But it is also in everything together. My rule is that if I protest, I write my congressmen. If I voted based on issues I wrote about I write them and explain my votes. I have at times gotten interesting responses that show I have sometimes managed to get folks to stop and think which is all one can hope to do.

But beyond that we need to do what is needed now. We need to get guaranteed secure email services going in nations which have strong privacy protections. We need to create networks of end-to-end encrypted voice traffic which use open source architectures designed for privacy. The NSA has handed the good guys one heck of a market. All that is needed is the time and effort.

Never forget that by changing your actions, and your awareness, you are influencing other to do the same.

And online protests are mostly useless. 10.000 people in the streets raise more attention than 10.000.000 facebook likes.

What we need is multiple court systems, multiple police systems, etc. And what's more important -- the ability to freely choose between them. Just like you're able to choose Pepsi over Coke or to choose Google over Bing, or to choose one bank over another.

This isn't easy system to achieve, but mostly because a lot of people are skeptical.

More on this topic: http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp

The privacy movement has not even begun to begin what is necessary to change the law. For example: can you name the leading organization that works solely on privacy? There isn't one. The issue is only sort-of covered if you add up the partial work of a bunch of different orgs, like the EFF, ACLU, NRA, Emily's List, etc.

So: want to move the needle? Start an organization, raise many millions of dollars, collect thousands of contacts, and then run a big scary public and grassroots campaign. Give money to privacy-friendly politicians, and spend independent money to defeat opponents of privacy. Recruit privacy-friendly folks to run for local, state, or federal office. Take meetings with corporate, regulatory, and congressional staff to find folks who are sympathetic to the cause. Run privacy conferences. Pay people to write privacy blogs. Pick a nasty law and create a test case to get it into litigation. Etc, etc.

Now you might say "we shouldn't have to do that." And you're right. But: life isn't fair. Black people should not have had to risk lynchings in order to vote, but they did--and they did it. And they fought it.

See "Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim" (http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t...)

What would the effects be from a flash boycott if X-million people suddenly stopped buying from a corporation? Someone could devise a model to calculate the effects and find potential candidates.

The SOPA blackout showed what's possible when the Internet organizes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA). Turn it into an Internet meme that empowers the people, and keep it going until the echo grows too loud to be ignored.

It would probably require the cooperation of a team of computer scientists, finance geeks, and social-marketing gurus to organize the campaign. Or maybe one clever hacker could pull it off.

See "Derek Sivers: How to start a movement" (http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movemen...)

Rootstrikers: http://www.rootstrikers.org/ted_promo

Voting/not voting/protesting/etc. are tactics that are only useful as part of a larger campaign, and as part of a large group committed to a particular goal.