Stop Watching Us Gathers Over 100,000 signatures to fight NSA surveillance

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/06/13/stop-watching-us-a-group-opposed-to-nsa-surveillance-scorches-past-100000-signatures/

by sethbannon • 13 years ago

162 58 13 years ago

thenextweb.com

enraged_camel2• 13 years ago

I know cynicism is not very productive, but I have never understood the point of petitions like this. Surely people know they are useless unless backed up by billions of dollars of funding?

csense• 13 years ago

useless

Not to the NSA! With no effort at all, they've gathered the names of 100,000 subversives to put on a secret watch list!

(I hope I'm kidding.)

korethr• 13 years ago

I hope you're kidding too. However, the cynic in me suspects that most of the signatories to the petition might already have been identified by the likes of PRISM as potential subversives and put on a secret watch list. This petition is probably just a confirmation of the majority of the names on that list.

iguana2• 13 years ago

I hesitated signing it for a good 5 minutes because I didn't want my name on the list of subversives, but then realized that since they monitor everything, I was already on the list.

Oh well, I'll let you guys know how good the food is in the secret prisons.

redblacktree2• 13 years ago

Hold on. Are you saying that being on the side of freedom, privacy and government transparency is now "subversive?" Where did America go?

sinak• 13 years ago

Just to clarify - this is not simply a petition. We're using a script that the late Aaron Swartz wrote to deliver emails directly to Congress via the contact us pages on legislator's websites. That means there'll be hundreds of thousands of emails delivered to Congress in the coming days.

It's amazing how practical some of the things that Aaron worked on are.

brk2• 13 years ago

So then, it's easy for them to have a consistent block of text to filter on?

Is there any data that sending template emails works? It seems like its too easy to write off as people investing minimal effort, and not sending a unique message.

I honestly don't know,, but this does not feel 'effective' to me.

tn132• 13 years ago

And how is that supposed to help?

paddy_m• 13 years ago

It would be great to have a program that does the same thing for telephone calls. A web app that let's you record a message, that is then called into a representatives phone lines.

I'm Paddy Mullen, and instead of donating $50 to your campaign, I donated it to the EFF. I did this because you ignore the rights of the citizens and haven't held the NSA responsible for the infringements on privacy.

Let the staffers get 100s - 1000s of calls that way.

cpa• 13 years ago

I'm not sure it's a good thing to do. Because this can happen: https://christianengstrom.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/european-...

mercurial• 13 years ago

Just to clarify - this is not simply a petition. We're using a script that the late Aaron Swartz wrote to deliver emails directly to Congress via the contact us pages on legislator's websites. That means there'll be hundreds of thousands of emails delivered to Congress in the coming days.
It's amazing how practical some of the things that Aaron worked on are.

I predict such large-spectrum email delivery will:

- either arrive to the designated inbox, and get ignored

- or get stopped by a spam filter

If you want something to happen, at least write a personalized email, or better, call. It's more difficult to answer calls with a form letter.

flyinRyan• 13 years ago

So as the GP said; this is all a big waste of time.

gesman• 13 years ago

People want to feel "empowered" cheaply. Like signing a petition or sitting (i.e. demonstrating). It never worked but doing the same thing all over again and expecting the different result is a habit of the crowds.

Now go ahead - downvote my post - feel the power :)

Ihmahr• 13 years ago

In a democracy you should expect a lot of signatures to have an effect.

dredmorbius2• 13 years ago

You're assuming this is a democracy.

nish1500• 13 years ago

"100,000 signatures .. um ... wow big number. We didn't know so many people didn't like it. Sorry guys ... you opened our eyes. Sorry, again. No more spying"

- NSA

davvolun• 13 years ago

Of course, the idea that it's useless to try is guaranteed to accomplish nothing.

dclowd9901• 13 years ago

I guess I don't understand how government works.

If a significant portion of the electorate doesn't want something, how do they keep the government from implementing it? Because it's certainly not by voting. I'm dead serious. Why does a government do things that its people don't want it to do?

iguana2• 13 years ago

There are some things that the people may want to do, but that the government should still not do. This is why we're a republic, and not a democracy: to prevent the tyranny of the majority. The idea is that a constitution limits the power of the majority. The only deciding factor to any action by government (or lack thereof) is: is the act constitutional? In the US, this question is decided by the judiciary.

Since a court already opined that such surveillance is illegal, it shows how much stronger the executive branch is in comparison to the others. Since the legality of the surveillance is in question, in a fair and reasonable system, a court would order an injunction against the surveillance until the legality was settled. What complicates this matter, is the executive branch's position that even discussing the legality of their actions is classified and secret. Pretty sad from the administration that promised us transparency.

enraged_camel2• 13 years ago

Contrary to popular belief, the American government does not actually represent its people. It represents special interest groups, which is a euphemism for "those who have money." Once your mind makes that paradigm shift, everything becomes incredibly easy to understand.

The fact of the matter is that the seeming irrationality and inefficiency of American government is a feature, rather than a bug. The inefficiency and general waste in government affairs actually serve to obfuscate the real functions and purpose of the state and makes reform vastly more complex and costly than it otherwise would be. The example I like to give is the tax code. The income tax started out as a tax on wealth and it used to be that only a very small percentage of households paid anything. Over time though, the burden of taxation shifted downward onto the middle class, while the elite simultaneously found alternative means of storing their wealth to avoid taxation almost completely. The problem is that the tax code is so complex now that most people cannot even comprehend the amount of loopholes in it. The only people who can are tax attorneys working for corporations and the ultra-rich. This is what I mean by the inefficiency and general waste serves to obfuscate the issue.

And the funny thing is, this is all working exactly as intended. The wealthy tightly control the system and the rest of the population is too distracted fighting for the crumbs to actually organize, form meaningful alliances and fight to change the status quo. What they do instead is share news articles and memes on Facebook and sign silly petitions on the Internet to be able to pat themselves in the back for fighting the good fight. They just want to feel good about themselves.

At the end of the day, this is because the vast majority of people don't actually care about the events that happen around them. They care about their self-perceived role in those events and their own feelings. You can actually see this type of behavior in many different cases outside politics. Take something as simple as exercise. A lot of people sign up for personal trainers, not because they actually want to exercise correctly and lose weight, but because the act of making superficial effort (such as paying a small amount of money) towards a goal is sufficient to make them feel good. And if they fail at weight loss, they can tell themselves that, well, they at least tried. Which is what the signers of this petition are going to tell themselves when it accomplishes nothing.

res0nat0r2• 13 years ago

100k people who spent two seconds clicking on a link online are not representative of 300 million population of the US.

adrianbg• 13 years ago

I don't think the American government is unusual in this regard.

ISL• 13 years ago

In part because voters don't vote for those who maximally represent their interests. It's a rare opportunity to vote for a candidate I support; normally I vote for the least-bad, simply because a candidate I support isn't there.

Voters may prioritize one (or few) cause(s) over others, leaving them disenchanted when a low-priority issue gains importance.

If the American system hadn't been successful for centuries, I'd have guessed that it wouldn't work.

The primary system, where candidates for the general election are selected, emphasizes the core/extremal parts of each party. The general election emphasizes centrist views. The usual result are candidates who will tell people what they want to hear. This makes it more difficult to predict what a candidate will do in office. Furthermore, a candidate who aspires to greater office may not do an optimal job in his/her present position in order to tune appearances for the coming election. Term limits would go a long way toward addressing this latter problem.

We get the government we vote for, and we don't always (normally?) vote for those who might do the best job.

a3n3• 13 years ago

The NSA probably thinks that collecting everything and analyzing it later was "a neat idea." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_North#Iran.E2.80.93Cont...

marshray3• 13 years ago

I don't see the analogy with Iran-Contra.

a3n3• 13 years ago

Well it's a stretch I admit, but they probably really did think it was a "neat idea," which was a phrase that Oliver North used (quoted in the link) to describe his opinion of the arms for hostage deal that he was being investigated for.

A more direct if mundane line is that Oliver North worked for/with John Poindexter. Poindexter was allowed to resign in disgrace, North was fired. Poindexter later worked for DARPA, where he proposed Total Information Awareness, which was widely viewed with suspicion and back-burnered, and then came back bit by bit as cynically predicted at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Poindexter

spikels• 13 years ago

Don't forget about the White House petition to pardon Snowden. It now has 70,229 signatures but needs 100,000 to get a response.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snow...

res0nat0r2• 13 years ago

Pardon him from what? He hasn't been charged with a crime.

The temporary outrage of the internet over something they don't even have a grasp on is why no one takes these petitions seriously.

icebraining2• 13 years ago

Technically, he can be pardoned preemptively by the POTUS, like Nixon was.

The power thus conferred is unlimited, with the exception [of impeachments]. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.

nano1113• 13 years ago

resonator--

joering2• 13 years ago

So 100,000 people sleep better tonight. And if you ever read any of government responses, you know nothing changed.

tn132• 13 years ago

The only thing politicians really care about is their ability to get elected. That is something we need to target in a threatening way.

jmomo• 13 years ago

Comrades! Only enemies of the United States of America would ever sign a petition like this, and thus so such enemies should be rightly targeted for increased scrutiny given their increased risk of threat to the state.

ianstallings• 13 years ago

And all were immediately added to Main Core.

Qantourisc• 13 years ago

I'd say only 100,000 that's it? I'm rather disappointed. There are 316,037,000 in your country, that means 315,937,000 who don't give a fuck ? Note to self: Never even set foot on USA soil.

Stop Watching Us Gathers Over 100,000 signatures to fight NSA surveillance

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