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Comment by drcode | Hacker News Reader

As an American, I don't think there's a way to stop this through the democratic process: If a whistle blower publishes details showing the government is running "Project X", and we "kick the bastards out" that authorized it via the ballot process, and the government shuts down "Project X" as a result, all the NSA needs to do is rename it "Project Y".

I'm seriously at a loss as to what to do about this problem.

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I agree, it is hard to know what to do. I called my congressman several times, including before every relevant vote. He voted to defund the NSA, was a co-sponsor the Freedom Act and then voted against it after it got gutted, for what it's worth.

Money is the language of power in American politics. If we want change, we need well-funded organizations that understand how to wield influence in Washington. I donate to the EFF and the ACLU.

Technology businesses also have money and know how to lobby. In fact, I think that's our strongest leverage point. Stop using the services of companies that work with the NSA or have architectures that enable surveillance. Tell them why you're doing it. I have been slowly divesting myself of known PRISM-collaborators including Google, Apple, Skype and Facebook (the ones I used). I deleted my Facebook account. I moved my email to Fastmail.fm. I started using startpage.com. I maximized the opt-out in my Google account. I installed CyanogenMod. This will be my last Apple laptop. I stopped using Dropbox and switched to ownCloud. There is still further to go. There are services where I haven't found viable open/private/secure alternatives (maps, video chat, youtube is ubiquitous). I got SSL certificates (free) for my site and set up a Tor hidden service.

I started using and supporting security and privacy oriented technologies. I spun up a Tor relay on my VPS to donate the unused bandwidth to the Tor network. I started routing my email and chat connections through Tor. I started using TextSecure and OTR. (Sadly, almost nobody I know use them.)

One of the best parts of cancelling my Google Apps account was that it asked for feedback. I wrote that while I love the service, as a foreigner I can't in good conscience use it while the political environment in the USA is what it is. I doubt it will change anything, but it's something I guess.

Take to the streets then, peaceful protest, make noise, make it aware to every man woman and child that this is an important issue, that your freedom is something you value. Peaceful assembly with a forceful message is one of the only ways this can be changed, Americans need to stand up and be heard or it's only ever going to get worse.

Any time this is attempted, it is met with enormous governmental show of force. No matter how peaceful the dissent, the US government is not tolerant of it.

It is? I'm not saying you're wrong, but I haven't seen legally organized protests (yes, you do have to file the appropriate paperwork) recently which have actually been shut down by an enormous governmental show of force. Do you have any examples?

Occupy Wall Street, the Seattle WTO protests, off the top of my head.

Let's fund a pay-per-install Tor Browser program. It would start by paying ISP techs BTC to install Tor Browser on every customer's computer indiscriminately. Maybe even make Tor start up in the background. If everyone is using Tor all the time, nobody is suspicious, and we can go back to having relative free speech on the Internet at least.

You get good people in at the top that actually reform things and change the organizational culture. It's very fixable. We've already come a very long way. The FBI used to blackmail politicians. The CIA used to frequently replace foreign leaders and even pulled that trick on us one time.

Now we have a much more subtle form of unconstitutional behavior. Like Bush before him, Obama thinks it's his "#1 job is to protect America." He forgot that he swore an oath making it his #1 job to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution."

Better technology will provide us real privacy, an informed society, and eventually the truly free countries all humans deserve.

> You get good people in at the top that actually reform things and change the organizational culture. It's very fixable.

"Trust us, everything is fixed now. No, we can't go into detail for national security reasons."

Your pessimism is not supported by history, as was my point. You have to explain how we got from an FBI that blackmails people to an FBI that really and truly does not.

We just shunted those responsibilities off to the NSA, it seems.

I'm sorry, but is your optimism supported by history?

There's no way to hold above-the-law institutions to the same standards as the public, by definition. Curb the NSA's budget and they turn to the black budget. Restrict them legally, and they find ways around it.

The only way to win is through ubiquitous deployment of anonymizing technologies that take the power away from corrupt, centralized institutions permanently.

Another thing you can do is find out who of your friends is or has ever worked at the NSA, and refuse to communicate with them. Refuse to give them jobs. Refuse to sell them products and services. Shun them, stomp them, and starve them out!

DOX the NSA.

Let them feel America's outrage for real, and in public. Let's embarrass these asshats, and make their lives a living Hell. Treat them like dirt until they wish they were in Russia with Snowden.

Yeah, the FBI no longer blackmails politicians. Instead, we have NSA, which conducts mass surveillance on the entire population and does who knows what else. If you think history shows some sort of improvement in these trends, you're hopelessly optimistic.

>The FBI used to blackmail politicians.

How do we know they don't still?

> The CIA used to frequently replace foreign leaders and > even pulled that trick on us one time.

It will be really interesting in a couple decades if we ever get to see a glimpse of what has been happening behind the scenes in Ukraine and Venezuela, not to mention throughout the Middle East.

I just feel sorry for all the people who are having to endure such violence. I can't even imagine the horror.

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