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Comment by ChuckFrank | Hacker News Reader

What was suspected about government abuse of power turns out to have been nothing compared to the scope of it.

Here are some of my suggestions in response: 1. Stand up on mass, digitally and in person, for what you believe in - don't shy from people sneering or judging that you are distrustful of the existing structures of powers. 2. Exclude the people who support this type of spookery, from investment bankers, to hawking politicians, from polite company. Whether you meet them at a party, or a plane, shun and shame them. 3. Crank up the noise. Write, make, do what you can to get more stuff out there. 4. Don't be singular. Be the complexity. 5. Never believe again. Demand evidence, oversight, & review processes. Demand transparency. 6. Commit to fixing what's broken. Fix the drug wars, fix the election system, fix the income inequalities, fix the racial divide. etc. 7. ? what else?

ps. Any obligatory comments about the obligatory NSA jokes?

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> 2. Exclude the people who support this type of spookery, from investment bankers, to hawking politicians, from polite company. Whether you meet them at a party, or a plane, shun and shame them.

This is a remarkably effective method to alienate people who are "on the fence." These are precisely the people that you need for suggestion #1 to be effective.

I guess I wasn't talking about people on the fence, I was thinking more about those that either participating by proxy, or participating directly. However, I may disagree with your claim that social pressure would alienate people on the fence. Bush's 'you are either with us or against us', was surprisingly effective politics at the time.

> Bush's 'you are either with us or against us', was surprisingly effective politics at the time.

I am curious how you came to this conclusion? Maybe this is more of a personal observations and is colored by your political leanings and those that you are surrounded by? I know a lot of people that were not turned on by the "with us or against us" line. I also think that it did not go over well in the international political arena.

Perhaps it only appeared effective in shifting the center in support of the war. It didn't have much effect on myself or those around me. But I think that there has to be a social function to be able to call out the people who are doing this work, or who are supporting this work. It's people who are doing this - not some nameless bureaucracy or some autonomous machine. People are responsible for this, and we need to find ways of holding them accountable. Socially or otherwise.

This is also one of the things that killed the British response during the American Revolutionary War, at least in the South. They forced people who would otherwise have stayed neutral (if not sympathetic to the Crown) to choose sides.... and they chose to keep their farms and land safe (i.e., they chose for the Patriots).

I used to live by this idea, but recently I've found that if instead of spoon-feeding arguments until they click you just are outspoken and determined, those who were gonna join you just figure it out for themselves and you stop wasting time with those who will forever be milquetoast until it's safe. It's not as simple as you portray it.

this passage from Catch-22 comes to mind whenever I see someone desperately demanding moderation between a ruthless right and a radical left

Everyone agreed that Clevinger was certain to go far in the academic world. In short, Clevinger was one of those people with lots of intelligence and no brains, and everyone knew it except those who soon found it out. In short, he was a dope. He often looked to Yossarian like one of those people hanging out around modern museums with both eyes glued together on one side of a face. It was an illusion, of course, generated by Clevinger's predilection for staring fixedly at one side of a question and never seeing the other side at all. Politically, he was a humanitarian who did know right from left and was trapped uncomfortably between the two. He was constantly defending his Communist friends to his right-wing enemies, and his right-wing friends to his Communist enemies, and he was thoroughly detested by both groups, who never defended him to anyone because they thought he was a dope. He was a very serious, very earnest and very conscientious dope. It was impossible to go to a movie with him without getting involved afterwards in a discussion on empathy, Aristotle, universals, messages and the obligations of the cinema as an art form in a materialistic society. Girls he took to the theater had to wait until the first intermission to find out from him whether or not they were seeing a good or a bad play, and then found out at once. He was a militant idealist who crusaded against racial bigotry by growing faint in its presence. He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.

> Never believe again. Demand evidence, oversight, & review processes. Demand transparency.

We've found a reason to demand this stuff every single year for the past 200 years. At some point, you need to go beyond demanding it and actually get it.

> Commit to fixing what's broken. Fix the drug wars, fix the election system, fix the income inequalities, fix the racial divide. etc.

And I think this is the closest thing to the correct answer. I think privacy advocates would be absolutely shocked to discover that fixing things like this would naturally help fix NSA abuses. And TSA abuses. And police brutality.

> actually get it.

I agree absolutely. With everything you mention. These things are intertwined. The solutions need to be intertwined as well.

It's not broken, it's working as intended.

And we must never forget that this is simply criminal.

Nobody should get away with that.

I understand what you are saying. It's broken for us.

En masse

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