
Show HN: A Political Non-Profit to End Mass Surveillance - r3trohack3r
https://everytwoyears.org/
======
yummypaint
How specifically to you plan to reach voters? Would these be ad buys? You
might consider sponsoring youtube videos from prominent creators with
audiences likely to be interested.

When i went to the site i was expecting to see cleanly presented and organized
analyses (538 style). Condensing data into concise, impactful, and shareable
content will probably be essential to your success. Personally i expect to see
demonstrations of that capability before i would consider donating. Nicely
articulating a cause in essay format isn't enough unless you're just trying to
sell your skills as an essayist.

~~~
r3trohack3r
Agreed and appreciate the feedback. Today is our official launch, we have a
long way to go.

I'm not happy with the state of our data. We had the trade-off conversation
about waiting to ship until we felt it "complete" and shipping now to get
feedback and spread the message.

We have a bet that we aren't the only ones who are disturbed by what our
mission addresses. We wanted to condense our mission down into an articulation
of our take on the problem domain and try to spread it. This articulation is
meant to cut to the core of the problems in an easy to follow way. Today is
part litmus test of our mission and part litmus test of our articulation.

I've updated the homepage with our current strategy. But this is early and we
are looking for help in cultivating that strategy.

~~~
pmiller2
I have to say, right now, it looks like some kind of parody site. Every single
senator and representative has 3 red X's next to them, and there's nothing to
represent any of their opponents, or any third party candidates. I think I
would have left that part off entirely at this point, since those pages have
effectively zero information content.

OTOH,
[https://everytwoyears.org/mission.html](https://everytwoyears.org/mission.html)
is great.

~~~
r3trohack3r
You're right. They were placeholders that showed future intent. I shouldn't
put my TODO list on the website. I'm taking it down now.

I appreciate your feedback.

------
easytiger
Hmm.

> A majority of candidates agree on undermining civilian oversight of our
> government.

Citation?

> We aim to fix that by taking away their power every two years.

Uh oh. Have you even considered the unintended consequences of such a thing or
ever read anything of the philosophy underlying democratic governance? I'd
wager you have not.

> We decide whether to keep our current elected officials in office with three
> simple measurements.

> We decide

> _We_

Oh no

> With your donations, we are going to fund analysis of candidates coming up
> for re-election.

As per my previous prediction [1] this is a donation sourced political hit
squad.

> End Mass Surveillance

The above has literally nothing to do with what you "intend" to do. It's a
smokescreen to make it seem more reasonable. What is the relationship between
this and biennial elections?

> Stop Big Money Politics

Well, it worked for Trump as mantra.

Honestly this is very poor. Furthermore trying to state you are a political
entity wanting to influence election outcomes and remaining anonymous is
beyond cowardly

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23562226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23562226)

~~~
whycombagator
This is a highly cynical but great perspective. The person posting here,
involved in the project, might not be completely anonymous, but no name
associated with their HN handle and no names on the site are definitely a red
flag. As are many other things you point out.

The concept is interesting but overall this is either a terrible execution,
terrible idea, something more nefarious, or a combination of those things.

~~~
r3trohack3r
I'm sorry you feel this way. It's a side project that has taken considerable
effort so far. It's being done in good faith.

I've added a link to our GitHub organization to the footer, all contributions
are under my personal account. My HN handle is the same as my social media
handles across the board (though some are l33t-ified depending on the
availability of the handle).

I hope that, as we get further down this path and have more substance, we can
demonstrate more transparency and earn more trust. Yesterday's launch
validated the idea is worth iterating on for us, we intend to keep learning
and pushing forward.

------
nardwe
Not sure how to do this or if this is really what wikis are for but maybe add
some info to a wiki and link it to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/527_organization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/527_organization)

------
tehjoker
It might make sense to try to tie this into the ideas of the current defund
the police demand that's getting some traction. Who uses mass surveillance?
The cops of one sort or another. Take away their money, take away their toys.

------
chiefalchemist
Make Democracy Great Again? :)

If you had such a t-shirt, I'd buy it.

While I side with your missions, that's also the problem. Three missions is
two too many. Pick one. Start with a focused product and find a market. Etc.

We wish you luck. We need it.

~~~
pmiller2
When was the American form of representative democracy ever great? You do
remember from your history classes that initially, only white, male,
landowners could vote, right?

~~~
r3trohack3r
I understand you are taking offense at "again". I've had a hard time grappling
with the past. It's dark. The history that brought us to this point violates
every aspect of the values I hold as "critical path" for the future of humans.

America's past is dark. But we have a legal system and founding documents that
allow for peaceful revolutions through civilian oversight.

The past is dark. The future doesn't have to be.

~~~
pmiller2
I'm with you on this. I wasn't taking offense at the word "again," simply
stating that trying to claim American democracy was ever "great" was
historical revisionism.

It didn't become "great" when black people got the vote, either. People in
power tried their damnedest to keep them disenfranchised.

It didn't become "great" when women got the vote. We've still gone on to
commit mass atrocities, some of which took place on our own soil (internment
of the Japanese, for instance).

It wasn't suddenly "great" after landmark civil rights legislation and
Johnson's Great Society programs passed. We still shot peaceful protesters at
Kent State, and began a hopeless War on Drugs.

And, it's not great now. Public support has essentially zero impact on whether
any law or regulation is enacted: [https://act.represent.us/sign/the-
problem](https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem)

That's what I was getting at.

~~~
r3trohack3r
<3

------
dantheman
Why do you muddle the issue with campaign finance reform? I strongly disagree
with your views on that, and even though I agree on stopping mass surveillance
I can't support your org.

As for money in politics - if bloomberg and hillary clinton don't proved that
money doesn't just buy votes, I don't know what will.

Lastly, anonymous speech is important - you would think people arguing against
mass surveillance would understand that.

~~~
r3trohack3r
This spawned from an observation that our representative democracy isn't
representative. We worked backwards from what caused that.

We've split the mission out into sub-goals but the primary goal is to make our
representatives, well, representative. We identified what, in our opinion, was
undermining that and set to work.

I don't think it's fair to attach everything to Bloomberg and consider the
matter a closed case. Large donors do indeed influence the outcomes of
elections, if they didn't we wouldn't have large donors. Conflating money with
speech isn't healthy, they can be exchanged for one another. Tracking that
exchange as part of campaign financing laws wouldn't constitute a warrantless
search while storing the "metadata" of peoples communication very well might.

Warrantless searches, and the government organizations wielding them, have
been used to systematically disenfranchise and suppress voters. The civil
rights movements have been actively undermined by the government wielding this
power. I may be operating under an availability heuristic here, but a sweeping
majority of the folks I've crossed paths with in my life do not support the
government's mass surveillance programs. Yet the persist, being sanctioned and
overseen by our "representatives".

The mission is cultivated from identifying and disrupting the viscous cycle of
power imbalance. The strongest branch of the U.S. government is supposed to be
the voters, not the few but the many, we aim to make that happen.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The problem with campaign finance isn't that there's nothing there, it's that
everything is there. "Money is speech" isn't a law of the United States, it's
a law of physics. Money buys staff and billboards and newspapers and TV
stations. Fox News works for the Republicans and CNN works for the Democrats
even if neither of them donate a dollar to anybody's campaign. Google can put
a banner on google.com that will be seen by the whole world.

Counting influence only when it's in cash and not in kind only makes the
asymmetry worse. It transfers influence from millionaires who can "only"
afford advertising to billionaires who own the media outlets themselves and
gain airtime for themselves by _not_ selling it to someone else. But counting
third party speech as a political donation because it benefits a political
campaign is intractable.

The easier problem to solve is to fix the voting system, because there is an
uncontroversial and straight forward solution. Switch to range voting or
approval voting, which dismantles the two party system. Then, when there are
twelve parties in Congress, it's much harder to buy elections with money _or_
airtime because the election winner's original chance of winning was 8%
instead of 50%, which makes it much easier to waste your money on a loser and
thereby reduces the payoff from spending it that way.

~~~
r3trohack3r
This is really insightful and powerful feedback. I'm going to spend time, a
lot of time, reflecting on this.

If you'd like to keep an ongoing dialogue on this, or help in any way, drop a
line to staff@everytwoyears.org <3

------
r3trohack3r
Founder/treasurer here. This is my first sharing of the project. Really
interested in feedback and happy to answer questions <3

~~~
specialist
Okay.

Question:

What laws, policies have you passed?

Who's on your board of directors? Who's advising?

What's your fund raising experience?

Suggestions:

#1: Focus on one issue. Or create one org per issue. You can't assume allies
will support your entire platform, so remove deal breakers.

#2: Pace yourself for a marathon. For example, a friend of mine worked
EIGHTEEN years to get the first statewide family leave act law passed. Had to
build the coalition one vote at a time.

#3: What are you for? Where's your model legislation? Be specific. Offense
beats defense, have an affirmative agenda, etc.

#4: Start locally. It's easier to move the needle, one jurisdiction at a time.

#5: Why not partner with existing orgs, create a local chapter? Is there
something wrong with the current public financing advocates? The people
fighting for RCV?

Bonus #6: Pick a strategy for privacy. Like extend property rights to personal
data. Like new accounting rules to make data aggregation a financial
liability. Something, anything that people can wrap their heads around.

~~~
r3trohack3r
This is super valid, and something I spend a lot of time thinking about. The
task ahead is monumental, but these are sub-goals. This spawned from an
observation that our representative democracy isn't representative. We worked
backwards from what caused that. The mission is cultivated from identifying
and attempting to disrupt the viscous cycle of power imbalance. The strongest
branch of the U.S. government is supposed to be the voters, not the few but
the many, we aim to make that happen. I don't think any of these three points
can succeed without the other two.

Mass surveillance, if you click through, isn't about mass surveillance. It's
about a government not being held accountable to it's own laws, which are
meant to be governed by civilian oversight. Our government must follow it's
own laws, it must pass laws that are foremost in line with our founding
documents and then inline with their constituent's desires. The mechanism for
civilian oversight is broken.

While reading the ACLU FOIA requests and court documents, it was clear to me
that the government wasn't playing by the rules. When you read the reasons the
government kept these programs secret on write-ups from leaked documents, it
was for fear of being subject to civilian oversight. This isn't how our
government was designed to operate.

~~~
schoen
I think you should at least talk to people who have a broader range of views
about the causes of mass surveillance. I've worked on fighting it for a while
and I've come across a lot of different theories about why it exists and
persists. A few of them include

* international anarchy theory: the world is really dangerous (much more dangerous than the public has any idea of) and so security agencies need to be more powerful than people, including the security agencies themselves, would really prefer in order to combat that danger or keep it at bay; surveillance is one part of the security agencies' toolkit for managing it

* international hegemony theory: the U.S. got its current position in the world partly via unsavory means and means that are very poorly understood or poorly remembered by the public (at least in America) (cf. Huntington's "The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion [...] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.") and there is some reason for the U.S.'s sake, U.S. allies' sake, or the world's sake that the U.S. should continue to maintain this position, including by continuing to use the tools that allow it to do so

* realpolitik theory: the U.S. in some sense can't afford to be that much more ethical than other actors because they will somehow take advantage of this

* military-industrial complex theory: surveillance is super-profitable for surveillance vendors and contractors, so they want to keep it going

* self-perpetuating elites theories: civil servants are accustomed to seeing surveillance activities that they participate in, or whose intelligence products they consume, as part of the way the world works, and they normalize it among themselves while just not caring very much what anyone else thinks about it

* non-political theory: currently the ideological anti-surveillance constituency is so tiny that most legislators find it rational to ignore it, as contrasted with other issues that generate multiples or orders of magnitude more passion, contributions, or votes

* public support theory: public opinion actually favors current surveillance programs, at least in broad outlines

* class conflict theory: someone, or some coalition, is relying on surveillance in order to keep suppressing the lower classes

* racial conflict theory: someone, or some coalition, is relying on surveillance in order to keep suppressing racial minorities

* other conflict theory: some other kind of powerful coalition finds surveillance important in order to maintain its power

* surveillance is actually good theory: sophisticated legislators and other officials have taken a look at the laws and institutions that carry out surveillance in the U.S. today and concluded that they are basically OK under the constitution, are basically subject to half-decent oversight, and represent a broadly politically acceptable trade-off in terms of what they accomplish and the risks they create

I think approximately two to five of these are well-aligned with your view
that campaign finance reform would be relevant to achieving surveillance
reform, but the others aren't so well-aligned. Although I have my own
opinions, I don't feel like I know for sure which of these theories are most
correct.

~~~
specialist
Been chewing on this reply. This is terrific. I very much support doing this
kind of analysis. I wish I had this kind of analytical framework back when I
was active.

To better understand the opposition, and rebut their rhetoric, sure.

But also to better advocate one's own policy, to message craft an affirmative
agenda.

\--

Say what you're for, not what you're against. Whatever the issue, there's a
positive message. Say "Walk please" instead of "Don't run". For privacy it
might be "I have the right to control my public persona" vs "Stop the
panopticon!"

Discussing policy using your opponent's framing is a trap. Because of the
asymmetry of bullshit.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law)

I did election integrity activism for about 10 years. Utterly exhausting. Any
effort rebutting your opponent's talking points is wasted resources. And
they'll always come at you with ever more inane irrelevant points, seeking to
discredit you, overwhelm you, muddy the waters.

For law makers, anything ambiguous is radioactive. Make it easy for them to
choose your policy. A great analog is Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think".

FWIW, lawmakers and their staff can only seriously consider 10s of the 1000s
of bills up for discussion. It's an attention economy, they're doing triage,
just like everyone else.

