Next time someone organizes something similar, can they think of a worlwide action? Can they make something which doesn't sound like "Worldwide anti-american day" but rather "Worldwide day of support to the debate that US citizen started"?
US citizens are only 313 millions and the US law protects you against surveillance. We, the rest of the world, are all subject to this surveillance in unlimited way.
From my perspective, it's like they read everything, look at your Facebook posts, your emails and what not, trying to profile you as a threat. And when they do so, you'll get on some listed that's automatically generated by some crazy scheme, and you'll no way to change that because you're not American, you're just some unimportant foreigner.
So although I have very strong opinions on the matter, I'm effectively censored by fear of hindering my future.
The more people that voice their opinions, the more impossible it becomes to punish that group (i.e. safety in numbers). Join in!
The Snowden revelations make clear that U.S. citizens are not protected against surveillance by their own government. Just because foreigners are less protected doesn't change that.
Frankly, U.S. Congressmen don't care what Americans think about U.S. surveillance policy.
They clearly do, because they spend quite a bit of effort trying to shape what Americans think about it, which is inconsistent with not caring what Americans think.
Having a desire for somone to think a particular thing about a subject is exactly caring what they actually think about a subject.
I think the distinction you want to draw is more between being influenced by what Americans actually think, on the one hand, and attempting to influence what Americans actually think, on the other.
But then, again, the only rational reason for members of Congress to try to influence what Americans think is because they think that what Americans actually think impacts the prospects for their political agenda, e.g., by influencing their likelihood of getting elected or influencing the behavior of other members of Congress or the President (perhaps by influencing those actors electoral prospects), so, really, I think that even that distinction is somewhat false. The reason politicians want to shape opinions is because politicians actions do respond to opinions.
The tech industry has more money now than anybody else outside of finance, including the oil industry. It's that simple. Use it.
Congress might care when US corporations' bottom lines are affected by the surveillance. In fact, it's starting to be reported that US corporations are being affected already.
EDIT: To be clear, when US corporations bottom lines in sales to entities in foreign countries. IBM and Cisco have already attributed slumps in sales to foreign entities due to NSA surveillance.
That being said, if you best wanted to ensure that no US agency ever spies on you, a good start would be for your government to prove it never spies on US citizens. That runs both ways: you want to trust us, we want to trust you.
So, it takes both: a strong localized protection, and a verifiable remote protection. We're working on our side of the first part, if you already have the first part on your side, the next best thing to do is start working on the second.
Edit: actually, 5 eyes is a perfect example of a negative (in this context) reciprocal agreement. We should work to create the opposite sort of reciprocal agreement.
You're right in saying it should be symmetrical. It goes this way: - US person is protected from US abuses by US laws, - French person is protected by French laws, - We have Safe Harbour so French's people data goes freely to the US, - French people aren't protected by US laws, - And symmetrical.
The cross-country problem is a big one, prompting for the creation of international organizations for the protection of international citizens.
> ... and the US law protects you against surveillance.
The recent revelations would suggest otherwise.
It gives no indication for foreigners either. Actually the letter is very fuzzy about the demands to the government(s). It should list action points and criteriae so governments/crowds know when the movement will be dissolved and don't get afraid of the limits.
Moreover the way we leverage politics in France is quite different from the US ;) So we may need to adapt the mode of action to local traditions.
> The recent revelations would suggest otherwise.
The recent revelations suggest the law was broken, so at least you had some rights. But we foreigners have no law about not being spied by the US intelligence.
When the banner goes live, we'll likely do IP-geolocation and offer users who are like outside the US a link to necessaryandproportionate.org, a petition to be delivered to international lawmakers.
However, given that many of the organizations behind the movement are US-based, it definitely still leans US-focussed. In some ways that's for the best: many of our organizations don't know how to be effective in changing laws in other countries. For example, during our planning it was suggested that we set up dial-in numbers for each country. After some research, we found that in many countries legislator's offices view calls as a nuisance and do not respond positively to them.
So, what I'm trying to say is: we're definitely trying to address this. And if privacy groups in other countries join us in setting up similar actions (as with the German rallies in solidarity with StopWatchingUs), we'll happily send international visitors their way.
This actually isn't true. The USA PATRIOT Act, Title II expanded surveillance procedures greatly so that pretty much anything is covered under it, it is so broad and encompassing. Someone on TV even quoted from it that it said it allowed surveillance for "any reason whatsoever" or some words to that effect.