I know cynicism is not very productive, but I have never understood the point of petitions like this. Surely people know they are useless unless backed up by billions of dollars of funding?
It's amazing how practical some of the things that Aaron worked on are.
Is there any data that sending template emails works? It seems like its too easy to write off as people investing minimal effort, and not sending a unique message.
I honestly don't know,, but this does not feel 'effective' to me.
There's some irony there.
Think of it like a poll. Would you make the claim that politicians are willing to write off people who respond to polls just because they all answer the same question or the question isn't somehow the "right" one? Probably not.
Of course, it's not a poll because people self-select. But even still, if the report to the representative says "this week, we had 37 letters about gun control and 43,742 about surveillance", well, it's clear what the politician wants to say that he or she is doing something about when he or she next sees a reporter.
If the most you can be bothered with is typing in your name and hitting send, why would any Congress member even believe you'll bother to vote in the next election? Or donate? Or convince other people to vote for their opponent?
I'm Paddy Mullen, and instead of donating $50 to your campaign, I donated it to the EFF. I did this because you ignore the rights of the citizens and haven't held the NSA responsible for the infringements on privacy.
Let the staffers get 100s - 1000s of calls that way.
> It's amazing how practical some of the things that Aaron worked on are.
I predict such large-spectrum email delivery will:
- either arrive to the designated inbox, and get ignored
- or get stopped by a spam filter
If you want something to happen, at least write a personalized email, or better, call. It's more difficult to answer calls with a form letter.
Not to the NSA! With no effort at all, they've gathered the names of 100,000 subversives to put on a secret watch list!
(I hope I'm kidding.)
That's a dark place to which I hope we never return.
It's far worse than "just confirmation." If the NSA is training a machine learning algorithm to identify subversives based on various features/activities of those people, they need a set of labeled (i.e. subversive = yes/no) training data for the algorithm to learn from. They now have 100,000 extra training samples to help the machine learning algorithm better tune its ability to identify subversives. So, not only have the 100,000 people moved from the "probably subversive" to "known subversive" column, but the NSA is better able to predict subversiveness for all of the people that didn't sign the petition by comparing their features/activities to those that did.
On the other hand, if the 100,000 people who already signed have now identified me as a subversive, I'd better go ahead and sign, in the hopes that it will maximize the odds of reigning in the NSA before they come get me.
Oh well, I'll let you guys know how good the food is in the secret prisons.
- NSA
Now go ahead - downvote my post - feel the power :)