Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spodek | Hacker News Reader

Great news!

Let's put it in context. In a nation of over 300,000,000 people, in which we know several departments of the executive branch are spending billions to spy on the world in gross violation of the Constitution, it seems only one or two people (Snowden and Manning with help from the press), and one or two organizations (EFF and ACLU), are able to make any meaningful progress.

The legislative branch has done almost nothing and is largely complicit. The judicial branch has been largely complicit except when motivated by the EFF and ACLU and didn't help with Manning. Same with the press. What's left? What other successes can we build on? What historical models can we learn from?

Probably everyone reading this wants to help. Surely we can come up with some way to do something. We can contribute resources to the EFF and ACLU. Frankly, I don't see marching in the streets helpful, but I'd love to be proved wrong. What else?

WE'RE TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEURS! We claim to understand the issues and know how to create and lead teams and marshal resources to meet demand. If any progress is to happen, IT HAS TO START HERE WITH US.

What else can we -- you and I -- do?

- Can we motivate and support more whistleblowers so future ones don't have to fear jail and persecution?

- Can we contribute more time, money, and other resources to the EFF and ACLU?

- Can we create new organizations to augment their work?

I have to believe we have more ideas in us. What else can we do? Can YOU add to this list?

I won't claim to be an expert, but here's how I'd suggest you get involved.

* The last thing most social-good organizations need out of their software is flakey, drive-by charity hack jobs. They need the same things most organizations need: dedicated, ongoing, boring IT support. Some problems can be solved in weekend hackathons, if you can get the right people together. But if you can't contribute hacking time (some activist software is open-source), contribute your dollars.

* What almost all organizations want is your voice and your support. Know those online petitions that seem so stupid? They help. If you as an organizer can walk into a lawmaker's office with a million signatures in your pocket, it amplifies your voice. And a talented campaigner can convert some of those signatures into more meaningful action elsewhere––in the form of donation dollars, real-life organizing, and local lobbying efforts.

* Learn about traditional political organizing, which has a long and proud history and has very little to do with software. Protests and movements don't happen by accident; they're built, sometimes in small pieces over many years, by fairly traditional organizing techniques. The Ladder of Engagement[0] is one metaphor that organizers use to talk about how to get people engaged.

* Learn about other organizations in the space. DemandProgress does a lot of work with legislators that goes largely unheralded (and they've just merged with Lessig's Rootstrikers, which argues that getting money out of politics goes to the root of the problem); Fight for the Future is good at getting out the word on upcoming legislation. The EFF and the ACLU specialize in legal assistance and litigation, which is spectacularly successful when it works, but aren't the only organizations working to support this space politically.

[0] http://lithgow-schmidt.dk/sherry-arnstein/ladder-of-citizen-...

Well, everyone always talks about what really motivates the legislative branch (campaign funding), but I've never seen civil libertarian types try to start a non-profit or super-PAC to lobby congress. We know this way of influence is proven to work, and to work quite well. Why is there no special interest organization that is in those fundraising dinners, talking to the legislators, and trying to get the various committees to influence laws we care about?

Letters and phone calls work, but hundreds/thousands of people willing to donate money to candidates that support particular causes works even better. That's how lobbying works. It's not even completely unethical, really. A spokesperson just buys their way in to fundraisers and says, "Hey, our group really cares about X. Here is why. Oh BTW, we might have a bunch of voters in your district who are passionate about X and would want to contribute to a person's campaign if they also cared about X. Do you care about X?"

I think the idea of an anti-spying super-PAC is interesting. One of the priorities I feel is informing people of just how dangerous these arguably illegal spying activities are. Funny thing is the super-PAC would probably end up airing commercials against both candidates.

> Funny thing is the super-PAC would probably end up airing commercials against both candidates.

That's not how politics works. You have to give candidates a reason to listen to you. If you attack both sides equally, you give up any leverage you have.

Yes, it was kind of a tongue in cheek statement alluding to the fact that both sides tend to support the spying programs.

What provides an leverage is not that level of advertisement, but the delta in advertisement with a change in behavior. As long as you wouldn't attack them if they changed and they believe that then you've got leverage.

There's no rule that it would have to be "equally."

That wouldn't be the best use of the funds, I think. Better would be to throw the super-PAC's weight behind supporting anyone who would take up the cause. Similar to how other organizations do it. The NRA, or the beef farmers' groups, for instance.

> in which we know several departments of the executive branch are spending billions to spy on the world in gross violation of the Constitution,

We don't know that at all. The closest thing we have is a FISC opinion which declared certain minimization measures to be unconstitutional which aren't in place any more.

To be fair, how could we know whether or not the spying was unconstitutional given nobody could sue over it because it was a secret program that by its very nature went unacknowledged.

To be fair, how could we know this about any of hundreds of other government programs that touch our lives, whether we know about them or not?

Mandated vaccination regimes? We know about those, but what about the specific drugs/vaccines that go in each regimen? I don't remember voting for the person at HHS overseeing that.

Nuclear weapons development and stockpiles? How do you know those are being properly supervised or not?

Foreign military sales? How do you know we're only giving our allies ships and other arms that wouldn't give away vital American secrets?

Or what about IRS tax audit policies? How do we know those are applied constitutionally?

Or abroad, how do we know that our diplomats are not doing anything shady?

Or even at home, how do you know the local cops don't have a pen register wiretap running on your cell phone tower this very day?

And it could go on and on. When it comes to the USG it's frankly a bunch of "unknown unknowns" that the people similarly can't really pre-emptively sue about. That's why it's important to get the built-in transparency and oversight measures correct in the first place, as the job of oversight is far too complicated to leave to the people alone.

are you seriously suggesting that there is an interpretation of the 4th Amendment that allows for prism? Even the author of the patriot act disagrees with you.

... because words can have no meaning outside of what the people in power say they mean. So our only way of deciding if what is going on is wrong is to wait for the nobles to tell us.

Manning had very little, if anything, to do with pointing out spying.

You mention her because her actions were in opposition to the USG, which seems popular to beat up on around here, but her leaks were about other things entirely.

> Manning had very little, if anything, to do with pointing out spying.

The information released by Manning, commonly called "Cablegate" [1] taught us about a lot of spying going on between nations.

[1] http://theweek.com/article/index/209830/wikileaks-cablegate-...

I've been mulling how a technology could be used to leverage generalized citizen support in terms of time and money into actual political change. It seems like broad uproar often dissipates without any real change. e.g. protests try to concentrate media attention, but that's really difficult and nothing really happens legislatively until some huge threshold of participation has been reached.

The technology to really focus the agitation might be a website that collects and displays key contextual data vs data of citizen promises of campaign money, voting intent, and/or time resources (for or against an issue).

The key contextual data would be something along the lines of summaries of issues & legislation, showings of each congressional position & vote history (is the rep generally for, against, undeclared vs an issue), key leverage positions (do they sit on comittees, could they be a swing vote between decided congress members?).

It's one thing to see general media coverage of some issue, and get a handful of calls/emails etc, but to see concrete votes and money stacking up on an issue that would be pledged to go into play in the next campaign - that seems like better leverage than protests and letter campaigns. It would be moving the Kickstarter model into a PAC framework.

My humble idea is to apply the crowd-funding concept to protest and civil disobedience. Only if the proposed action reaches a sufficient activation threshold of interest and commitment does it go forward.

The trick is getting people to stick to commitments, given the ease of clicking a button online. One way is gamification, with reputation scores and mobile location check-ins. Another is getting people to commit real money, which is forfeited without a check-in (or perhaps, donated to something vile like the Westboro Baptists!). But after collecting enough data, you can also start doing some number crunching to estimate real turnout, and use that for your threshold.

We need new forms of protest, and new tools of solidarity. I plan on building it if no one else gets to it first.

Honestly what would help the most would be renouncing your citizenship and becoming a citizen of a different country. They don't give a shit about your protests, your votes, or (lately) your rights. They will give a shit when the best programmers and engineers start an exodus. Or if some of the ultra wealthy decided to get out and bring their portions of the economy with them, that would wake up some congressmen.

Where would you go?

I have no idea, they are all bad apples, aren't they? So I'd be picking a lesser evil in protest of the US. Canada? Germany? I think HN user sneak moved there. Iceland?

Equador or Russia are nice places I hear...

Didn't Dick Cheney buy land in Uruguay? That might be a decent indicator.

Here's how, get up from your computer, exit your door, turn left or right, move to the next door, knock.

Have a conversation with the person that answers the door. Encourage them to do the same. When you have 20 people, get them all to go down to the office of your representatives, county, local, state, federal.

I imagine you'd get a free ride to a federal office if you talked to enough people.

>What else can we do?

"sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXqs02lNQMM

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