
Can they see my dick pic? - seanieb
http://cantheyseemydick.com/
======
natural219
First of all, I want to say, this is one of the most brilliant things I've
seen in a while and I think is exactly the line of reasoning you need to
pursue to make effective action in the world: Find a _highly visible_ line in
the sand that everyone can agree is bad, and draw a clear metaphor to a
current problem to show why that problem is bad. Bravo to the creators.

I came here to comment that it's interesting this story has gotten flagged off
the front page immediately. A more immature mind would have jumped to "OMG!
The NSA trolls are burying this story!", but in this case, it's pretty clear
that some people flagged purely because of the title.

It creates an interesting problem for the HN community, because (as a long-
time hacker news reader) I feel this is _exactly_ the type of content that
would be interesting to most _hackers_ , but probably least interesting to
non-hackers who come here because of YCombinator's prominence as a non-strange
attractor and just simply don't want to hear genitalia words in their news.

I'm sure this comment will fall on deaf ears, but there was a Hacker News once
that would have brook'd the eternal VC industry to keep his state in
Hackerdom, as easily as a (hacker-king? I'm stretching here)

~~~
seanieb
Agreed. John Oliver's approach to making government mass surveillance tangible
for the masses is an awesome example of a social hack too.

Edit:words

------
zz1
I think that adding a call to action would be useful:

Now the government has the right to see your dick. If you want this to change,
call your representative and tell him/her to vote againts the Patrioct Act
reauthorization on June the 1st.

~~~
Splendor
> call your representative and tell him

Or her. ;)

~~~
zz1
Yes, you are right: thanks for the friendly heads up! :)

------
jastanton
Screenshot of the website for those who don't want to click it at work:
[http://i.imgur.com/5EQuKlO.png](http://i.imgur.com/5EQuKlO.png)

~~~
gear54rus
Not that it would make it any less NSFW though with those big ass letters
though, would it? :D

~~~
cookiecaper
I think the main idea would be to prevent the term "dick" appearing in traffic
logs.

~~~
darklajid
I thought that term would be a rather harmless abbreviation of a first name -
in the very same country that is prudishly labeling lots of stuff NSFW?

Seriously, 'dick' in a traffic log is bad? And 'dick' already comes up in this
very story's title..

------
Splendor
I think this is fantastic. I would recommend attributing Edward Snowden for
the quotes being used though.

~~~
olivierlacan
Good idea, saved it for later in the rush to transcribe.

------
asuffield
(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion, not my employer's. Not representing anybody
but myself. I work at Google, not on gmail.)

While the main point of this article is about legislation that enables
interception, they're using gmail as an example and there's something I'd like
to point out (took a little digging to find a place where this had been said
publicly):

[http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/staying-at-
forefron...](http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/staying-at-forefront-of-
email-security.html)

"In addition, every single email message you send or receive—100 percent of
them—is encrypted while moving internally. This ensures that your messages are
safe not only when they move between you and Gmail's servers, but also as they
move between Google's data centers—something we made a top priority after last
summer’s revelations."

The NSA can lawfully intercept all of Google's inter-datacenter traffic at the
borders of the US. Good luck to them in doing anything useful with this
firehose of encrypted traffic.

~~~
juliob
And you're so sure that there isn't a single NSA agent working at Google who
could subvert your systems? Let's be realistic

~~~
asuffield
It would be a fairly poorly designed system if any individual could subvert it
without getting caught. It's not all that important who's paying them ;)

I can't talk about internal systems at all, of course.

------
stephengillie
I'm curious about what this is, but I dare not click the link at work.

~~~
seanieb
It's SFW. Just text, even the youtube video from John Oliver is SFW IIRC.

~~~
shepardrtc
The video is SFW as long as you're not playing it through speakers.

------
Alex3917
The entire premise of this is wrong. Research has shown that the majority of
Americans favor allowing the government to take naked pictures of them, even
if it doesn't result in extra safety. Jeffrey Rosen wrote an entire book about
this called The Naked Crowd:

[http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Crowd-Reclaiming-Security-
Freedo...](http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Crowd-Reclaiming-Security-
Freedom/dp/0375759859/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1428335270&sr=8-1&keywords=the+naked+crowd)

~~~
amarte
John Oliver made it pretty clear in his street interviews that people were
unanimously uncomfortable with the US government collecting and storing dick
pics.

While I have not read the book you linked, I think the dick pic premise
captures the extent of the NSA's programs quite well and frames the issue in a
down-to-earth way. It lets people see the domestic side of the issue, which is
the difference between "Edward Snowden is a traitor who has compromised our
national security" to "holy shit, the NSA is invading my privacy wtf..."

------
zz1
Ok, it was open sourced: [https://github.com/olivierlacan/can-they-see-my-
dick](https://github.com/olivierlacan/can-they-see-my-dick)

------
zz1
I think that adding another explanatory paragraph could be useful, in order to
make it clear that is not just dick pics that we are talking about.

Think about your most intimate pictures, your most intimate conversations.
Would you want to share them with hundred of thousands of people? Because
that's happening already. Good news, you can change this.

~~~
olivierlacan
Good idea, pull requests accepted: [https://github.com/olivierlacan/can-they-
see-my-dick/pulls](https://github.com/olivierlacan/can-they-see-my-dick/pulls)

No being a jerk, seriously I'd love help with the copy. :-)

~~~
zz1
You can steal what I wrote for now, if you don't I will try to do a PR in the
next days. :-) (et bravo pour le lien à LQN <3)

------
titzer
This will backfire. Freedom of expression is about a lot more than freedom to
send around pictures of naughty bits. The public should not get the impression
that freedom from surveillance is being demanded by puerile hornballs, lest
they think that those who have their privacy compromised by the government
_deserve_ it.

Please, please, take this down.

~~~
seanieb
Have you watched the John Oliver clip on Youtube yet? I think the motivation
for going this route is clearly outlined, and firmly based in humor.

------
robertwalsh0
You might want to add some more meta tags for images, twitter cards, etc. For
those who are sharing this across social media. For instance, when I shared to
FB it didn't pick up any of the metadata to show a snippet.

~~~
olivierlacan
Do you mind helping out? [https://github.com/olivierlacan/can-they-see-my-
dick/issues](https://github.com/olivierlacan/can-they-see-my-dick/issues)

------
m3talridl3y
Dick pics are seen as a source of humor in our culture. "Can they see my pu
__* " would be more effective.

------
fluidcruft
I get the intent...

...but I'm not sure anyone, anywhere wants to see dick pics, anyway. This will
backfire spectacularly.

Thanks, "bro"

~~~
zz1
They might not want to, but they already do, and not just through the quoted
programs: look up Opticnerve, eventually on [https://www.nsa-
observer.net/](https://www.nsa-observer.net/)

~~~
fluidcruft
You misunderstand.

What I mean is "Oh noes the NSA may be chilling effect on unwanted dick pics
that stuff my inbox" could be a strong pro-NSA selling point to a very large
portion of the public.

Very, very few people are interested in receiving dick pics. Far, far fewer
than there are people interested in sending them. Failure to understand this
is a complete failure of understanding dick pics.

~~~
zz1
I think you are over-reducing the statement. What we talk about is John
Oliver's dick pick, Scarlett Johannson's nude selfie, and you passing naked in
front of your computer/phone. The last one might remain unknown to the vast
majority of the public, but I think the first two are being understood.

