Restore the Fourth
restorethefourth.net
restorethefourth.net
Edit: Also, call 1-STOP-323-NSA to be connected with your local congresspeople. You will be given a list of talking points and it's super easy. Call today (hell, call now), as government offices will be closed tomorrow.
But also, bring others! Friends! Family! If they don't understand why, explain it! Ask them to do the same!
Although pvnik who replied to you points out everyone being off work which is a very solid point. Apparently it was decided to be the best date. I guess I like the symbolism. Still not sure though.
Perhaps it's because I'm not an American and learned what I know about American law by reading it cold rather than growing up within a web of assumptions about it, but it seems obvious to me that 4th amendment protections are actually fairly narrow, because it allows for all sorts of reasonable searches and seizures.
The fact is that as Americans you don't have a proper constitutional guarantee of privacy. You have a half-assed one that was semi-invented by a liberal court in the 1960s in what even liberal legal scholars consider to be an embarrassing example of judicial overreach - and this is why the right wing in America has never been able to accept Roe v Wade. The US needs a proper and explicit right to privacy, not one that was discovered in the penumbrae of other amendments and which could easily be lost there again, and not one that is subject to first amendment attacks (the usual argument of junk/bulk mail senders).
Thanks to everyone who's helped so far to make it! It's been really awe inspiring to have over 20 people come and figure out both server scaling and a new frontend for the site over the course of about 24 hours.
We're working on new event pages at the moment: they should be online in the next couple of hours.
If you're interested in helping with projects like this, sign up below. And please do call 1-STOP-323-NSA to tell Congress to stop surveillance.
Props to you for gathering us together, Sina.
Long story short: GO! DRAG OTHERS!
I never thought I'd have this thoughts in the US. Never. We often referred to banana republic dictatorships enslaving their people. Never in the US, right?
Today you have to be afraid to stick your neck out because the government is watching and recording as much of your life as possible. And there's a likelihood they will use what they have on you to exercise their ability to take revenge against anything you say or do, legality and constitutionality be damned. What the IRS did to Tea Party groups is probably just the tip of a very large iceberg.
The uncomfortable reality is that the only peaceful way to fix the problem is to expose yourself to the potential of government retaliation by, ironically, exercising your right to free speech and assembly.
And so we have to participate in these demonstrations with full acceptance of the potential risks.
Ultimately it will boil down to the political process. And that means really giving our reality some thought when it comes time to choose your representatives.
If you are a hard-core Liberal it is time you wake up and realize the monster your party has created. They are intent in growing government and taking control over as much of your life as possible. Time to apply the same passion and energy you had in voting-in Obama to let him know that this has to stop.
If you are a hard-core Republican and keep voting-in these religious assholes bent on world domination and delusional social control (gays, abortion, etc.). Wake up and think. You are just as guilty as Liberals of voting as a tribe rather than as an independent thinker.
If you are a Libertarian, wake up and make sure other's understand why this is the best path forward for our country. Less government. Less intrusion. Less control. More freedom.
THIS IS NOT THE COUNTRY WE WANT TO LEAVE TO OUR CHILDREN.
Think about that for a moment. Don't be so fucking selfish.
They, the government, politicians, agencies, work for us. They don't own us.
I still believe we can fix this within the legal and political framework already in place. Next election be very careful about who you vote for. Don't fall pray to pandering. We need adults in the room who can fix problems and stop us form sliding into the abyss.
The problems are tough and not everyone is going to get their freebies. Don't let them pander to your needs or to your group (religious, union, whatever) and buy your votes. Every fucked South American regime has a foundation in buying popular votes by pandering, giveaways and pitting the masses against intellectual or business leaders. If you want the US to be like them, continue voting like sheep. If you don't, let the ruling class know it. They work for us. They do not get to do as they please with our country.
Think.
Hint: If you use Snowden as an example you automatically forfeit your right to participate in any reasonable discussion on the matter.
https://www.google.com/search?q=free+speech+arrest
I'd also argue that having speech consigned to these places[1] when the whole country is supposedly a free speech zone doesn't follow the spirit of the 1st Amendment. Also if they setup a free speech zone and you don't use it then you can be arrested for that
Obviously you can't be charged for "exercising free speech rights" since that isn't a crime, the charge is always something else like "disturbing the peace" or "resisting arrest" or some other trumped up nonsense.
It is required by law to acquire a permit before protesting. This is very easy to do, everyone has permits for the July 4th protest already. The government has not historically blocked protest permit requests
Also, kind of ridiculous that you need a permit to protest.
Take off the tinfoil for a moment and think rationally. What happens during a protest? Often, huge masses of people gather in a single public area (a street, a park, a government building, etc). While protesters are generally well-intentioned, wherever there are large gatherings of people, there are criminally-minded folk who seek to exploit this via looting, theft, assault, and other wonderful things that the dregs of humanity like to perform. Additionally, it often gums up public works, traffic, etc. It's important that the police (yes, most police officers are just middle class folks like us that are interested in preserving general peace) be aware of these types of things so that they can provide protection for both the protesters and the citizens of the city.
[0]http://books.google.com/books?id=8_HWOTtdsMUC&pg=RA1-PA126&l...
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/police-arrestin...
Jared Marcum was arrested in school for wearing an NRA T-Shirt.
The Bank of America graffitist was arrested for using sidewalk chalk.
Occupy protestors in Nashville were arrested, and a judge later proclaimed that their arrests were a violation of their freedom of speech rights.
I watched a video yesterday in which a dog was shot because the dog's owner was recording the police on his cell phone.
Cameron D'Ambrosia was arrested for posting lyrics to a rap song on Facebook.
Or the Irvine 11, who were convicted (thankfully of pretty minor sentences) for protesting a speech?
Or Walter Bagdasarian, who said that somebody ought to "shoot the nigger" (referring to Obama) who spent years in prison before being released on a circuit court appeal?
In short, the 'successful charge' does add height to the hurdle, but the rampant arresting of people for their exercise of free speech is a problem, whether or not it results in a conviction. For many Americans, a week spent in jail, later to be released, is a very big problem; both from the result of lowered reputation as well as the financial impact.
Walter Bagdasarian not only exhorted readers of a public message board to 'shoot the nig [sic],' he also sent emails containing text such as "Pistol??? Dude, Josh needs to get us one of these, just shoot the nigga’s car and POOF!" with a link to a high-calibre rifle advertisement, among various other even more obnoxious statements. Bagdasarian happened to own a .50 cal rifle at the time he was making predictions that "[Obama] He will have a 50 cal in the head soon."
I encourage you to read the full decision, as well as Wardlaw's dissent (with which I agree - Kosinski's reasoning seems strained, pendant as it is on other people being unaware of Bagdasian's ownership of the kind of gun whose use he was predicting) at http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/07/19/09... The government did not appeal the 9th Circuit decision, as far as I know.
Bagdasarian did not spend years in prison, or even go to jail. He was sentenced to time served (when he was detained prior to arraignment, after which he was freed on $100k bail), ordered to spend 60 days in a half-way house, undergo 2 years of supervised release, and fined $500. http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/oct/26/no-prison-la-mesa-man-c...
I'm not sure why you chose this example, but you significantly mischaracterized his remarks and the penalty he suffered.
I don't think the Irvine 11 are are going to see their sentences overturned at appeal, as their protest took place in the context of a private event and they were convicted of disrupting it by repeatedly shouting the speaker down, rather than for the content of their criticism (which I thought was entirely reasonable).
I will look into the Terak Mehenna case, which I'm not familiar with but which comes up for appeal later this month.
I haven't read the full decision, so I will, and will likely be informed. I also don't claim superior legal knowledge, though I am studying for the bar, but that is despite not having a juris doctorate, so there are large gaps in my knowledge, especially in crim.
I could cite more examples, though perhaps the Mehenna case will be the best example of the ones cited anyway.
Regardless, thanks for the corrections. I'll look into them.
Believe it or not I'm more drawn to defense work.
I've been studying law for some time, but it only recently occurred to me that I should even attempt the bar, at some point in the future. A friend of mine keeps telling me I should blog about it, which I've agreed is a good idea to cement my findings, but I'm debating whether or not anyone would care about a random asshole trying to pass the bar enough to make the blog public.
Here's[1] some aggregated info on Mehanna, and also his wikipedia entry[2], and ACLU's[3] recap.
[1] - http://archive.recapthelaw.org/mad/119881/
Not an arrest, but pretty fucked up. You seem to lack a lot of historical context.
Personally I think our best hope is to try to fix the media. If our media was doing what it was intended to do, keep us informed on the goings on of our representatives, the actions of our government might actually reflect the wishes and best interest of its constituents. Unfortunately that's not the case today.
Edited to explain: Fixing the news media could be viewed as addressing an underlying cause for a dysfunctional representational system.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government
If you look at it from a capitalistic perspective, I suppose you're right. I meant it from a civics perspective. For "job," try substituting "importance." You can't have a functioning democracy (or representational government) without an informed electorate.
> Presently this has arguably not enough to do with informing the populace, but I don't see that this is substantially more the case now than historically.
You're right that the motives to sell papers (capitalistic goals) don't require them to fulfil their role as a watchdog (civics goals). I don't think these incentives were ever aligned, and I think that's what you meant by your last statement.
I never said that it was any different in the past. Not being "substantially [different] now than historically" doesn't preclude something from being broken. I was just explaining to the parent commenter who said, "I'm not sure how fixing the media would change that."
Pardon, but this is not a partisan issue. I do not mean to derail this discussion, but these programs have been in place since the 1970's (with mail covers before that) and both sides of the aisle are equally culpable. The programs themselves are now just receiving their proper public reveal and the fact that they have existed for so long suggests that the Pandora's Box has been opened and the only way to shut is to bring the programs to the forefront of the national conversation and demand, as a people, that it come to a halt.
Splitting it into a partisan bickering match is exactly what the politicians want because it confuses the real issue at hand. Do not play into their hand.
That isn't to say that the Republicans aren't culpable, but in implementing the tools used to carve out more power for the government (abuse of the commerce clause, general welfare clause, contracts clause, etc.), you can almost exclusively look to the liberals for blame.
I should also point out that while I'll pile equal amounts of blame (but for different reasons) to both liberals and conservatives, I lay the blame at the feet of the citizenry pretty squarely, for not knowing what they're voting for, not bothering to check on who they're voting in, and for routinely voting in the better looking candidate, or believing rhetoric without comparing to voting records, and for continually violating Tytler's dilemma, which suggests that a democracy can only last so long as the citizenry doesn't realize it can vote itself favors from the public largesse.
Your final point is dead on. The populace needs to wake up and realize what a terrifying course we are currently on and do something to change it.
This was enabled by a couple of Supreme Cases under FDR - which, while I'm usually wary of attributing SCOTUS actions to the president of the time, FDR was responsible for the appointment of EIGHT Supreme Court Justices, stacking the deck - Wickard v. Filburn eroded all libertarian meaning of the Commerce Clause. Helvering v. Davis eroded the concept of personal economic liberty, in that since its interpretation, the government is allowed to take money from you and give it to others, as part of the New Deal push for Social Security.
These two cases are also considered, generally, to be some of the worst decisions by the Supreme Court, and both of which led to vast expansion in government powers. As those expansions were used primarily to take away from the citizenry, they subsequently eroded civil liberties.
The commerce clause is now what is used to allow the federal government to arrest California medical marijuana proprietors, even though it is perfectly legal in the state of California, which means that the impact of the clause has effectively eliminated the idea of states' rights. If the states have no sovereign rights from the federal government, then you can rest assured that the people don't either.
Funny, I would think that some of the worst decisions are generally considered to be Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Bush vs. Gore (the last of which a former SCOTUS Justice has even said they regret granting certiorari to the case).
whose impact is still being felt.
There, I've fixed it. The cases you referenced have clearly been course corrected by amendments to the Constitution and subsequent cases. It would be foolish to suggest now that black people can't exercise judicial standing, or have access to the same water fountains as white people.
It would be equally foolish now to suggest that the government doesn't have the right to take your money and give it to someone else, though that was the case before the New Deal appointments to SCOTUS.
As for Bush v Gore, I understand that O'Connor has regretted granting cert, but not the decision on the whole. Beyond that, I haven't studied the case so I can't speak for its merits (or lack thereof), but either way, my citation of very bad Supreme Court cases is obviously a very incomplete list, but I thought the cases I referenced were particularly appropriate given the question asked.
The difficulty with which to find a case to directly challenge it on the merits you want it to be challenged, and have that case escalated to SCOTUS, and have that case be heard, and then receive a ruling clearly in your favor without some other myriad legal issues clouding it from the main point? The odds are infinitesimal.
It is a real problem though. One book that addresses these problems well is Robert Kagan's Adversarial Legalism. As for the situation in the US, there's a school of thought that argues sufficient resolutions have been lodged with Congress to warrant a Constitutional Convention, and last Spring, Indiana, Georgia, and Kansas passed fresh resolutions in hopes of getting some momentum behind the process. Of course the problem is the mutual suspicion and factional acrimony that would inevitably characterize such an undertaking, but then that was true of the first one as well. I'm with Prof Sanford Levinson of UT in thinking that it would a good idea to give the nation a legal tune-up, but my political views are, ah, eccentric.
Perhaps I have a different definition of civil liberties than you. I subscribe to the following definition, as proposed in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_liberties)
> Civil liberties are civil rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights. Though the scope of the term differs amongst various countries, some examples of civil liberties include the freedom from slavery and forced labor, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, freedom of conscience, religion, expression, press, assembly and association, speech, the right to privacy, the right to equal treatment and due process and the right to a fair trial, as well as the right to life. Other civil liberties may also include the right to own property, the right to defend oneself, and the right to bodily integrity.
What do you consider your civil liberties to be?
Making this about parties misses the point: they're playing for the same team and serving the same masters. All else is theater.
I could cite plenty of examples in which the Republicans eroded our civil liberties and grew the military machine as well, but that didn't seem to be what the grand-parent was objecting to.
Furthermore, you can go back a little bit further in history to the regime of George W. Bush who stole the election and point out how his programs set the ground for this type of surveillance. Then you can go back further and point out the Echelon program under Clinton (and Waco and Ruby Ridge), etc. etc.
The point is we can continue this partisan bickering match from behind our keyboards ad infinitum and never take to the streets and work on building a movement.
How are broad based coalitions that demand change and get it built? By people setting aside their differences and working towards a common goal.
So the next time you see someone who's all herp-derp Ron Paul or an Obamazombie Libtard (I'm using inflammatory language here to make a point), instead of arguing with them to try and assign blame, why not invite them to the next Linux Users Group meeting and show them how to install crypto software? Or the next planning meeting for the next demo?
It's only by setting aside our political differences and taking small, baby steps working with a diverse group of people can we build a strong coalition that can't be divided by petty bickering as it starts to gain political power.
I never thought I'd have this thoughts in the US. Never.
Then you either haven't been in the US very long or aren't a student of history.
Not that it makes it right, but this has always been the case. Whether you were a suffragette, a unionist, a war protester, a civil rights protestor, an anti-abortion/pro-life protestor, occupy, etc. The list goes on and will always go on.
When you fight 'the man' you can (and should) expect him to fight back - sometimes unfairly.
You need to read more books. Start with something about coal mine strikes, or the general history of the labor rights movement.
The reality is, nobody is going to shoot you and your friends in the head for marching around chanting about NSA surveillance. They won't even point firehoses at you, or sic dogs on you. You are freer than Americans have been at virtually any other point in our country's history.
To add to that, I'd also recommend Eight Hours For What We Will. It's an excellent look at another aspect of labor history--the history of working class leisure. Very fascinating and insightful.
And it's really not that hard to look up a user's profile to see where they work if they put that sort of information there.
You know, a lot of people here look up to you. When you write stuff like that it has a lot more influence than when some newbie account does. I would probably say that the influence is negative, assuming HN is a thing that you care about.
After submitting I see that you changed your post. The link is not much better.
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5992358
> I'm glad you approve. No, wait, I don't give a shit.
So someone asked if you've done work for the NSA. Who cares? Clearly you have the ability, it's not the most offensive thing in the world even if it's a bit naive. The person doesn't necessarily know that it's totally against your values, assuming that this is the source of the offense.
I'm not offended at someone suggesting I might have worked for NSA. You still don't get it.
(I changed the parent not because I'm uncomfortable with it, but because I wrote it before I saw the comment below that I ended up replying to; either "go fuck yourself" or the response I wrote downthread work for me, but both together seemed pointless).
Even if true, I wouldn't say this indicated you were a shill, because shills are generally paid to push propaganda.
People are naturally biased by their experiences in positive or negative ways. You made what could be construed as a pro-NSA comment in an environment dominated by anti-NSA sentiment, and somebody made an assumption that maybe you had a good experience working at the NSA and wanted to clarify it.
For what it's worth, it never occurred to me that you were a shill or a former employee, the suggestion is absurd and totally out of left-field.
Respectfully, not because I'm fed up talking about this but because I don't want to be one of those threads where 'pg has to comment and say "will you guys please stop", I'm going to leave it at that.
I recall you checking me on a similar point once upon a time.
Edit: for what it's worth, I agree with your observation that things aren't as bad as, say, they were with the Pinkertons breaking strikes up.
Still, don't be a tool.
As for being a tool, well, it wasn't an awful question. For what it's worth I never worked with them either.
HN has too much tolerance for this 1000% totally bogus intellectually insulting rhetorical tactic. It demeans everyone.
The people writing these idiotic "you must be a shill for {Microsoft,Mozilla,NSA}" comments think they're clever, but what they're really saying is "not only do I not understand what the Fundamental Attribution Error is, but I can't even comprehend the idea of someone disagreeing with me or even presenting a fact or idea that challenges my preconceptions; no, it's much more likely that this is a bad faith comment than that I don't know everything there is to know about every topic".
And then other people cheer them on!
There is no online community anywhere on the Internet less capable of spotting a shill than Hacker News. Any competent shill could immediately see how to game the site.
I was just offering a perspective on effective methods of communication. Whether it means anything to anyone other than myself, it has no effect on my continued meager offerings in the future.
Anyways...
Today at noon, I hope to see tptacek-class crypto experts at our Seattle Westlake Mall, I hope to see some crypto hackavists providing popular personal security advice and tools.
Includes not only an intro to labor history, but also to civil rights history, and American Indian war-of-extermination history, and of course the charming US imperial history of the 20th century. (Not that any other country's imperial history is much prettier.)
If you want to fill in some gaps, and want to ensure you don't end up as some kind of do-gooder, add Kissinger's Diplomacy. It's very interesting, and the ideas in it probably won't leave you wanted for war crimes in several first-world countries.
Did I miss something?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...
[2] http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/03/198129...
Discretion and basic human intelligence is a vital part of the system, and in that case it is not being used.
For example, a frequent objection to the government of today is its willingness to engage in drone strikes. It's true that these represent a significant change in battle, since US is risking only some flying hardware but no longer a pilot. It's also true that whenever we attack someone elsewhere we risk creating a new enemy who wishes to avenge the first target.
On the other hand, this has to be viewed in the context of diminishing casualties over time. Drone strikes are far more discriminating than cruise missile attacks, which were the preferred means of retaliation 20-30 years ago; and cruise missile strikes are in turn more discriminating than tactics like carpet bombing of 40-50 years ago. It's instructive to compare this with America's first outing on the international stage, the Spanish-American war (1895-98), which was rapidly followed by the Philippine-American war (1899-1902), when the newly-acquired territory of the Philippines promptly rebelled. The latter conflict was truly horrific, with the US engaging in what would be indisputably classed as genocide today. Moral low points of the 'war on terror' have involved US soldiers photographed in mocking poses with prisoners of war or dead bodies. Back then, veterans were proud to pose atop the massed bones of thousands, in scenes as gruesome as anything from WW2. If you can overlook the messy design and are interested in the history, this is about the most comprehensive resource online: http://moviephilippines.blogspot.com/2013/04/documentary-phi... ...but given that these events took place over a century ago, books are still a better resource (which was how I learned about it).
My point here is not to say there's 'nothing to see here,' but to warn against a kind of historical revisionism that paints the past in idealistic terms as some sort of Eden from which we have since fallen, because appeals to the idea of a noble past to which we must turn back can be leveraged to resurrect injustice as easily as ideals.
I strongly recommend looking for the Penguin Classics edition of the Federalist Papers, which contains an outstanding introduction of ~70 pages by historian Isaac Kramnick which delineates the factors and factions that gave birth to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The actual positions of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists still echo through American politics today, and it's worth remembering that the (many) opponents of the Constitution considered it a tyrannical imposition on what had up to then been a confederacy of free States. Whether that change in the form of government made Americans more or less free remains a matter of intense dispute.
The'll just round you up like cattle in big orange nets and arrest you. Guess that's a little better though.
The government didn't have the capability of near-omniscience, down to the level of an individual. They couldn't video-surveil entire cities in real time. They couldn't execute military action at massive scale. They didn't operate in a climate of such overwhelming political apathy that allowing military forces to operate domestically, seize people off the street, and throw them in a hole, forever, generates little more than an online petition and a few calls to Congress.
In short, we are orders of magnitude less free than we have ever been, simply by virtue of the incomprehensible power of the federal government. Just because they have not deigned to exercise it on a large scale (up till now), doesn't mean they can't, or won't. It just means they haven't needed to (yet). As is the case on many topics, I believe Frank Zappa summed it up best:
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Hmmm. That feels a little condescending. I could be wrong.
At any rate, I didn't say that they'd shoot, firehose or otherwise physically interface with you in any way. There are far more effective ways to cause pain in the modern age than to actually touch someone. For example, the IRS could harass the shit out of you for the next ten years. That'd be life changing. Or how about your boss and co-workers get phone calls asking about your "suspicious activities".
Yet again, here's the link from another thread on HN:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352432/free-justin-car...
How about them apples? They might not shoot you, but they can sure as hell ruin your life.
My point is that the regime we seem to be constructing --a system where we are all naked and exposed in front of our government at many levels-- is one where we become their property to do with as they wish. They gather data on you at every level and can then turn your own life against you.
The point is that our government should not have the power to do this. Period.
Or look at the LGBT history. For example, the modern gay rights movement in USA, started with the Stonewall riots in 1969. At the time cross-dressing or drag was illegal, you have to wear enough items of "gender appropriate" clothing, if you're a man wearing make up, you were arrested! Dancing with members of the same sex was illegal and an arrestable offence. So much for their constitutional rights.
Dude, I try. Believe me.
You can lead a human to knowledge, but you can't make him think.
When I talk to Democrats, they assume that Libertarians are just "the Atheist wing of the Republican Party" and when I talk to Republicans they assume that I'm a Jesus-hating infidel who happens to like guns.
Still, there are encouraging signs of progress here and there... I hear more and more about the rise of "liberaltarians" from the Left, and on some of the pro-gun forums I frequent - where you usually mostly encounter dyed-in-the-wool Republicans - I'm seeing more and more libertarian leaning verbiage.
I think, ultimately, as our government grows larger and larger and more corrupt and more authoritarian, it's going to reach a point where everybody will start to notice that the path we're on is wrong, regardless of their present party affiliation. When that starts to happen (maybe it already is), we may see an opening for more libertarians to enter the mainstream and perhaps even get elected to Federal offices. There's already a huge crack in the GOP between the neocon/theocrat type "conservatives" and the Ron/Rand Paul "small 'l' libertarian" types... Rand himself may stand a decent shot at making some noise in 2016 if he runs for President. And while I'd rather have Michael Badnarik or Mary Ruwart than Rand Paul, I'd damn sure take Rand Paul over GW Bush, Barak Obama, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Hilary Clinton, etc., etc.
I am going to exercise my right of free speech right here by strenuously disagreeing with this comment, and point to my comment posted at the same comment level
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5988216
in this thread in which I announce that I am unafraid to protest publicly with my wife the first-generation immigrant naturalized American citizen and with my minor children.
I still believe we can fix this within the legal and political framework already in place. Next election be very careful about who you vote for.
I'll quote this part of your longer comment too, for agreement. Yes, vote carefully (that's why I'm a ticket-splitting voter, because I vote carefully). On the other hand, don't be afraid to protest as part of the Restore the Fourth protests. We can all express our opinions openly, early and often. I'm not afraid of exercising my right to free speech--not here on HN, and not anywhere else.
And the FBI cracked down on Occupy:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coor...
Gross deregulation leads to monopoly. Please show how this is not the historical fact. Fiscal loss of power leads to the same ends as loss of political and military power.
Highly regulated capitalism seems to be a good mix. It seems like it's too late for the US in this case, since our government is almost entirely flooded by corporate interests. "Democrats vs Republicans" is really "Capitalist-imperialists who support abortion vs Capitalist-imperialists who don't support abortion." Of course, our media doesn't give a damn either, and distracts us with every last fringe issue...or in recent news, "Where's Snowden, LOL?!" vs "HEY your government is fucking treating you like a terror suspect just for using the internet and/or a cell phone!" It's weird that in almost every case, the media tends to whip people into a completely frightened frenzy. Now all we hear are crickets.
I think the first course of action in "fixing" things is a new voting system...one where you don't get two completely ineffectual parties clawing each other eyes out over ridiculous issues. One where if you vote for a third, fourth, or fifth party candidate, they actually have a chance.
We're in a hole, and we've got a lot of digging to do to get ourselves out.
For example:
"Six electric light companies were organized in the one year of 1887 in New York City. Forty-five electric light enterprises had the legal right to operate in Chicago in 1907. Prior to 1895, Duluth, Minnesota, was served by five electric lighting companies, and Scranton, Pennsylvania, had four in 1906. … During the latter part of the 19th century, competition was the usual situation in the gas industry in this country. Before 1884, six competing companies were operating in New York City … competition was common and especially persistent in the telephone industry … Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis, among the larger cities, had at least two telephone services in 1905.
No one suggests that competition can not or does not exist in areas at times. What I offer is the idea that the emergent (in a completely deregulated environment) outcome is a monopoly (or cartel acting as a a de facto monopoly).
I suggest events such as the Lincoln County War, or any of a number of company towns from 1890s through 1920s of the United States.
Maybe they're doing it earlier in the day, or hoping that the big crowds will see their message in passing.
Join us, this 4th of July! The Restore the Fourth movement is holding a peaceful protest in San Francisco. We plan to meet at UN Plaza at 11. Bring water and patriotism. Hopefully together we can raise awareness for the issue.
Feel free to contact me, I'm sure I forgot a bunch of stuff. See you on the streets!
On a separate note I have a browser extension that people run on the Facebook sight. It will be reminding people of NSA coverage through the July 4th and long weekend.
Just a simple PSA
One thing that was going through my head during the march: much ado has been made about Obama's statement that "you can't have 100% security and also have 100% privacy." I think it deserves rebuttal, but a more careful one than a simple statement that it is false. It is not false; if Obama had stopped before the "and" it would have still been true: you can't have 100% security. What bothers me about it is that it ignores the fact that liberty itself - while valuable in its own right - is also an essential part of security against some threats. It is also unreasonable that "there are tradeoffs" be used as an excuse to avoid discussion of whether the decisions being made are appropriate.
I'll even concede that these programs are being constructed out of genuine interest in public safety. But what happens when a malicious hacker breaks in? Or China? Or corrupt insiders start selling blackmail secrets to the highest bidder? Or the next Nixon is elected?
The 4th exists for a reason, and privacy is only a secondary benefit. What really matters is preventing concentration of power. And if you don't think having access to a limitless database on everyone is dangerous, you need to read up on Sun Tzu.
We've been throwing paper airplanes off skyscrapers while yelling at people not to look at them for years. This isn't even someone looking, this is somewhere between someone grabbing all of the paper airplanes and putting them in a huge disorganized room full of trillions of other paper airplanes and someone being able to look at the paper airplane if they get permission from a third party that always says yes.
Either way, do you trust Google, Apple and Facebook more with this than the government? What does happen in any of those worst case scenarios? The Chinese find out you like George Takei on Facebook and occasionally stock your ex? The next Nixon finds out you own an iPhone and have some great iCloud photos? Corrupt insiders try to blackmail you for secretly watching that One Direction music video on YouTube a few dozen times?
I think more than anything I'm just pissy because what used to be a cool avenue for tech/startup news has become this weird, paranoid community obsessed with Big Brother watching them. Every day I feel more like I'm checking NRA news than Hacker News. It's really depressing.
The financial machinery of the intelligence community has co-opted the political power structure of the nation. The freedom to speak publicly without asymmetric authoritarian consequence does not exist, if it ever did.
Thus, to focus on tech and start ups, the environment needs to be less toxic.
Did you have any specific inspiration, or resources that I could read that you used for the design?
The "4th" also refers to the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America which holds that (any) People should be free in their papers and effects from unreasonable searches (spying) by their Government. We are taught that these are not rights granted by a god, or by consent, or by a monarch, but are rights inherent for all people whether they live in America or not. They are natural rights, like the right to happiness and to pursue your life without harming others.
I am sorry if it seems like this is a very American-centric protest, but it is up to Americans to change our government for the better. We have too many of our fellow countrymen who misinterpret or disregard the Constitution, and it is up to us to remind them what so many great men and women died for.
By the way, our friends in Taiwan, which now enjoys freedom of the press after people power pushed out a dicatorial regime, have produced one of those funny animated news videos
urging viewers to participate in the Restore the Fourth protests. This is why I am glad I participated in Taiwan's democracy movement[1], and why I continue to support China's democracy movement. What goes around comes around. Democracy can never have too many friends. Freedom is something for all of humankind to share and to defend and to cherish.
[1] The dictatorship in power in Taiwan when I first lived there eventually fell, after a largely peaceful people power revolution that forced a transformation to an open political system. In the years leading up to that transformation, people I know personally were imprisoned for leading peaceful protests urging free and fair elections and a stop to censorship. (For example, the father of one of my wife's high school classmates was in prison while they were in high school. The classmate is now the godmother of my son who was born in Taiwan.) Most people don't have the courage to go to prison--especially prisons like those in Taiwan at the time. But courage is what it takes to undermine a dictatorship. A successful movement for greater freedom requires great courage, and a degree of social trust among the movement participants that is not easy to find. Allow me to repeat advice I have shared here on Hacker News before. If you really want to be an idealistic but hard-headed freedom-fighter, mobilizing an effective popular movement for more freedom wherever you live, I suggest you read deeply in the free, downloadable publications of the Albert Einstein Institution,
http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html
remembering that the transition from dictatorship to democracy described in those publications is an actual historical process with recent examples around the world that we can all learn from. You can find publications in Arabic, Azeri, Belarusian, Burmese, Burma (Chin), Burma (Jing-paw), Burma (Karen), Burma (Mon), Chinese (Mandarin), Dutch, English, Estonian, Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Thai, Tibetan, and Ukrainian there to share with your friends around the world.
You have no idea how predatory you need to be to face Power down, and a sponsored Face Book / Reddit protest is not your friend. $100k donations - to whom? People forging careers in Social Media Shaping (or as us old timers like to call it, propaganda[2]) and so on?
This is a serious warning (and I fully expect a ban, or "down votes" for this, given the political alignment of HN): you need to be hard, sharp, fast, ruthless and enjoy blood sports to get into this game.
I suspect most of you are not: and the people "running" this campaign via Reddit / Face Book are really not your friends[3].
And since we are living in a time where a Face Book "threat" from a teenager can get you prison time, I'll merely give you a quotation from a science FICTION novel (not even a real political theorist, they're dangerous / now under the "banned" list in America):
"The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.” ~ Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQEDojPZ7YI [2]http://www.propagandatheory.com/history-of-propaganda/french... [3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4pIXQvxMeA&list=PLA62577633...
Do you have a permit?
Are you aware of the surveillance you'll be under, and have you informed all participants that they will be logged into a surveillance system?
Are you aware that all of your correspondence has already been logged, monitored and Gold / Silver / Bronze Police teams are now running models to negate your impact? [run a search on the papers if you need to understand how modern policing works, the USA is a bit tight-arsed about it, look for the EU white papers, they're much more accessible without being illegal]
Are you aware that traffic and city wide electronic signals will be modified throughout your "march" to control flows?
And so on. If the answer to any of these is "no", then you need to Wise The Fuck Up.
Predators don't play nice.
There's a reason they get to be on balconies with champagne laughing at you, and it isn't "luck". It's called home-game-advantage and owning-the-Power-Structures.
If you're unaware of any of this, you're dog-food. And the Police certainly are the dogs here.
Bottom line: No one important gives a FUCK about your 4th amendment rights. And that's just the truth of it. [Hint: MLK, see what happened to him, and that was a long time ago, "bro"]
[1]http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/06/wall-streets-secret-s...
The answer to that is, of course: that is why you'll fail, that is why they'll ignore you, and that is why this is all a joke.
Thanks for making the point so clear.
Might want to study history, dear, and learn just how hard-core "the people" had to be to gain any kind of Power. The fact you think that Power respects your protest is why you won't ever be a "player".
Have fun on your little protest, I'm sure you know what you're doing. (Which is precisely: nothing). And, here's a tip: you might want to listen when a predator tells you why you're going to fail, they might have some experience you don't. Ask the Egyptians, if you think that was a popular revolt, you need some serious edumacation [hint: IMF / Egyptian Military / Economics, do some research already. The World is not a nice place, and it doesn't respect people who don't know the Rules]
I'm out, trix are for kidz.
Now, you might have noticed I'm not naive, but it does show one thing: Whoever is using their "precious HN karma" to down vote my comments, without ever bothering to argue with them, proves the model doesn't work. [It was logged - the same user mass-spammed the "down vote" on all of my posts in this thread within 72 seconds, much like they did in the last one]
Predators: you're being run by autistic ((blinkered)) agents who don't even realize the #1 rule of Agitprop: The Streisand effect[1].
Hint: this reaction was priced into the effort to reply to HN. As a predator, if I got the reaction, it was a trigger to say: "Prey". If you ain't seeing the obvious yet, you ain't playing the Game. [And, no doubt - I'd imagine that within X hours my account will be unable to post, either through "negative karma" or "hell banning". While you can read it, work out the politics of it].
Be Seeing You. (Amateurs). And seriously: if your ability to run Propaganda is limited to a "down vote" button, you're not in the running. But, feel free: KONY2012! You might recognize this model from other parts of the web. (And yes: We See You Down Voting).
Bottom line: if you're "down voting" my content, you're either a mark or an extremely naive bottom rung player. Enjoy working out which one you are. Top tip: the real players don't give a flying fuck if you know what they're doing, they just don't care, as long as you can't provide evidence of individual crimes. You. Just. Do. Not. Matter. To. The. Higher. Meat. Eaters. Fucking deal with it. (Down Vote if you think you do!!11!11! Please, I need +1 likes on Face Book!!).
Be Seeing You. Rule #1: Life is cheap - the myth of America is that 300,000,000 of you are precious. Spoiler: 295,000,000 of you ain't. Cry me a fucking river, you're food. (And if you think that's harsh, look around a little. Sorry, it's true.)
It's hard to respond to semi-coherent ranting.
You're mistaken about downvotes. People have a single downvote. If you're seeing multiple downvotes that means multiple people are downvoting you. If people are downvoting you that's because they think your comments don't belong here. You can try saying "The downvotes prove me right" but you should be aware that that line is used by wingnuts.
Your argument is invalid.
p.s. Today's analysis of the "protests" and even the flaccid NSA "approval" of them on their website shows you exactly where this movement came from. Spoiler: I told you that HN / Reddit were far more gamma- than Advanced Publications let on, didn't I?