
Californians: Ashamed of Senator Feinstein's lies on surveillance? Join Us - zmanian
https://shameonfeinstein.org
======
rosser
If you really want to get Feinstein's attention, an internet petition, even an
incredibly well-written one like TFA, isn't likely to do much. You need to
pick up the phone and interact with a human being in her office, making sure
that person understands the importance of this issue to you, one of her
constituents.

If her staffers start being effectively being DDoSed from doing their jobs by
phone calls about NSA surveillance, she _will_ hear about it.

Source: my cousin and his wife were both Senate staffers for a number of
years.

~~~
zmanian
We've evaluated our options for influencing Feinstein's office directly and
there is no precedent for a citizen movement causing the Senator to change a
publically announced position.

We are trying to adopt a strategy more like the 2nd Amendment groups to
discredit and delegitimize.

~~~
refurb
2nd amendment groups like the NRA use the direct method, not petitions. They
send out pre-written postcards for the member to fill out and send in. They
also send out contact information for all the member gov't representatives,
phone numbers included, and tell them to call.

The grandparent is right. Give people the number to Feinstein's office and
tell them to call and say:

1\. I live in Feinstein's district

2\. I oppose X

3\. If Feinstein votes for X, I will vote against her next election.

The call can take less than 1 minute, but her staff will record the comments
and present them to Diane.

~~~
zmanian
EFF has a great action site on this issue.
[https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action3/common/public/?a...](https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=9437)

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timw6n
The fact that there's an "Is this safe" link next to the button for signing
the petition is itself a telling indicator of the chilling effects of this
sort of surveillance.

A couple of years ago people wouldn't even have imagined the possibility that
there'd be consequences from this sort of very low-level, very legitimate,
democratic participation.

~~~
rayiner
The organization opposing surveillance is the one putting the button there.
Its pure propaganda on their part.

~~~
TelmoMenezes
Honestly, if you had to bet, would you bet for or against the following
hypothesis?

hypothesis: A significant amount of people nowadays think twice before writing
or voting on something that could be interpreted as critical of government
surveillance. They fear they will be included in some list and that this may
have future negative consequences.

~~~
rayiner
I don't know how you're defining "significant." I don't think its appreciably
higher now than it ever was. I think the latest news just validates people who
have always been paranoid.

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belluchan
Feinstein beyond reproach. She's probably too old to run again and she just
won her election. She's a lame duck with a ton of power. She can take the flak
I think with no repercussions.

I also don't think she's lied. She's been open about her position. I don't
agree with it, but I don't think she's ever misrepresented herself.

~~~
davidgerard
Feinstein has been like this forever, but she's in a seat where the electorate
would rather vote for a Democrat that eats babies over a moderate Republican.

~~~
belluchan
California elects republicans statewide all the time. Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Pete Wilson, a Senator can win too. Not that I would want them to.

~~~
dragonwriter
> California elects republicans statewide all the time.

Well, California has an unusually large number of separately elected Statewide
officers, but for the big three statewide offices (Governor and the two US
Senators), "all the time" would be something of an exaggeration. In the last
19 years, Arnold Schwarzenegger's reelection as Governor is the only time a
Republican has been elected to one of those big-3 statewide offices in a
normal election.

> Arnold Schwarzenegger,

Arnold Schwarzenegger was first elected in a recall election which uses
different procedures (an open plurality election with no primary to filter the
field, with a side-by-side majority vote on the same ballot for actually
recalling the incumbent -- more people voted for the incumbent Democrat to be
retained than voted for the Republican Schwarzenegger to replace him.)

> Pete Wilson

Pete Wilson -- the last Republican elected Senator from or Governor of
California, was last elected Governor _19 years ago_. The political landscape
has changed a bit since then.

> a Senator can win too.

Pete Wilson did it the last time _25 years ago_. Sure, the Republicans _could_
run a candidate that could win, but they haven't shown much propensity to do
so.

------
discardorama
The _ONLY_ way that you can have an impact is by (1) raising money (I'm
talking $1000/person), and (2) donating a significant amount of time to
working for their challenger.

Go after some of the most ardent supporters of NSA and get them defeated. Once
you make an example of a few such politicians, the rest will fall in line.
That's what the NRA does, and it works swimmingly for them.

------
prolways
Is anyone weighing in on this in touch woth how california actually votes? It
doesn't matter how bad DFi actuallu is, our party voters are too busy
protecting you from republicans. i didn't hear one reason in favor of hr last
term, the only justification for voting i got was "fioria is terrifying"

------
zmanian
Get involved: We organize primarily through our mailing list.
[http://restorethefourthsf.com/mailinglist/](http://restorethefourthsf.com/mailinglist/)
& Facebook Group
[https://www.facebook.com/groups/RestoretheFourthSF/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/RestoretheFourthSF/)

------
naaaaak
Campaigns won't work, be it email or phone. A lot of Californians (and US
citizens in general) have been trained to automatically vote for someone with
a D (or R) next to the person's name. They've also been trained to apologize
for their politicians, buy into whatever they say, and ignore serious issues.
Skepticism and criticism only apply to people from the other side, and even
then, it's only the easily marketable rhetoric people will repeat.

In California, Feinstein will be re-elected into her grave because of that D
next to her name. She could support almost everything George W Bush stood for,
just say otherwise, and that D will keep her in office. Want proof? Look at
Obama.

------
patrickg_zill
Feinstein's husband:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Blum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Blum)

All the controversies about self-dealing must just be coincidence:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Blum#Controversy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Blum#Controversy)

------
MRSallee
Ashamed? No. Her actions are no reflection of my own character or behavior.
I've never voted for her. Ashamed is not the right word.

------
jedbrown
When you open this page with NoScript, all the alerts are shown.

* Thanks for Signing We've sent you an email. Please check your inbox to complete the process.

* We've already got a signature for your email. Thanks

* You appear to be overloading our servers. Please stop.

* Something went wrong. Let us know on Github

~~~
zmanian
We are serving all of our javascript over SSL. We think think that should
protect our users against malicious attacks if they are using TOR to access
our site for instance.

We could pretty easily provide a fallback HTML form for sign up. I'll try to
get that up and running soon.

------
jmspring
Lies on surveillance is one if many issues Senator Feinstein is an
embarrassment to me. It started with her own self serving nature even as mayor
of San Francisco.

Google her stance on gun ownership and the steps she took for her own private
interests.

------
joyeuse6701
pretty sure her office is around Santa Monica blvd. and Sepulveda IIRC, should
anyone want to do protest more physically.

------
andyl
Feinstein consistently opposes the interests of her own Tech industry. She's
gotta go.

~~~
mikeyouse
I'm as unhappy as the next person with regard to Feinstein's track record, but
to say she's opposing the interests of her own industry is just Silicon Valley
bias. She's a US Senator, not a congresswoman from Palo Alto.

Yes, the tech sector is very large in California but they've largely been
apolitical in the past. There are two massive industries who lavish
politicians with donations and who Feinstein is representing just fine:

Military and Entertainment.

How many defense contractors from the top-100 list[1] are based in California?
How about the world's largest entertainment companies (who would profit
immensely from SOPA / PIPA)?

Ignoring these political realities is unhelpful.

[1] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S._federal_government)

~~~
gbhn
I didn't read OP's comment as saying Feinstein wasn't serving any industry's
interests -- but that she was being actively and passively hostile to the tech
sector which comprises a significant part of her constituency.

I'm happy to say I've voted for her opponent in every election where the
option was available to me. I suggest everyone living in California do the
same, barring her running against a truly ghastly opponent. (But isn't that
always the issue...)

