oversimplifying the issue, a la Godwin's law.

If you want to make a piece of literature irrelevant, make it a mandatory reading for school.

That's a good soundbite (honestly), but it doesn't jibe with my experience.

The goal here is presumably to create a news story, and raise awareness. So why not send books to journalists instead? If I'm a journalist, which do you think will have a larger effect on me: seeing some anonymous people online say they're sending copies of 1984 to congresspeople (who will quietly throw them out, presumably), or receiving several copies of 1984 myself?

Good point. I can answer it, hopefully with good points of my own, since I'm the guy who created the Flood Washington with 1984 campaign earlier this evening.

Several reasons:

- Elected officials have a direct vote. "These programs are subject to congressional oversight and congressional re-authorization and congressional debate." — President Obama on June 7. - If the campaign is successful, journalists will hear about it in a way that makes it more interesting to report on. If I'm a journalist, I want to write about a grass-roots campaign to change Washington--not a campaign to--what, change journalism? - I'm upset with elected officials such as my own Dianne Feinstein who are publicly defending the program. I have no beef with journalists. - It didn't even occur to me to send the book to journalists.

P.S. You are correct about the goal, but there is a further goal you did not mention: to change the law. The best way to do this: change the minds of lawmakers.

Elected officials respond to political pressure, but 100,000 books to officials from across the country do not represent significant political pressure by themselves. They could become political pressure if they turn into a news story, and more people hear about it; but if elected officials are the ones receiving the books, they have a high level of control over how much attention the story receives, and since they don't want to be subjected to pressure, it's against their best interest to publicize it.

Of course, you can create your own publicity to some degree, and I do agree that elected officials are the ones who need to fix this, which makes them a good target in many ways.

I think journalists are already quite aware of this story. It's been top news in every major news outlet since it broke.

Yeah, wonderful idea, let's remind them that we're 30 years behind schedule.

That's what happens when you rely on contractors with the lowest bid. Billions in cost overruns and a forgotten schedule.

Which schedule would that be?

From 1984 to now ~= 30 years

I was contemplating a different schedule.

Slacktivism at it's best.

What are you doing to make the world better? When's the last time you did anything that helped make things better? Yes, this might be a relatively easy, small thing to do, but at least it's something. Who knows? Maybe one of the representatives / senators actually notices and pauses for a moment and thinks. Stranger things have happened.

And it's "its".. "It's" is a conjunction. "Its" is possessive.

You are quite presumptuous in assuming that I have not done anything for others recently. I have in fact but I don't think that I have to justify myself to you. What sort of argument is it that "stranger things have happened"? If you got cancer, would you start jumping on one leg on the off chance that it would cure your cancer? Probably not. You'd probably want to concentrate your limited resources in a way that might actually have some results.

>> And it's "its".. "It's" is a conjunction. "Its" is possessive.

Lazy, useless nonsense like this gives people the feeling they've done something when they've done literally nothing. Some of those people might have actually done something meaningful if they didn't have a release valve like this to ease their conscious.

> And it's "its".. "It's" is a conjunction. "Its" is possessive.

"It's" is a contraction, Brainius.

Stop being a baby.

Be careful, they might consider it an instruction book.

... and create a Ministry of Truth. We already have a Dept of "Defense".

Department of War!

well then we send them copies of Fahrenheit 451!

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