The Day We Fought Back: By The Numbers
thedaywefightback.org
thedaywefightback.org
Q: How do you judge the success of the campaign to raise awareness by calling congress people?
A: By the number of calls/contacts made. Instead they compared it to the SOPA protest that "stopped" the bills and hence declared it a failure.
The goal of raising awareness was most certainly achieved (because the frikkin NYT wrote a whole article about it) This is just the first salvo in a long war - no need to declare victors & losers already.
Even the name "The Day We Fight Back" implies that this is a fight that can be won in a day. Supporters later pointed out that this is a long war, not a fight for a day. But the initial promotion of this campaign did little to encourage people to take this fight and make it part of their lives for the foreseeable future. And the fact that supporters are justifying the legitimacy and effectiveness of this campaign by citing one-day numbers only furthers the notion that a single day can make a difference in what will inevitably be an ongoing battle for the rest of our lives.
For example, in the buildup to SOPA we had Internet Censorship Day in November, the Godaddy boycott in December, and then the blackout in January. To see this on a larger scale, simply skim the timeline of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 [1].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2011_Egyptian_r...
Furthermore, to be more brutal about this, I think "getting an article in the NYT" can no longer be a success outcome for awareness in a world with such fast attention cycles. There's an adage in politics that an issue has to be in the press for something like 5 consecutive days for it to have real electoral impact. Seems like that is more akin to the target here.
Yes, it means we can't automatically declare victory, but it also defines a victory that's earned.
The leaks do state that metadata about the call, including that it was made between the parent and Twilio, would have been stored in a database, so theoretically the parent could be targeted for calling on that day "with a few clicks", as you say. News outlets have published theories based on the leaks under which this would happen:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-nsa-...
But they sound pretty hyperbolic to me. Note that according to the official procedures, the data is supposed to be destroyed immediately unless it "is reasonably believed to contain significant foreign intelligence information", etc.:
http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Minimization%20Procedures...
and the NSA was/is certainly not supposed to intentionally go after this type of information. But to be fair, I might not have been so skeptical if the parent had only mentioned metadata.
The parent responded and brought up COINTELPRO. Yes, if something like COINTELPRO were happening now, then such fears would be warranted. I cannot rule that scenario out, but it's worth noting that the leaks make it significantly less likely, since the NSA would probably be involved in such a program (as it was in COINTELPRO), yet nothing of the sort came up in the leaks. I guess the proven ability of the government to keep misconduct secret in general means that it is rational to suspect that some kind of misconduct is happening somewhere, but I wouldn't say there's enough evidence to rationally specifically fear being targeted for contacting Congress.
They and another person also reiterated that the wording was "wouldn't be surprised" that something is happening, which is a more general standard than thinking it is actually likely to be happening. And I admit that even a small chance of it happening can still make it "scary" to call, since the repercussions if it were true could potentially be much larger than the benefits of calling; moreover, some of the people who might call may not be rational or well-informed but still should be entitled to call and state their views on what ought to be happening. Still, I do not think it's unreasonable to ask for evidence either.
[1] - http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/06/22205443-...
It's very convincing that someone powerful targetted him for his anti-wallstreet policies and sought to catch him with a high paid prostitute. The weird part starts happening when they interview the madam and brothel hustlers who she hired, and find out tons of famous politicians and Wall st execs uses them... but noone else got brought down despite all the private investigations, wiretaps, and FBI investigations, except the one guy pissing off people in power.
Now in 2014 we're back down to nearly zero reputable prominent people in office calling out Wall st or political corruption. Except maybe the crazy fringe types like Rand Paul.
M: 10/10
You're basically saying "I don't care, he went to a prostitute of his own free will", which is no rational reason to discount the theory that they targeted him specifically, because if he hadn't done so, they'd have either found something else, or made something happen. The fact that they didn't have to, doesn't suggest they did not target him, while the fact that they also didn't out any of the tons of other people, suggests that there might be a reason for this particular person other than mere chance.
http://sina.is/thoughts-about-tdwfb/
tl;dr The NYT post was inaccurate in lots of ways. It's true that Tuesday was much smaller than SOPA. But judging campaign success by the most important online activist moment in history sets an almost impossibly high bar. Also, SOPA didn't just happen, it was built up to. American Censorship Day happened 2 months before and was much smaller.
That's one of the biggest points missed by the NYT piece, in my opinion. To play devil's advocate, I do think it raised a good point: namely, that this particular fight is more abstract in the public eye. But in the set of all possible points to be made about TDWFB, that was a relatively minor one.
SOPA and PIPA had much higher general awareness before the blackouts, and the blackouts were built up to for weeks on end. (Maybe even months, judging from a quick look back at my own HN history from the time.)
It was kind of awesome calling a rep and being told "oh, she is an original co-sponsor of the legislation you're calling about...".
It's pretty clear this is going to be a sustained battle through the press, in the courts, through the legislature (especially in 2014 and 2016 elections), and in technology development. Thanks for this step!
I wish there was something meaningful for me to do, as a non-american, to help this campaign. It's only sane to assume that surveillance efforts similar to those of the US exist in most other countries, but it's hard to act when no concrete information is available.
For instance, for me that is Bits of Freedom in NL. They do good things and provide tangible local things to do, help with, or raise awareness about.
Why not show us what percentage of internet users saw a banner that day? What percentage of those seeing a banner called their congressman?
So the percentage of Americans is small, but the impact may be much larger. Or it might be much smaller. Who knows.
The Republicans gave me a non functioning Congress and a presidential candidate unable to pull his head out of his ass.
No other party matters unless you live in a specific district where an old time independent is an incumbent.
The rest of your analysis is about right, though.
> No other party matters
And both of the incumbent parties write legislation to make sure it stays that way...
89k is actually a very large number.
Did you collect analytics about calls and which domains they came from? I would be curious to see what sites generated the most calls/emails or the best call/email ratio or the best action/view ratio. Is that possible, or would that be too… privacy violate-y?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/HCuSJLMmGCP94/videos?sort=p&...
People with no understanding of internet and/or privacy, pretending to care about privacy.
You would be better off spending the money on developing new encryption solutions, antiforensic tools, anonymity networks and legal defenses for those caught in their snares. The five eyes will never stop their global surveillance of planet Earth. Learn to work around it, not complaining to government to make things change. Technology never regresses. You poor bastards ain't seen nothing yet.