Show HN: thedaywefightback.js

https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback.js

472 135 12 years ago

sinak5• 12 years ago

Hey HN,

Thomas and I (with help from a few others) have been working pretty solid for the last 10 days or so to get this banner ready, and wanted to get it out with plenty of time before 02/11. We realize there are a few cross-browser quirks and some of our code is messy, but it works, and any issues will be ironed out between now and February 11th. You can embed the code starting now without worry.

In the meanwhile, if anyone wants to submit pull requests to fix any issues they see, that'd be wonderful. We'll clean up the code and fix any outstanding issues in the meanwhile.

In case you missed it, this is a follow up to The Day We Fight Back campaign [1]. The site itself will also be updated on the day.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037532

Edit: If you work at a medium or large tech company and care about this issue, please take a moment to start a conversation internally about joining the day of action on the 11th. It can be adding the banner, or something else entirely. It's likely you'll find quite a bit of support amongst other employees. While we've reached out to the policy arms of some larger companies, we're pretty constrained on resources, and many of them are interested but hesitant. Engineers often have a lot of say in what actually happens; if you care, speak up.

techwizrd• 12 years ago

I'm working on a startup called postdot [1] that allows you to send physical mail the same way you'd send email. Would it be possible for us to help you add a feature to send a physical letter to your representatives?

[1] http://postdot.org

fibbery• 12 years ago

this is really generous and should definitely be followed up on. tons of email is easier to ignore than a cascade of real letters.

rubbingalcohol• 12 years ago

Hey, I couldn't find any contact info on your site, but this is something I would definitely like to learn more about. I'm working on a different project to help fight state surveillance, and sending physical mail could be a hugely useful feature. Could you email me jeff@rubbingalcoholic.com

BTW, props on your generosity!

sinak5• 12 years ago

Yeah that'd be great. I've been wanting to do something like that for a campaign for a while. Feel free to send me an email (it's in my profile).

xr09• 12 years ago

The Django Debug Toolbar is on, seems like you forgot to remove it from production servers.

wallawe• 12 years ago

Hey, just a heads up: I went and poked around the site a bit and after submitting a blank form within the "Order Summary" modal, I got the following traceback page:

http://postimg.org/image/74y6crfbf/

"You're seeing this error because you have DEBUG = True in your Django settings file. Change that to False, and Django will display a standard 500 page."

Noxchi• 12 years ago

Sweet, I was hoping someone would make something like this!

The thing that inhibits me from using your site is that I don't understand 100% what it does / how it does it, and how much it costs.

I'd add A LOT more meat to your landing page.

I want to know

* What am I allowed to print? Show me examples of all the stuff I can do

* Can I create campaigns, where it is automatically scheduled to send X on Jan 1st, Y on Feb 1st, etc..

* Can I have trinkets / widgets delivered to you guys and you combine that into one mailing?

* I definitely want to be sure the printed thing looks like how I intended it to be. How will you do this? I would like it if I got the mail piece scanned or photographed (as a review copy, before it is scheduled to be sent) and emailed to me.

* What's the cost? You don't have to do all the stuff above for free. You can charge a fee for everything, e.g. $1-$5 per trinket that has to be processed, $10-$20 for a review copy photo / scan. What's the cost per print + mailing? Can I choose the mailing speed (e.g. FedEx overnight, UPS 3-day ground, etc.)?

smoyer• 12 years ago

A platform play for "Snail-Mail as a Service (SMAAS)"!

I love the idea, but most of my outgoing mail requires that I send along a specific piece of paper. Most of my bills can be paid on-line now, but my quarterly income/tax declarations require a coupon that's 1/4 letter size.

I suppose it's the signature they really want (though my account details are on there too and for some people, that eliminates incoming payments that can't be read due to illegible hand-writing).

timmclean• 12 years ago

Your Django debug is showing! D:

    DoesNotExist at /letter/new
    Address matching query does not exist. Lookup parameters were {'name': u''}

wyager• 12 years ago

That would be freaking awesome.

I would totally pay 1mBTC or something to have a letter sent for me.

bib971• 12 years ago

Always got "DoesNotExist" error whichever valid address I put in

donw• 12 years ago

You've got an interesting idea, and I have no idea how to contact you from your site to talk to you about it. Or from your HN profile.

Fletch137• 12 years ago

Love the idea, but I don't really get the recipient field - whichever (valid) address I put in, I get an error. I also think it's a bit unclear on what should be entered here, a post/zip code, company name, etc.?

viraptor2• 12 years ago

Hey, I tried to check out the examples, but neither one displays the header for me. (FF-28a) There's only a black bar at the bottom of the page and this in the console:

    TypeError: options.location.country is undefined
    if(options.location.country.iso_code) {

sinak22• 12 years ago

Sorry, our bad. Fixing that now, should be done in a few minutes. That's our GeoIP server not returning a value, and our javascript freaking out as a result.

beaugunderson• 12 years ago

Should be fixed now; sorry! Made the code that checks for geoip location more resilient.

teawithcarl• 12 years ago

Thanks, Sina.

darkotic3• 12 years ago

WordPress plugin to add the footer js. https://github.com/darkness/thedaywefightback

whitegloveapps2• 12 years ago

Thanks for making the plugin! How do I add it in WordPress? I went to https://github.com/darkness/thedaywefightback, downloaded it as a .zip, and tried to install it via http://www.my-site-name.com/wp-admin/plugin-install.php?tab=..., but got the error "The package could not be installed. No valid plugins were found. Plugin install failed."

scoot• 12 years ago

It's not obvious from the call-to-action button or on the call info page whether the call costs the end user anything, and if so, how much. Judicious use of the word 'free' might increase conversions (if that's actually the case).

bmelton• 12 years ago

It just occurs to me, though I'm signed up and all, that I don't actually want "new laws" that curtail online surveillance. I don't personally believe that the current interpretation of law is Constitutionally valid, and what I really want is for more gravitas to be given to the 'old laws', namely, the fourth amendment.

I don't know that I expect you guys to change it, or whether or not my non-solution is actually workable, or that it will necessarily stop me from displaying the banner; Either way, while I'm not trying to be a pedantic nay-sayer, I couldn't let it go unmentioned.

joshfraser• 12 years ago

I agree. History has shown that new laws are largely used to legalize the behavior. The wording should focus on the fact that mass surveillance is unconstitutional and we want our leaders to support the constitution that they swore to uphold.

midas007• 12 years ago

All socially-polished hustlers in the DC area might consider prioritizing some time to setting up meetings with congress people to continue this crucial conversation in person. It's important to underscore that their participation in the debate or not and their votes are being watched. On a personal note, a friend of mine promised to do this and I will bug him again to follow-through on it.

thatthatis2• 12 years ago

This trend suggests to me that a centralized, trusted "outcry" system would be useful.

It'd be great if I could just add outcry.js, then on outcry.io enable this campaign instead of having to add new banners every time the Internet gets up in arms about SOPA/CISPA/NSA.

sinak5• 12 years ago

So the Internet Defense League [1] do this already, and we'll be distributing the widget through their code as well.

The reason for not doing this natively through the IDL codebase [2] is that we are doing a load of custom stuff that they don't generally support. At some point we'll abstract it all out and add it to IDL though ... generally our Taskforce.is group builds something for a campaign and then reuses the code as much as we can. For example, this project recycles a bunch of code from Project Megaphone [3].

[1] http://www.internetdefenseleague.org/

[2] https://github.com/fightforthefuture/idl-members

[3] https://github.com/tfrce/project-megaphone

thatthatis2• 12 years ago

nice, thanks for the links

tveita• 12 years ago

I doubt many people really want to copy/paste a piece of AGPL 3 licensed code into their website.

Is people "stealing" this code really that much of a concern?

herokusaki• 12 years ago

What counts as "linking against a library" for JavaScript code?

richardwhiuk• 12 years ago

Lots of people won't want to take the risk of not knowing what the answer is.

awj2• 12 years ago

That's exactly the kinds of questions that this library shouldn't be raising.

belorn5• 12 years ago

If the result count as a combined work that requires copyright permission (ie, copyright law), then you must have a license. The question about linking is always about this question.

If you are creating a combined work, AGPL would then provide permission under the condition that all users interacting with it are given an opportunity to receive the source code.

sinak5• 12 years ago

So that license was suggested by someone at FSF and I ran with it because I don't know enough about licensing.

Can someone who does make a suggestion and I'll change it? We do use snippets in the code from other GPL/Apache licensed code in main.js for example, but we specify the sources and licenses for each snippet in the code.

My original thought was to use http://unlicense.org/. Would that work? Do I need any other language in there to clarify that the licenses of the snippets we use stand?

(Feel free to submit a pull-request with fixes)

Edit: Made an issue for this -> https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback.js/issues/31

networked• 12 years ago

Don't use the Unlicense: https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/147111/what-....

We do use snippets in the code from other GPL/Apache licensed code

If you include in your JavaScript code any code that is licensed under the GNU GPL you most likely have to release your code (the files with the GPL snippets) under the same -- at least that's an assumption you don't want to bet against. As for your other JavaScript code, the situation is less than clear and there's debate on the matter. See, e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/a/1239727/3142963 and read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Lin....

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

chimeracoder• 12 years ago

So that license was suggested by someone at FSF and I ran with it because I don't know enough about licensing.

Disclaimer: I care a lot about software licenses and have used pretty much every free software license around. If you can name a free software license, I've probably released some code under that license.

You can use the regular GPL and it will be fine here (it will not require anyone to release any code from the rest of their website).

If you use other GPL-licensed software in your project, you should use the GPL[0] for this project too.

Do not use the Unlicense - it's legally shaky (and not compliant with GPL-licensed software you incorporate).

[0] You can use the AGPLv3 if the GPL software is all GPLv3, but I would not recommend doing so.

cinch• 12 years ago

use Apache or BSD or MIT. simple

rch• 12 years ago

I don't see any GPL code in main.js - only MIT, and dual MIT/GPLv2.

What am I overlooking?

jff• 12 years ago

Someone from the FSF suggested the FSF's current license? There's a surprise!

belorn5• 12 years ago

The first thing anyone should know about licensing is to ignore advices that says "use license X". The only exception is the advice to use known and established licenses.

Ask instead yourself under what conditions you would accept having your code used. Is it acceptable if a commercial company take the software, say Google or apple, using it in products and do major secret modifications and changes without contributing anything back? If no, AGPL is the license of choice.

If you are acceptable of that, do you want direct distributors of the software to contribute secret modifications? If no, use GPL.

Do you want companies to be able to take your code, distribute it and then try and take you out with patents? If no, use apache.

Else: MIT/BSD. For-profit companies prefer the lower end of the list because it gives them the most options in order to create revenue. As such, you might get more users if you can live with the consequences. In the end, only you can answer what you want the license to say.

snuxoll• 12 years ago

I was actually about to look at putting this up until I saw the license, GPL-family licenses (aside from the LGPL) are viral and affect the project as a whole, the AGPL on this would then require the source for my entire site would need to be licensed under the AGPL.

Please look at moving to a less cra^H^H^H restrictive license like BSD, MIT, Apache, etc.

davexunit3• 12 years ago

The GPL is not viral. It doesn't spread on its own like a virus. Please stop perpetuating this.

sgrock• 12 years ago

I had the same reaction. I believe using AGPL code within a website requires that the entire website be open sourced as AGPL. For nearly any company or non-AGPL project this is a huge barrier to using your project. Maybe someone with more legal knowledge can weigh in on if my understanding is accurate.

r0muald• 12 years ago

Is running a small piece of AGPL3 code on your website that much of a concern? Especially for only one week or so, and then it will be gone for good?

rosser2• 12 years ago

Yes, it is.

AGPL requires you not only to release your changes to that code, but to release any code that talks to AGPL'ed code over the network.

davexunit3• 12 years ago

I certainly want to use AGPL code. I imagine that many others want to as well.

alecco• 12 years ago

Don't listen to these fear-mongering selfish people. There's nothing wrong with AGPL for what you are going to use and it does not force the whole site to be AGPL. All that is nonsense.

pnathan2• 12 years ago

I understand that phone calls are one of the more effective ways to communicate your thoughts with a US congressperson.

I know tokenadult recommends the Albert Einstein Institution's writings.

What are other effective and positive ways to influence the culture besides being "Angry Tech People"?

ultramancool8• 12 years ago

If you want to "fight back" as a technical person, please do something useful:

- Learn some applied cryptography and use that knowledge to write and review cryptographic software. Develop and analyze anonymity networks. Work towards development of powerful peer to peer replacements for existing centralized technologies.

- Deploy systems with this technology

- Teach others to take advantage of it

Don't waste your time and everyone else's with worthless campaigns such as this. The only real way to change is to defeat the useful purpose of spying.

ajkjk2• 12 years ago

Of course, your whole point hinges on the last sentence, which many will disagree with.

Awareness can go a long way if done right.

zmanian3• 12 years ago

We desperately need less user hostile encryption technologies but our control regime for abusive surveillance technology must include create a societal norm that these systems are morally unacceptable. The toolkit to do this is the popular democratic process and these campaigns are essential in this effort.

f_salmon• 12 years ago

- Deploy systems with this technology

- Teach others to take advantage of it

Here you go: http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/

An all-in-one communication solution that is:

- encrypted (public key, as we're supposed to)

- 100% decentralized

- open-source

pnathan2• 12 years ago

Don't waste your time and everyone else's with worthless campaigns such as this. The only real way to change is to defeat the useful purpose of spying.

Wrong. The only reason that the spying is happening is that it is accepted and allowed. The mentality needs to be clear: only police states(evil states) spy on citizens (their country and others) without a clear reason (c.f. 4th amendment of the US). The concept of mass surveillance needs to be dumped into the ashbin of the US history, along with the internment camps and the Trail of Tears.

Only when the mental restraints of the police/espionage forces are lifted does strong encryption become a working requirement for free speech.

As a technical person, I would argue that our responsibility is to educate non-technical people on what is happening and the ramifications thereof - encouraging artists to explore the idea of the panopticon; encouraging writers to ruminate on the matter in fiction and non-fiction; talking to police and politicians about what security really means in practical purpose; talking to the neighbors about the implications of the coming internet of things and what mass surveillance means then.

Helianthus• 12 years ago

Don't waste your time and everyone else's with worthless campaigns such as this.

I mean, you can do both.

sp332• 12 years ago

In addition to improving our tech, we can also reduce threats by stopping the NSA from launching attacks in the first place.

eli9• 12 years ago

You could find politicians who have the same values as you and work to support them. You could start a PAC that contributes to the campaigns of candidates who promise to change the things you don't like. You could run for elected office yourself.

ultramancool8• 12 years ago

Ultimately though if you're relying upon intelligence agencies, ISPs, etc to change what they do, good luck. Unless I can be elected head of the NSA, the democractic process isn't going to help much here.

joeblau• 12 years ago

I was going to add it to http://www.gitignore.io, but I need someone to give me a quick rundown of the License: Pro/Con style.

Thanks.

dkroy• 12 years ago

Imagine if Google did this in place of their search engine.

joshuahedlund• 12 years ago

Are there already representatives co-sponsoring the act the script asks them to co-sponsor? Would it helpful/possible to customize the script for those users to say "I very much support your sponsorship" (i.e. to encourage them to be more active about courting other reps, etc) vs. the same "Please co-sponsor..." text?

einrealist• 12 years ago

Why only online surveillance? What about surveillance in general and the fact, that secret services are causing more damage than they prevent?

dmix• 12 years ago

Every HN NSA thread has someone defending spying as something moral and ok, only taking issue with mass surveillance. So I doubt this comment will get much support.

The more I read about the history of IC, the more I agree with the "causing more damage than they prevent". History is completely littered with good examples. For every success such as intercepted Nazi radio comms in WW2 there are countless interferences in international politics with temoporary economic benefit and long term poltical turmoil (Iran assassination, trained Al Queda fighters, CIA-supported Indonesian mass killings of communists, etc).

lucastx• 12 years ago

Slightly off-topic, but since the developers are listening:

Is there a RSS feed for The Day's blog (https://thedaywefightback.org/blog/)? I want to keep up with the news.

sinak22• 12 years ago

Hey Lucas, we need to add something like Jekyll-RSS-Feeds (https://github.com/snaptortoise/jekyll-rss-feeds) to our repo. I'm totally strapped for time, but will try - if you fancy submitting a PR though, the repo is here: https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback

dreamdu5t• 12 years ago

The bill this campaign supports is a joke. It doesn't stop the NSA from mass surveillance. It just legalizes it.

0ca04• 12 years ago

Yeah, I'm sure that if people just nicely asked their oppressors to stop then they would. This is the right idea here. Good job!

stefan_kendall• 12 years ago

Remember when fighting back involved marches and riots in the streets? Now it's a hashtag.

Waaaay more convenient. Things are definitely going to change.

0ca04• 12 years ago

I like your sense of humour.

im3w1l• 12 years ago

I don't understand this idea. Things don't have to be hard to be useful. Raising awareness has never been easier and that is a good thing.

orthecreedence2• 12 years ago

You're right. Raising awareness is a waste of time. It's probably best to do nothing at all.

0ca04• 12 years ago

It's probably best to do nothing at all.

False dilemma.

You're right. Raising awareness is a waste of time

Raising awareness to what end? Things get done by doing, not by talking about doing. What you are doing is raising awareness about raising awareness. Your endgame is for everyone to be aware that nobody is protecting their freedom of speech. Your efforts are to keep a conversation alive, not the freedoms that the conversation is about.

Raising awareness is only the goal when what you really want is to be included in a conversation in order to identify with a social circle.

Raising awareness is a side effect of when you be an example by doing what you believe in.

bennyg• 12 years ago

Boom. Put it on my site that links to a slightly relevant iOS app I made. https://www.onions.io for those that don't mind a shameless plug.

alkonaut• 12 years ago

Aww I thought it was finally a campaign against js

eli9• 12 years ago

What if my representative is already a co-sponsor of the USA Freedom Act?

Seems like it would not be very helpful to direct people to call/email her office and demand she support something she already supports.

There's a list here: http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/legislation/usa-freedom-act-c...

benburleson• 12 years ago

My understanding is that staffers take the calls and basically tally numbers of support (positive or negative). If the numbers agree with your representative, they can use that as ammo in their debate.

eli9• 12 years ago

OK, fair enough. But you mean like a debate on the floor? I'm not sure how many minds are changed on the floor of the house... especially based on a second-hand tally of constituent calls.

nej• 12 years ago

They should at least promote the good legislators that cosponsored the USA Freedom Act on the banner so the good ones don't get sent massive phone calls and emails and are instead promoted for doing what's right.

fuqua• 12 years ago

Yes, for sure. As someone who works there, there's nothing more annoying for staff assistants sitting through hundreds of irrelevant calls from uninformed people reading a script. It's not a problem to call offices already in support of the legislation, but make sure those calling know that before they dial!

ctdonath3• 12 years ago

Just more noise for the NSA to sift thru and for well-paid legislators to ignore.

Americans: there's something called the Fourth Amendment. What we need is a free straightforward how-to guide to filing suit over this wholesale monitoring[1], such that thousands of individuals can act on for mere court filing fees. Overwhelm the courts with it, creating a proliferation of contradicting verdicts, forcing the Supreme Court to address it on terms of 300,000 individual citizens vs NSA. Rather than pouring vast sums into a single case with a couple carefully selected plaintiffs and hoping for an unlikely perfect outcome, crowdsource it.

Just a recurring thought.

[1] - which the Founding Fathers would certainly enumerated rights against had they been able to conceive of such pervasive intrusion on "papers".

eli9• 12 years ago

Americans elect their legislators. If enough people in their district don't like what they're doing, they can put someone else in office. It's a beautiful system.

And careful what you ask for re: a SCOTUS ruling.

ctdonath3• 12 years ago

The problem is the "tyranny of the majority". Those who don't understand the issue squash the interests of those who do. Fortunately, the Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution which focuses on protecting and facilitating the rights of individuals such that no majority can (in theory) suppress them. For the issue at hand, getting enough voters in enough precincts to take a dominating stance on something as obscure as NSA spying is unlikely; a system as beautiful as the one you note is the one whereby a single person can stand up and say "you can't do that!" and, duly adjudicated, be left alone.

Yes, asking for a SCOTUS ruling is playing with fire in a hay barn. I'm just annoyed that for all the ink spilled on this (and other such topics, see 2nd Amendment) there is precious little actual court activity addressing it, with most of it decided by either extremely big money or guilty-as-hell defendants grasping at straws; the legal system should be reasonably accessible by pretty much anyone without having to shell out big bucks for lawyers more interested in preserving their symbiotic relationship with the courts.

johnbm• 12 years ago

A broken system more like, where nothing can change until a critical mass of people is sufficiently pissed off. Proportional representation or GTFO.

whatevsbro2• 12 years ago

Americans elect their legislators. If enough people in their district don't like what they're doing, they can put someone else in office.

Do you think Americans have liked what "their" legislators have been doing for the past 10 years, for example? PATRIOT ACT, SOPA, CISPA, NDAA, hello?

What positive changes has voting brought you?

esMazer• 12 years ago

this would be great!

DannyBee2• 12 years ago

This won't work. Even if you had individual standing (4th amendment violations were actionable on their own due to bivens, but not so much anymore due to later precedent. For the most part, federal agencies don't count as a whole), your plan to flood the courts would fail.

They have multi-district litigation panels, etc, meant to manage the process of thousands of claims that are not class claims, and are spread out all over the place.

inglor• 12 years ago

So, letting arbitrary javascript from an untrusted source run on our production website?

No thanks.

davexunit3• 12 years ago

You are a grump. The source is right there for all to see, audit, and fix.

shuzchen• 12 years ago

The problem with this widget is the majority of the widget contents are stuck in an iframe. The js code mostly just does time detection and places the iframe on the site.

So even if you can audit and fix the js code you're running, you're still including content served straight from someone else's machine.

When we did this similar thing for sopa blackout (https://github.com/sirpengi/sopablackout), our widget was entirely self-contained (and under 200 LOC). And if you didn't trust our server you could host it entirely yourself.

Sir_Cmpwn• 12 years ago

You've got MediaCrush's support, with ~10k average daily uniques.

https://mediacru.sh

http://git.io/foPs6w

sundip• 12 years ago

Looks to be a great way to spread the word for this day of protest.

I cloned the github repo into a runnable; should make it easier to go through and try out changes to the script:

http://runnable.com/UvKyrkfQ1xg-AAAN

ediblenergy• 12 years ago

Is this to get only the NSA to stop collecting data on everybody, or Google/Facebook as well?

plg• 12 years ago

The day we fight back against privacy violations run amock. Now enter your phone number and email into this JavaScript banner.

athaeryn• 12 years ago

Waiting for the NSA to submit a pull request with some sort of "back door" function.

puppetmaster3• 12 years ago

I'm about to give up on fighting NSA, I think they win.

whitef0x• 12 years ago

Cool concept and idea, although I'm not sure whether this will make anything change up on Capitol Hill. Wikipedia's SOPA blackout sure didn't (they just waited 6 months after the fact to pass another) law.

I think there has to be a better way to enact change than to voluntarily replace you website with a huge black banner. Maybe through lobbying or a SuperPAC type of organization (with donations?).

Show HN: thedaywefightback.js

Related Stories