
The Day the Internet Didn’t Fight Back - petethomas
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/the-day-the-internet-didnt-fight-back/
======
junto
Financial pain. We forget how powerful this is. We have shown that we
collectively can protest by adding a bit of JavaScript to our webpages and
some of you called you senators. Great start, noble, but I guarantee that
nothing will change.

What really hurts is _loss of revenue_ to global companies. We need to
collectively boycott firms until _THEY_ resolve the problem. It is their tax
write-down lobbying donations that keep these jokers we call senators in
power.

If we really want to protest against say, monitoring, then we should be
building free tools for people to easily move their email away from GMail or
building something better than email as an alternative.

If we want to discourage Concast from throttling Netflix, then we should all
collectively dump Comcast and move to a company that promises they won't.

If we want to discourage the NSA then lobbying government as individuals isn't
going to cut it. That horse has already bolted. That horse needs a bullet to
the head. Corporations are the only entities powerful enough to stop
government. We need to empower them to fix the problem.

We think that protesting within the confines of the system will work. It
doesn't. We think that protesting in the street will work. It doesn't (Iraq
War protests anyone?).

It works outside the western world because they aren't kept within what I call
"the sheep bubble". Western governments know how to keep the people within a
bubble that provides just enough comfort to keep the vast majority happy.
Places where we have seen revolutions haven't maintained that bubble.

Since we don't have direct control over the bubble in the western world, we
have few options for collective revolt.

I would like to see this (very cool) system that you have collectively put
together for yesterday's protest, to be pivoted and used to actively boycott
companies that we collectively see as damaging to the us sheep.

 _Then we become the wolves._

~~~
elorant
Let’s get realistic here shall we? Building an alternative to Gmail? Nope. We
can’t do that. We don’t have the resources. And if we were to charge people
for a service like that in exchange of extra security the majority wouldn’t
give a damn.

The thing is that NSA has the ability to attack the infrastructure. If for
example they can go to carrier providers and monitor the pipe no matter what
we’d do on top of that would be futile. Furthermore, they can backdoor
cryptography algorithms-which to my opinion is the scariest from all the
revelations regarding NSA. So even if we move everyone to SSL we wouldn’t know
if that’s enough.

The financial pain you’re referring to cuts both ways. If you were to boycott
commercial solutions then you’d have to go and find alternatives. Which could
be relatively easy for tech-savvy individuals but what about companies? They
wouldn’t do it. Simply as that. No one would go out of their way to install an
alternative to Exchange Server in order to put pressure on Microsoft. It’s not
realistic.

Basically what we need is a new Internet. We have to change everything. I
don’t know if that’s even feasible but my guess is that even if it was it will
take a lot of time.

~~~
frabcus
Of course we can!

It looked like Internet Explorer was a permanent browser monopoly just over a
decade ago.

The Spread Firefox campaign - a crowd marketing campaign - fixed that.
Combined, of course with a well made browser.

The result was that Apple and Google could later compete on another level with
Microsoft (without Spread Firefox, websites wouldn't have worked on iPhones or
Chrome).

Something similar can absolutely be done again.

~~~
davidw
> The Spread Firefox campaign - a crowd marketing campaign - fixed that.
> Combined, of course with a well made browser.

Thanks, almost entirely, to Google's money.

~~~
pdpi
Thanks, almost entirely, to Mozilla's efforts.

Yes, Mozilla gets most of its income from Google right now, but saying that
Spread Firefox's success was almost entirely attributable to Google's money is
tantamount to saying that Mozilla would've been unable to secure any other
source of funding.

------
spenvo
"By late Tuesday, some 70,000 calls had been placed to legislators and roughly
150,000 people had sent their representatives an email."

What was to be expected? The offices of my Senators and Representatives were
swamped all day with phone calls.

The author keeps paying lip-service to the comparison of this effort to
SOPA/PIPA --- which was entirely different. Those bills were a direct
challenge to the internet as we knew it, and everyone (including the big
players) moved in to participate. That protest was about two game-changing
bills with votes on the floor (all other paths for success had failed - if
you're Google,Wikipedia, etc); this protest was about the status quo.

Our elected officials heard us today - from seemingly nowhere, that the
_status quo_ isn't acceptable. The verbiage directly called the kettle black
on the supposed "FISA Reform Bill," reminding politicians that the powder is
dry if head too far off course. And that (IMHO) makes a big statement.

I felt the post was unjustifiably negative[/defeatist] with a link bait title
and lame observations. It _would be great_ to see Google, Facebook, Wikipedia,
etc. play a larger role and "see the bigger picture"\-- especially given that
companies like Microsoft have officially recognized dragnet surveillance as an
"advanced persistent threat." [0] Again, it would be great, but it can't be
_necessary_. We want their help, but we cannot _need_ it.

PS - It's defeatist to say the following: "internet protests will never change
anything in Washington."

"The Powerbroker," a Pulitzer-Prize winning biography praised by Aaron Swartz
[1], conveys the following two lessons with regards to affecting change in
government: 1.) the only thing which matters (from the perspective of a common
man) is raising the political stakes in every manner possible, forcing the
issue into the court of public opinion where politicians must pick sides in a
very public affair. 2.) The _other things_ which matter are in conversations
which you are not a part of. . . ... dig in. This is a minor skirmish in a
long war (of attrition) against the Est..

[0] - [http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/5/5177554/microsoft-plans-
se...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/5/5177554/microsoft-plans-server-
encryption-against-nsa-snooping) [1] - [https://zolabooks.com/list/aaron-
swartz-reading-list/1](https://zolabooks.com/list/aaron-swartz-reading-list/1)

~~~
ItendToDisagree
The fact that Google/Yahoo/Facebook/Wiki didn't promote or get involved with
this REALLY hurt the cause...

To many (read: The Majority) of people the above companies _are_ the internet.
In the same way the people who think this way used to think AOL _was_ The
Internet (Capitals important). It really is sad that this seems to be true and
that a couple companies have so much influence on what the internet is and
does. But it really did make it easy to downplay the whole thing by saying "If
it was so important why didn't Google get involved?"

~~~
jebus989
So the press has picked up Wikipedia didn't get involved but what actually
happened was:

* Jimmy Wales posted on his talk page inviting discussion on the issue [0]

* There was support for having articles on the main page all be related in some way to the topic of mass surveillance [0]

* A handful of editors then made a subpage and began plans for a request for comment (RfC)... [1]

Then said handful of people made a series of bungles and strange decisions
(like naming the proposal "Surveillance awareness day" instead of associating
with the protest) and ultimately didn't bring the RfC to the community for
proper discussion.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales/Archive_155#The_Day_We_Fight_Back)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Surveillance_awarene...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Surveillance_awareness_day)
(see history, talk page)

TL;DR Wikipedia didn't decide not to get involved in the protest, 2 or 3
editors dawdled and made bad decisions until we ran out of time to discuss it.

~~~
eli
Every time I read something about "behind the scenes" at Wikipedia, I'm glad
that I never really got involved.

~~~
blowski
I imagine 'behind the scenes' at most organisations is a nightmare. My
experience of the folks at Wikipedia is that they are nice bunch of folks,
achieving really amazing stuff with a minuscule budget.

Due to their non-monetary goals, total reliance on volunteers, and transparent
structure, they are more like the UN than Google, which inevitably leads to
weird arguments.

~~~
smsm42
In 2013, Wikimedia got over $44M in contributions. I'd not call that
minuscule. Of course, they have huge site, huge traffic, etc. - but that
doesn't make $44M minuscule.

------
jjcm
I was one of guys behind sopablackout.org, one of the larger players in the
sopa movement a while back. I think that the main difference between the
effects of this protest and the sopa protests, is that for sopa, sites quite
literally blacked out their pages for the day. You couldn't ignore the
message. This time, the popup/message was less in your face. On HN it was a
small piece of text at the top of the page. I didn't even see it on reddit.

Yes a lot of call volume was made, but I think the general public didn't
really know it was happening. With SOPA, sites went black. Content became
unavailable. Users didn't get what they wanted, so they tried to figure out
why.

70,000 calls are great, but the that makes up a minuscule portion of the
elected officials' demographics.

I think the largest problem here was that the campaign's objective was
contacting representatives, whereas the SOPA's objective was educating the
public. One lasts a day, the other is sustainable.

~~~
this_user
I think one big difference is that the SOPA campaign had a very clear-cut goal
of stopping that legislation while this campaign is "against mass
surveillance" which is much more nebulous. Most people on the Internet seem to
agree that they are against mass surveillance, but there is a lack of clear
goals and demands that everyone can get behind.

~~~
Ensorceled
Worse, they all have different levels of acceptable surveillance. Many
Americans think that the current spying is ok, many more think spying on all
non-Americans is ok, many other Americans thing ANY spying is bad.

The vast majority of Americans could recognize that SOPA was just plain bad:
bad for business, bad for users, bad for everybody.

------
synctext
Easy to do nothing, it's easy to be cynical (+get a headline).

IETF Internet guardians say "pervasive monitoring is an attack":
[https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-farrell-perpass-
attac...](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-farrell-perpass-attack/)

$52.6 Billion yearly budget is feeding the attacker:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/special/national/black-...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/special/national/black-budget/)

Seems a political reform force is needed or nothing will change. SOPA/PIPA
gave us the taste of blood..

~~~
crassus
The only way to be effective is to make politicians lose their jobs. This
means coalescing behind single-purpose organizations meant to win reelection
for anyone supporting a minimalist tech/privacy platform, and defeat for
anyone else.

Tech workers today are too caught up in mainstream political bullshit -
"parental notification laws for abortion are basically rape" and etc. - to
actually do this.

------
etiam
The initiative has been criticised for lack of a clear call to action many
times, not least here on HN. If the response was really lukewarm (the contacts
to legislators and political representatives looks pretty good?) maybe it's a
consequence of that.

I personally have never really liked the framing of the campaign. " _The Day_
We Fight Back"? As if anyone's going to solve this problem between breakfast
and their evening snack? I realize it has a connotation of 'a day on which we
start fighting back', which is clearly clumsier as a slogan, but I think
building up the expectations on a single day is a bad move in this context. To
me it seems that way the initiative gets more fragile than it needed have
been.

My respect to the people arranging it though. It's great to see activism
protesting these crimes. Keep it up!

Today Is A Day We Try To Take A Sliver Of Our Spare Time And Do Something
About Mass Surveillance, and so is every tomorrow until success.

------
danshapiro
This will go down as the day the New York Times considered the number of
Reddit comments a more important indicator of impact than phone calls to
members of Congress.

~~~
marshray
Do we know that there aren't members of Congress watching Reddit comments? I
would at least expect political consultants to.

------
staticelf
From a european perspective, this protest was unfortunately way to directed to
the American public. When it comes down to protests like this, I feel like
there is too much focus on the US government even if they are the most
hardcore when it comes to world wide surveiliance.

But when Europe came together on stopping ACTA (I helped organize an IRL
protest) it felt like the world was much more united on the issue. Yesterday I
did nothing mainly because I felt left out because my little country did not
matter.

The demonstrations were covered in the media in my country pretty heavily and
I think a bunch of people screaming on the streets, giving out flyers and so
on gives a much better impression on the general public than some websites
having a banner or some telephone calls.

Seriously, America should get together on the streets AND swamp their
telephone lines.

~~~
kyboren
> I felt left out because my little country did not matter.

The truth is that you really don't matter to American politicians, and
American politicians are (ostensibly) the only ones who wield power over the
NSA. Our politicians don't even care about their constituents; why in the
world would they care about you?

The general American psyche holds the rights of US citizens in high regard
while ignoring or outright disparaging the rights of non-citizens. We have to
be realistic. Our message is much more powerful when we focus on the crimes
_against the American people_.

~~~
staticelf
> Our message is much more powerful when we focus on the crimes against the
> American people.

And that's why I think I feel left out, even by the group I would be
supporting. I think the better way would be to describe the crime against the
worlds population including the American one.

There is also mass surveilance going on in my country and they are basically
forwarding all data to the NSA which of course is illegal. But I can't really
join a fight which I am not a part of and probably never will be. I can't call
American politicians, but I can call the representives in my country.

But it feels rather silly to call and complain and it will not matter if I am
the only one who does it. I want the EU to take action against the US gov for
their crimes, I also want the EU to take action against my government for
their crimes. I want all mass surveiliance shut down. No matter where it is
located. It's a bit like to try and take action on international crime in just
one country.

------
INTPenis
Being involved in a hacker space in a very developed European country and
leading workshops that try to educate the general public on online security
this is my view on the belated public reaction of all these past years of
leaks.

There are two main camps visible to me, the indifferent and the frightened.
I'm sure there are plenty of people in the spectrum between those two but I
find observing these two camps rather interesting. Because one camp seems to
be overwhelmed by all the revelations, usually this camp is not involved in IT
at a professional or hobby level.

The indifferent camp seems to either believe it's a problem but that they
can't do anything about it, or believe that this is status quo and they need
to go on with their lives.

The other camp, the frightened, are usually IT enthusiasts. Even if they're
not very skilled, they're now working on that. They're looking up information
on Tor, GPG and PKI.

They seem to be bunkering down to defend their privacy from their own
government.

Those are just my observations.

------
seanccox
It doesn't surprise me that major internet brokers weren't involved; Google,
Yahoo, and others are alleged to have had established relationships with the
intelligence community – relationships that likely profited them. So, those
firms shouldn't be relied upon to take a stand.

To make a company an effective advocate for any change, you need to threaten
their revenue stream. That's really the only factor a corporation can be
relied upon to respond to, and it was a motivating factor behind much of the
corporate defiance to SOPA. SOPA included provisions that would have barred
advertising and imposed costly bureaucracy, and it was thus valuable to
protest it.

By comparison, any current relationships between such companies and government
agencies, regarding their data, only makes them a party to pissing on the
constitution and assisting in assassinations through the provision of
metadata.

That doesn't cost a thing.

~~~
higherpurpose
The whole settlement they made with the NSA/DoJ recently for "transparency"
was a big farce, too. Even Twitter knows that.

[https://blog.twitter.com/2014/fighting-for-more-
transparency](https://blog.twitter.com/2014/fighting-for-more-transparency)

------
ronaldx
> DuckDuckGo, which were listed as organizers, did nothing to their homepages.

This is factually incorrect - the Duck was (is still) being watched by a
surveillance camera.

------
Cthulhu_
I put it up on my community site as well, and to be fair... the response was
underwhelming. A few people found the site ending up being unusable (on
mobile), others found it annoying, and others thought their computer or the
website had been hacked / infected with malware.

So yeah, on the one side, the big players didn't participate; on the other,
the banner was ineffective or confusing for a lot of people, and finally, a
lot of people simply either didn't get the message or simply didn't care.

You know what happens when people do care? Open revolt, violent protesting,
revolution. See also: middle-east. Whose people are a lot more emotional /
angry than western countries are, and more inclined to take affirmative action
for what they stand for.

In the case of the US, this should be the gross violations of the
constitution's amendments, and the lack of action from the higher legal courts
to stop it in its tracks. That's when the amendment of the right to bear arms
kicks in, allowing the people to overthrow their own government. In theory,
anyway.

~~~
davidw
> You know what happens when people do care? Open revolt, violent protesting,
> revolution.

Like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi?

~~~
pessimizer
Yes. Like Martin Luther King and Gandhi. If you don't see what they did as
open revolt, I don't know what you're seeing. If you don't see their protests
as violent (even though the violence was done to them), I don't know what you
were looking at.

These people risked their lives every day for their causes, and lost them.
That is not comparable to banner ads.

~~~
davidw
"Open revolt, violent protesting, revolution." written together, bring to mind
much different images than what Gandhi and MLK were involved in.

No, it's not comparable to banner ads.

------
officemonkey
The reason the big companies didn't mount much of a fight is because they
benefit from the surveillance state.

Facebook and Google hoover more private data out of my life than the NSA ever
will. They may have less sinister motives (I don't think Amazon intends to
kill anyone with their drones,) but whipping up public ire about on-line
surveillance will blow back on them.

So they go the Captain Renard route ("I'm shocked, shocked to see mass
surveillance going on here!"): they put up token resistance, but they don't
want to be too effective.

~~~
mpyne
Indeed, Google is the one who came up with the idea that surveillance-by-
computer was somehow more innocuous than surveillance-by-person. With GMail
they tell you straight to your face that they will store all this personal
data about you (i.e. your email, login history, etc.) but that it's OK, "a
human never looks at it". Well, great.

------
bowlofpetunias
I didn't like the protest.

It was way too US-centric politically motivated anti-governement. The people
behind claimed to believe in "privacy is a human right", but only addressed
the privacy violations of the "Big Bad Gubernment".

I'm all for a pro-privacy protest, not for a libertarian anti-government
protest disguised as one.

The SOPA/PIPA protests were about standing up to the copyright mafia as well
as the authorities, something that was mirrored by the European ACTA protests.

This protest was totally one-sided, ignoring 50% of the privacy issue,
especially as it is perceived outside the US, where Google, Facebook e.a.
stand shoulder to shoulder with the US government in their efforts to tear
down privacy rights.

------
mladenkovacevic
Just a little marketing/human nature insight that someone will hopefully find
useful:

"Fighting back" works as a slogan in countries where people are fed up or
believe they have been abused long enough.

Americans are very placated and have an over-inflated sense of privilege.
Calls to "fight back" sound like hard work that someone who already enjoys a
comfortable life shouldn't have to do. I believe a better slogan might be
something like "The day we reclaim our privacy" or "the day we renew our
dignity" ... or something along those lines as long as the implication is that
we are simply taking back what's rightfully ours.

~~~
chc
I agree that "fight back" was unfortunate terminology, but I thought so for a
different reason: It sounds like juvenile blustering. We weren't actually
fighting anything — we were just making a few phone calls. Those who aren't
interested in violence will be turned off by the hostile name and those who
are interested in violence will be turned off by the fact that it's just phone
calls.

~~~
mladenkovacevic
Regardless, I think the result was very positive. 70,000 phone calls is
amazing especially for a first go at it. The Canadian openmedia.ca also had a
campaign which is how I participated, so I'm sure the numbers are even higher
globally. Experiment, analyze, tweak, repeat.

------
ChrisAntaki
85 thousand calls is pretty awesome, actually.

------
higherpurpose
Ah, of course his is coming from NYT. They've never been too supportive of the
whole "anti-NSA" movement, and in fact lately they've started defending NSA
quite a bit more than initially, with all the "leaks" they get from NSA now to
make them look good.

Shouldn't those leakers be prosecuted, too? Shouldn't someone call for the
assassination of _those_ leakers?! Funny how nobody says anything bad about
the leakers when the leaks make the NSA look good, isn't it?

------
gesman
Emails, banners and "click here to occupy" is a yawn.

But 70,000 annoying calls to legislators that cannot be ignored and/or
attributed to telemarketing spam is probably the most significant result that
might actually been noticed.

------
bhauer
Financial pain is a proven way to affect companies, and in turn affect the
government. But causing financial pain to organizations that are compromised
by NSA action may not be feasible without a serious cost to ourselves of lost
time and productivity.

Although I have not been pushing the concept much, I would invite you to
consider the model of my side project [1], wherein we use donations to charity
to illustrate the importance of action. The donations can either be made
immediately or pending completion of the task.

This gives a bit of financial weight to the activism, if not direct and acute.
It also benefits charities and in some cases gets the charities involved in
providing pressure from another angle.

To date, it's only been modestly effective with local tasks, but I've not been
able to build the momentum behind the model to test it with something larger
scope.

[1] [https://usa.brianstaskforce.com/task/386/stop-unwarranted-
su...](https://usa.brianstaskforce.com/task/386/stop-unwarranted-surveilance-
on-us-citizens-by-the-nsa)

------
xerophtye
So how many HNers actually did send an email or made a call to their
representatives?

~~~
nmc
> _" how many HNers [...] made a call to their representatives"_

I believe you mean _" how many_ American _HNers "_. On the website, you were
asked for an American ZIP code anyway... maybe should have been called
thedayamericafighstback.org?

~~~
VeejayRampay
"What is this 'rest of the world' you keep referring to?"

~~~
davidw
Those are people who do not vote for representatives in the United States,
just as people in the United States do not vote for representatives in other
countries.

Those people probably carry some weight with American companies with which
they may or may not do business, so that's probably their most likely angle of
attack to effect change in the US.

~~~
nmc
I think — I mean, I am not sure, but I strongly believe — that VeejayRampay
was simply being ironic.

~~~
davidw
Yes, but it's that kind of facile sarcasm that doesn't really add much to the
conversation, and is so overdone as to not be in any way, shape or form
humorous.

~~~
nmc
I personally found it funny, but I agree with you, it kind of kills the
conversation.

------
VMG
The only reliable solution is secure end-to-end cryptography. It's painful,
but it more effective than this kind of slacktivism.

~~~
etiam
I'm all for secure end-to-end cryptography, but there are plenty of problems
that doesn't solve (social graph building by traffic analysis being one
important example). Most importantly, encrypting does little, if anything, to
solve the deeper problem that the spy organizations blatantly ignore the law
and try to deceive the public and the public's representatives to get away
with it. You sound cynical about the likely effectiveness of the political
campaign, I know I am, but the really big problem with this whole issue is
about abuse of power and how we arrange society. In my opinion, any 'solution'
that doesn't address the political side is not really a solution at all.

------
Suncho
I honestly don't care about the NSA stuff. There are real issues in society
that I actually get fired up about (poverty, education, intellectual property,
and the like). Government surveillance isn't one of them. Privacy isn't really
one of them. SOPA and ProtectIP really mattered to me. This didn't.

~~~
marshray
Surveillance _is_ censorship.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Surveillance isn't censorship, but it is an effective tool to aid in
censorship.

~~~
kyboren
Mass surveillance creates a chilling effect on free speech; it causes people
to self-censor.

It's just as effective at censorship as requiring a license to print a
newspaper--something our Bill of Rights was explicitly designed to avoid.

~~~
vbuterin
Not by itself it doesn't. Google does mass surveillance on us all the time,
and most people barely register that. What creates the chilling effect is mass
surveillance _combined with power_. That's what people are scared of - not
just that some magic oracle somewhere knows what they're talking with their
friends about, what their job is, what microscopic laws they're breaking and
who they're cheating on their spouses with, but the fact that the entity doing
the surveillance is also the entity that has a near-unlimited capability to do
essentially whatever they want to them. That's where the self-censorship comes
in.

~~~
marshray
You've never thought to yourself: "Ooh I'd better not Google for _that_ " ?

------
Shivetya
Fight back? How? Sending email? Making a call. Tell me you had to even put
such effort as standing up to do so.

As in, its a meaningless gesture.

The only way to get something done is to upset the apple cart. Meaning finding
candidates who will pledge to fix it, this can mean funding people for the
"other" party, something I know some will find any excuse not to. This can
also mean creating a faction within both, the Republicans are already being
whacked by the Tea Party its high time the Democrats had something similar,
something not fake funded and orchestrated like OWS - a real movement within
that strikes fear at sitting Democrats like the Tea Party did to Repubilicans

Send an email, gee whats next, we fight back by flipping them off or talking
around the water cooler?

------
pirateking
These campaigns need to be more creative and _fun_.

The majority of youth today (a demographic with the most free time and
incentive to participate) do not like making calls or writing emails. Also,
the emotion created by most of these campaigns is doom and gloom. Dark colors,
threatening symbols, scary acronyms, powerful shadowy figures, walls of text.
Raising awareness or gathering support through fear based campaigns is not
going to work. The media has run that cart into the ground long ago.

The majority of people I know will be turned away or further made apathetic by
these campaigns. Those of us who aren't, live in an awareness bubble.

Here is an idea I came up with just now (so don't take it too seriously) -
organize a huge public BBQ at the park nearest your local representative's
office. People only vaguely interested in the cause would show up for good
food and fun, and may contribute to the perception of success of the event,
while possibly learning more about the cause in a non-threatening environment.
The representative's office is right down the street should they wish to
support the cause in person. If these BBQs, were every Friday at lunch or
something, I would be there for sure every time. Now I am hungry. Errr...
hungry to end mass surveillance... right.

Maybe that idea is ridiculous, but the basic idea is that if you want people
to spend time for a cause, it's easier if you let them have a good time while
doing so.

For passive participation, I believe selling t-shirts specifically designed
for different audiences is one the best options, way better than changing an
avatar or creating an online meme. Donate the proceeds to the EFF and open
source crypto and networking projects, and it is a solid campaign. The
messaging should be simple and direct, but not overbearing. The key is for the
design to stand on its own regardless of the message it carries. 99% of people
don't care about the message, they want a sick shirt. If anyone here is
interested in making a shirt related to this cause, you can email me about
your idea and I will do a quick concept design for you for free.

------
varjag
Well this is 2014. Make likes, not war.

------
waterlesscloud
Oh please.

HN had a header.

What more do you want?

------
RamiK
It didn't help having it coincide with Safer Internet Day (
www.saferinternetday.org ) which did make it to my local media.

I only heard about the Day We Fight Back thing a day or two in advance so when
I saw the evening news and they talked about that Safer Internet Day I wasn't
sure if there was some mix up or just bad reporting...

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johnpowell
Honestly. This was a joke. And the NSA doesn't care about money. They simply
don't care. Their money isn't impacted.

I didn't even notice what Reddit did. There was a blog post floating around
the top all day. If that was all, great job.

------
Kiro
The truth is that most people don't care about NSA anymore.

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coltr
DuckDuckGo did make changes to their page. Their logo had been changed to look
like it was being recorded and then linked to thedaywefightback website.

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BrownBuffalo
It's all about location, location, location. Good message or bad - you have to
advertise. Ask the FB poster from this week about engagement. :)

~~~
ArtDev
Whose idea was to call the Feb 11th event "the day we fight back"? Signing a
petition or calling your congress-person is not really "fighting back". I
don't think we can really "fight back" against the NSA in a way that is legal.

We CAN pressure our representatives. Our representatives certainly can fight
back.

Next time there is an online protest on the NSA there should be a better name
for it.

There is a lot of lazy apathy out there on the interwebs. I think that this
needs to be framed not around "our privacy" (while most of us are thinking we
have nothing to hide anyhow) but around the "privacy of journalists, activists
and people in important positions".

What if you knew that every news article was written by a journalist who was
afraid for their family from the NSA? In the age of the internet we are all
journalists and activists of one sort or another.

------
hajderr
Don't worry. We'll be fighting back and reclaim the freedom online. It is time
for people to wake up from their slumber!

~~~
lurkinggrue
Sorry I was looking at cat videos.

------
insertnickname
I'm glad this thing is over. Those popups everywhere were really annoying.

------
johncoltrane
The day a few citizens of the Internet pretended to fight back against a
vastly more powerful _thing_ that doesn't give a flying fuck about them with
ridiculous weapons.

------
michaelochurch
Personally, I don't worry much about PRISM. Abstractly, yes, these are very
important issues. I don't want to downplay that. However, since at least 1925
the US has _always_ been in more danger from private entities than from its
government, and this is even more true of individuals within the US. Private
health insurance is a lot scarier than our government. Given the ease with
which private entities can and do destroy an individual's reputation, often
over petty slights, PRISM is low on my concern list compared to that.

I know people who've been blacklisted by venture capitalists. I don't know
anyone who's been personally affected by PRISM. I'm sure that some people have
been; I just think it's rarer.

Top software executives are pissed about PRISM not because of the legality or
the ethics of the program. They're embarrassed that, although they make
gigantic salaries and are darlings at the Silicon Valley ball, they got pwned
by nerds in Maryland making government salaries.

Don't get me wrong. There are principled civil libertarians who are raising
these issues because they genuinely care about what is happening, and it's
worth listening to them. But the indignation of the software execs and venture
capitalists is just petty embarrassment and nothing more.

