An Open Letter to HN from EFF, Demand Progress, and Cory Doctorow
Two years ago you joined in fighting back against dangerous Internet censorship legislation during the SOPA protests. You blacked out your websites, lobbied your employers to do the same, and started creative campaigns to defeat a threat to freedom on the Internet.
As was often the case, Aaron Swartz said it best: “[We defeated SOPA] because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story.” [1]
In the last 6 months it’s been revealed that government agencies, like the NSA and GCHQ, have twisted laws to create the legal and technical infrastructure for mass surveillance. Surveillance precipitates a dark form of censorship: people become afraid to speak freely. It undermines our security and restricts our ability to communicate privately.
With SOPA we had a clear goal: defeat a specific bill. In this case, we have promising bills (like the USA Freedom Act) and terrible ones (the FISA Improvements Act). But if progress is to be made, we need to send a message to our legislators that we won’t let the Internet be turned into a tool for mass surveillance. We need to push them to have the courage to support comprehensive reform.
Today, on the eve of the anniversary of Aaron’s death, we’d like to ask you to step up once again in defense of a free, open and secure Internet. In memory of Aaron, we’d ask that you to join us in a month of activism, culminating in a day of action on February 11th.
Our organizations—Demand Progress, EFF, and others—will be doing everything we can. We’re creating a banner that sites can add on the day and built a campaign website [2]. But for this to be a real success, each of us must again be the hero of their own story.
Will you join us?
Rainey Reitman, Activism Director, EFF
David Segal, Co-founder, Demand Progress
Cory Doctorow, Co-editor of Boing Boing
[1] http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/14/freedom_to_connect_aaron_swartz_1986
[2] https://thedaywefightback.org
105 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadOver the last 6 months, I've seen a number of people make comments on relevant HN posts to the effect of "This sucks, but how do we actually change anything" This is what you've been waiting for - here's a chance to actually do something about it.
Don't be discouraged when things seem to be standing still. Because of the way our minds work, single-point events stand out more than continual progress, and we get discouraged when the former seem to have less effect that we'd like.
My work was related to drug policy specifically[0]. During the years that I was actively involved in this, there was very little visible progress on the issues I worked on. We managed to pass a Good Samaritan law[1] in New York state (which I was involved with), but that was the only major success that I can remember, amid a long stream of what seemed to be failures.
On the other hand, when it rains, it pours. We've see a number of major successes very recently on this front (not just with marijuana policy, thought that's what gets the most attention). Looking back, the state of drug policy in 2014 is in many areas much brighter than it was in 2006, even though it certainly didn't seem like we were making any progress at the time.
It's easy to get cynical about large-scale, long-term efforts. As an individual, you're right, it's tough to do much on your own, since no individual has the same stamina as the forces that we're fighting. But showing support for groups that are fighting these longer battles is the best way to see some real action, even if it takes a while to incubate.
[0] On HN, that's oftentimes synonymous with "marijuana policy" - while that was certainly a part of it, my work focused more on the effects of drug laws on students (such as the Higher Education Act) and the socioeconomic impact of an incarceration model.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_samaritan_law
I want to do more than just like stuff on facebook... hopefully this will present something more tangible. I signed up for the "Add a banner to your site" list. I can tell ~15k visitors about this over the next month at least.
As long as people are willing to pretend that the problem is only the US and not the entire West colluding then the easier it is for these governments to continue.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/inside-canada-s-top-secret-b...
And GCHQ has less significantly legal restrictions than most other SIGINT agencies.
This may be true to some extent. But let me provide an anti-thesis to the statement.
For nearly a century (or more) everyone has looked at the US to lead in reforms and at times reversing reforms. What happens in the US is often used as a model by world governments as a blueprint.
If the US citizens, corporations and the tech community in general could get the US to positively change the distopian outlook/direction we (the world) seems to be heading in, this change would trickle down to the other countries beginning with the Western countries that you aptly state are colluding together.
In what respects? I can think of far more cases over the last century of the US lagging behind in reforms than taking the lead. In European politics, the US is more often channelled as the big regressive bogeyman (e.g. "we don't want US conditions, do we?") than somewhere to look to for reforms.
To the extent governments looks to the US, it is more often out of necessity due to the balance of power.
It's be fantastic if that changed and the US became a beacon of progress, but that will still take a lot.
In terms of surveillance, though, just getting the US pressure lifted would make local progress vastly easier.
More relevant today than when it aired almost a decade ago...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/
http://assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=A02063&term...
Which appears to say that
2. Someone seeking health care for themselves related to a drug or alcohol overdose cannot be prosecuted for drug or alcohol use (based on evidence obtained as a result of seeking care),
1. In recognition that a person experiencing drug overdose may not be in a state to seek health care for themselves, and people sometimes engage in drug use in groups of two, someone seeking health care for a third party experiencing drug overdose cannot be prosecuted for their own drug use (based on evidence obtained as a result of seeking care),
and 5. In recognition that no one would ever engage in drug use in groups of three or more, any evidence obtained as a result of someone seeking health care may be freely used against anyone who neither made the request for health care nor experienced the overdose themselves.
(There is also some text about class A-I and A-II felonies being exempt from the good samaritan provisions.)
I don't see any obligation mentioned in the bill, although point 5 does seem a little ill-advised to me.
"[We defeated SOPA] because everyone made themselves the hero of their own story. Everyone took it as their job to save this crucial freedom. They threw themselves into it. They did whatever they could think of to do."
Very much hoping the community will rally around and join us in this. In particular, startups and larger tech companies (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, etc.) don't get involved with this kind of activism easily. If you care about this issue and work at a tech company, you're the only ones who can exert pressure from within.
And I'm not even talking about the accusations of complicity (or have we forgotten that was the opening salvo in the NSA revelations, followed by a boilerplate non-denial and an eery silence?), but the fact that these companies regularly violate privacy laws (at least outside the US) and lobby against privacy protection.
Especially for me as a non-American, the US government and US tech companies like Google and Facebook are two sides of the same coin.
Of course they (or their employees) don't get involved, and they shouldn't. That would be like Elsevier getting involved with supporting Open Access.
Your lawyers say all that appears to be legal and legitimate, and informal discussions with other tech executives reveal that everybody in your industry does it and it's no big deal.
It takes a lot of courage to resist.
Now that the scope of the surveillance has been revealed, and it's become clear that most of the technology culture, and a big chunk of the general public, is on your side. And the risk of consequences like jail time is much less if you're no longer talking about the government's specific activities in your case, but things that have been published in major newspapers.
It suddenly becomes a lot easier to make a strong statement.
> Elsevier getting involved with supporting Open Access
That's not a fair comparison at all. Open access to scientific research would totally kill Elsevier's main revenue source. The main revenue source for e.g. Google or Verizon is customers, not the NSA. Surveillance reform wouldn't kill their primary business models.
There's a moral conduct that is above paper orders. Each one of us decides how to act when we face a contradiction. Aaron, Snowden - they did one thing. Google, Facebook - did another.
There you've conflated them again, and then provided another point about Swartz being in favor of access to information. You specifically did not address the grandparent's question about why Swartz would be against access to information for some cases and for access to information in other cases.
I'm not suggesting that he wouldn't (I don't know offhand, but it's clear that pro-whistleblowing folks often self-identify as anti-surveillance, too), but it's not clear what information-related principles are being used to justify these positions.
The current surveillance is being performed without oversight and in secret: so a "favoring access" stance aligns with wanting full disclosure of the surveillance, and a judicial process that allows for oversight of what is being surveilled and when.
Within the surveillance issue is a desire for privacy (which is not "favouring access" to information, as you note), which I think comes from two issues: that the government is a public institution for the public good and so it has less expectation of privacy than an individual. and also that there is a power imbalance between what the ability to act on information between governments and other entities, and an individual.
Publicly-funded research that the public is denied access to is an issue of both government openness and power imbalance.
Government promotion of the arts and sciences (which is the reason for copyright) being used to unduly deny the public access to aspects arts and sciences falls into both as well, IMHO.
People need to be anchored in something they can relate to or is memorable or of note.
Think of all the laws like "megans law" etc.
Somewhat common to use a person as a rallying point for a cause.
If you think that's all Aaron did with his life, or that this is what his life should be defined by, then that is a tragedy.
Still, sopa and pipa were copyright/censorship, not surveillance.
Next time someone organizes something similar, can they think of a worlwide action? Can they make something which doesn't sound like "Worldwide anti-american day" but rather "Worldwide day of support to the debate that US citizen started"?
US citizens are only 313 millions and the US law protects you against surveillance. We, the rest of the world, are all subject to this surveillance in unlimited way.
> ... and the US law protects you against surveillance.
The recent revelations would suggest otherwise.
It gives no indication for foreigners either. Actually the letter is very fuzzy about the demands to the government(s). It should list action points and criteriae so governments/crowds know when the movement will be dissolved and don't get afraid of the limits.
Moreover the way we leverage politics in France is quite different from the US ;) So we may need to adapt the mode of action to local traditions.
> The recent revelations would suggest otherwise.
The recent revelations suggest the law was broken, so at least you had some rights. But we foreigners have no law about not being spied by the US intelligence.
When the banner goes live, we'll likely do IP-geolocation and offer users who are like outside the US a link to necessaryandproportionate.org, a petition to be delivered to international lawmakers.
However, given that many of the organizations behind the movement are US-based, it definitely still leans US-focussed. In some ways that's for the best: many of our organizations don't know how to be effective in changing laws in other countries. For example, during our planning it was suggested that we set up dial-in numbers for each country. After some research, we found that in many countries legislator's offices view calls as a nuisance and do not respond positively to them.
So, what I'm trying to say is: we're definitely trying to address this. And if privacy groups in other countries join us in setting up similar actions (as with the German rallies in solidarity with StopWatchingUs), we'll happily send international visitors their way.
That being said, if you best wanted to ensure that no US agency ever spies on you, a good start would be for your government to prove it never spies on US citizens. That runs both ways: you want to trust us, we want to trust you.
So, it takes both: a strong localized protection, and a verifiable remote protection. We're working on our side of the first part, if you already have the first part on your side, the next best thing to do is start working on the second.
You're right in saying it should be symmetrical. It goes this way: - US person is protected from US abuses by US laws, - French person is protected by French laws, - We have Safe Harbour so French's people data goes freely to the US, - French people aren't protected by US laws, - And symmetrical.
The cross-country problem is a big one, prompting for the creation of international organizations for the protection of international citizens.
Edit: actually, 5 eyes is a perfect example of a negative (in this context) reciprocal agreement. We should work to create the opposite sort of reciprocal agreement.
From my perspective, it's like they read everything, look at your Facebook posts, your emails and what not, trying to profile you as a threat. And when they do so, you'll get on some listed that's automatically generated by some crazy scheme, and you'll no way to change that because you're not American, you're just some unimportant foreigner.
So although I have very strong opinions on the matter, I'm effectively censored by fear of hindering my future.
The more people that voice their opinions, the more impossible it becomes to punish that group (i.e. safety in numbers). Join in!
The Snowden revelations make clear that U.S. citizens are not protected against surveillance by their own government. Just because foreigners are less protected doesn't change that.
Congress might care when US corporations' bottom lines are affected by the surveillance. In fact, it's starting to be reported that US corporations are being affected already.
EDIT: To be clear, when US corporations bottom lines in sales to entities in foreign countries. IBM and Cisco have already attributed slumps in sales to foreign entities due to NSA surveillance.
Frankly, U.S. Congressmen don't care what Americans think about U.S. surveillance policy.
They clearly do, because they spend quite a bit of effort trying to shape what Americans think about it, which is inconsistent with not caring what Americans think.
Having a desire for somone to think a particular thing about a subject is exactly caring what they actually think about a subject.
I think the distinction you want to draw is more between being influenced by what Americans actually think, on the one hand, and attempting to influence what Americans actually think, on the other.
But then, again, the only rational reason for members of Congress to try to influence what Americans think is because they think that what Americans actually think impacts the prospects for their political agenda, e.g., by influencing their likelihood of getting elected or influencing the behavior of other members of Congress or the President (perhaps by influencing those actors electoral prospects), so, really, I think that even that distinction is somewhat false. The reason politicians want to shape opinions is because politicians actions do respond to opinions.
The tech industry has more money now than anybody else outside of finance, including the oil industry. It's that simple. Use it.
This actually isn't true. The USA PATRIOT Act, Title II expanded surveillance procedures greatly so that pretty much anything is covered under it, it is so broad and encompassing. Someone on TV even quoted from it that it said it allowed surveillance for "any reason whatsoever" or some words to that effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/nsa-gchq-illega...
"B-but this time it will be different! We have logos of relatively big companies on our website!" - hang in tight, brother, because "The Day We Fight Back" isn't anywhere close.
At least everyone involved will fee like they did something.
This is not doing anything, but damn if you don't feel like it.
That seems EXACTLY like changing your avatar and spamming Facebook. How does spamming Facebook or changing your avatar show the effects of the NSA's spying?
That is how it is useless. It does nothing.
And this doesn't change that.
> helps more people to start understanding and caring
And this does nothing of the sort.
That's why it's useless. It is the very definition of slacktivism.
That said, I don't think there's any substitute for people on the street and other people talking to the political & bureaucratic workers to change policy and procedure.
The average skeptic/cynic makes none.
This really is the last time you are left in charge of the hives. And I don't care if Diogenes says he likes it in there, he's probably just drunk.
What would Aaron do? Would Aaron have just passively asked for people to come forward? Would he have asked everyone to post some icon everywhere? Some forgettable meme?
Or would he have created something? Something that maybe wouldn't be obvious to the likes of us, to the likes of the EFF and The New Yorker? Something explosive (figuratively, Ms. Ortiz, figuratively)? Something evolutionary? Would he have banged out some code that would make even die hard Wikipedians feel unwise?
I don't know. I really don't. I don't even know what A/B testing means. But if no one else does, I have a feeling this is going to suck.
Edit: I didn't even know downvoting was possible on HN, but hey, if haters aren't hating then you're doing it wrong
Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Rand Paul's bill also I think sounded better than the USA Freedom Act. I always forget its name because they chose a pretty bad and long one ("intelligence oversight something"). So I hope you keep working on passing those (or others like it), too, and don't stop at the USA Freedom Act (or try getting some amendments to that pushed, too).
If you have the skills and drive to help, I would suggest looking into those two projects.
[1] https://crypto.cat/
[2] https://whispersystems.org/
"Call Congress Now"- using Twilio, you can call Congress folk from your browser (for free). http://www.callcongressnow.org/
Here are some Congress people who are doing some shady stuff: http://www.callcongressnow.org/profile/F000062 http://www.callcongressnow.org/profile/L000174
But it's pretty hard to get the word out about websites like that. In a sense, nobody passively cares enough to call Congress. Only when the Congress folks do something that brings about outrage do people care enough to really pick up the phone (or click the twilio button, as it were). So I built the /u/CongressionalHound, a bot on reddit that hunts for mentions of current sitting members of Congress in submitted articles and displays information about them in the comments: http://www.reddit.com/user/CongressionalHound/comments/
If you are a mod on reddit and want me to run the bot on your subreddit, PM the bot and I'll have it saunter on over and get to work. Slowly putting the bot on subreddits that give me permission or invite me to. My hope is that when articles about the NSA, or Obamacare, or the shutdown, or or or any big political issue comes up, that the bot will channel people towards getting in touch with their representatives and senators and effectively voicing their opinions.
Both of these are prototypes and there are major known bugs in both, but I think they can serve as examples of systems that could help citizens better impact their government through the power of the internet.
Let's build automated tools allowing people to send out letters, signed petitions, emails, faxes, pre-recorded voicemail etc.
That would would potentially eliminate procrastination.
Just a thought.
https://github.com/zmaril/callcongressnow/issues/1
Along with calling, it might be helpful to have a wiki that outlined the issues and talking points. People often care, but then feel like they don't have enough depth of knowledge to take action.
At very least it would be nice to point to one.
To those people, including the writer of the above letter:
If you're too naive to even notice unless you're told through official media channels, don't bother.
You ain't smart enough to outsmart them, quit fighting and accept whatever it is you voted for, it's not like the bullshit victory you may yet achieve is going to change reality one tiny bit.
"Not wittingly."
This can be disheartening, frustrating, even despondency-inducing. I've been there more than once, and activists across the world have probably been experiencing this since the first protest happened outside the first town hall.
For those stating "it will do nothing" - it can sometimes be hard to see the distant / second-order effects, but they do matter. Registering dissent matters. Now, I would add that there is a threshold beyond which activism loses its potency (for a variety of possible reasons) and you need to go to the next level (everything from non-violent resistance to revolutions.) In this particular case, we're nowhere near that, and by the looks of it, the tide is firmly against the anti-surveillance bloc, so pile on.
Finally, I'd say that the idea that the arc of the universe bends towards justice is wrong; people bend societies towards it.
I also personally take issue with Aaron Swartz as a poster child for SOPA related activism. There are many of us who did what we could to prevent SOPA and who are opposed to illegal aspects of mass surveillance who nonetheless believe in a proper place for intellectual property.
This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.
http://snowdenandthefuture.info/events.html
http://benjamin.sonntag.fr/Moglen-at-Re-Publica-Freedom-of-t...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ciscosystemsrouteratcern....
Are you going to organize rallies? Provide logistical support for people who want to do so? Even a snail mail campaign would be an improvement over Yet Another Complaint On The Internet.
Don't get me wrong: The cause is great, and drawing attention and support to it is important. But this might as well be a high-profile version of trolling a forum. It's not going to help anything unless you take action that will reach the people in charge and the people who might not currently be aware of what's going on and how important it is.
I don't see this doing much of either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act
I didn't know him but I am not trying to rally around him for a cause either.
If you think it's insufficient action, you be our new Sam Adams or Patrick Henry! I'll join, with determination and passion.