
Show HN: thedaywefightback.js - thomasfromcdnjs
https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback.js
======
sinak
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](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
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](http://postdot.org)

~~~
Noxchi
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.)?

~~~
futurist
Death by feature-creep.

Sorry, but you sound like you'd be a nightmare client.

~~~
freehunter
While it might not be the best feature-set for this specific startup, those
are features that I would be looking for if I wanted to use this for my
business.

However, the "About" page makes it very clear that this is nothing more than a
project (not a business), so adding the feature request would likely take more
time than it would bring in dollars.

------
ctdonath
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".

~~~
eli
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.

~~~
ctdonath
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.

~~~
eli
Isn't that exactly the problem this is trying to solve by educating the users
of various websites?

~~~
ctdonath
What, call this number and say something vague about opposing surveillance and
supporting a law with an extremely vague name and no link to the actual
content thereof?

A momentary tsunami of opinions will soon pass, vs the persuasive job-
preserving quiet comments of a few people who know everything. I don't want to
knock this effort as all efforts in the same directions help; I'm concerned
that it will have little effect, vs the potential of grossly under-used
objective tools of actual laws enforced starting with first principles (the
Constitution).

Educate users? Start with an up-front link to the actual text of the law, with
explanation of how portions of it apply and how it has real teeth vs an agency
protected (sometimes with force) by extreme & legal secrecy.

I'm suspect of bills named as vapidly as "USA Freedom Act" with little
addressing of its content. More like a legal Rorschach test, eliciting what
individuals want to see and then asking them to act on what they imagined it
is.

------
pnathan
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"?

~~~
ultramancool
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.

~~~
zmanian
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.

~~~
ultramancool
I disagree. Unless systems like TrueCrypt, PGP, Tor and Bitcoin are being
outlawed, there is no need for such a protest.

~~~
unethical_ban
To the other person's point, if you're the only one who gives a damn, then
using PGP doesn't matter.

>Our control regime for abusive surveillance technology must include create a
societal norm that these systems are morally unacceptable.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

~~~
ultramancool
But it hasn't done so or has completely failed to do so. Most people I've
discussed this with have generally supported privacy, some have even changed
usage habits to do so.

I believe there have been wide studies even on this that have largely shown
that people world wide are against such practices.

------
tveita
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?

~~~
sinak
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/](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](https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback.js/issues/31)

~~~
cinch
use Apache or BSD or MIT. simple

~~~
awj
This is the right answer. These licenses are all heavily vetted and can be
safely used in almost any kind of project. The attribution requirements (when
present) are straightforward and easy to resolve.

You don't want people to have to think or worry about anything before using
this library. Because if they do they often won't bother. These licenses align
with that philosophy.

------
thatthatis
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.

~~~
sinak
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/](http://www.internetdefenseleague.org/)

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

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

~~~
thatthatis
nice, thanks for the links

------
eli
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...](http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/legislation/usa-freedom-act-
cosponsors.htm)

~~~
nej
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
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!

------
joshuahedlund
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?

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

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

Thanks.

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

------
whitef0x
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?).

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

~~~
dmix
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).

------
dreamdu5t
The bill this campaign supports is a joke. It doesn't stop the NSA from mass
surveillance. It just legalizes it.

------
sundip
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](http://runnable.com/UvKyrkfQ1xg-AAAN)

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

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

~~~
sinak2
Hey Lucas, we need to add something like Jekyll-RSS-Feeds
([https://github.com/snaptortoise/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](https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback)

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

No thanks.

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

~~~
shuzchen
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](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.

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

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

[https://mediacru.sh](https://mediacru.sh)

[http://git.io/foPs6w](http://git.io/foPs6w)

------
alkonaut
Aww I thought it was finally a campaign against js

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

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

------
puppetmaster3
I'm about to give up on fighting NSA, I think they win.

------
0ca0
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
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.

~~~
im3w1l
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.

