Excellent. If engineers and technologists refuse to take personal political and ethical responsibility for the future they help build, they need to be reminded to do so.
I've never felt the need for a down vote button for a comment on Hacker News until now.
Yes, we should be ethically aware of the tools and products we build, but this is not the way to go about this! Harassing a man at his home like this is unnecessary and aggressive.
Please stop the promotion of individual harassment.
When people block Google busses, and break one window of one bus, it's inappropriate violence on par with barbarism [1].
When people peacefully protest a Google employee and try to raise awareness in his neighborhood of his activities that they disagree with, it's individual harassment.
Isn't that just lovely? Hacker News: privileged technologists setting the standards for techno-skeptical protest. Tell us what the proper way to go about it (outside the established means of the sham that is representative parliamentary democracy, of course) is, then.
"We intend to prevent you and your family from leaving your home" - by what means do these protestors feel acceptable? Verbal? Staring intimidatingly? Pushing his wife back as she crosses the property line? Punching his child? Drawing guns?
When you explicitly state, and act, with the intention to prevent people from leaving their own home, effectively placing them in a state of house arrest, then sorry, your protest is no longer any more peaceful than the force implied by that house arrest.
Hiding behind "raising awareness in the neighborhood" is a disingenuous sham that exposes a duplicity. What relevance has "representative parliamentary democracy" to your argument other than to make you feel martyred?
Remember, you are actively threatening a family that you will not let them leave their home, there is a distinct, and real, fear of how far you will go to do so. For all your "blocking busses, and breaking one window" (carefully emphasized to minimize), there's the Seattle WTO protests and everything in between, and a distinct set of people who -will- resort to violence that constitutes a non-zero threat to this man and his family's well being that you wave away as nothing.
At least have the courage of your convictions and stop pretending it's just some people "raising awareness".
You claim that it's unnecessary and aggressive yet you do not discount its effectiveness. Therefore I'm going to discount your argument. Protest is worth it when its effective. And we're reading about it, so its done its job. Protest need not be cozy, clean, friendly, or Batemanish.
I never claim effectiveness. Reading an article about a protest and a protest causing actual change are two very different things. I don't see what job was done.
Are you seriously suggesting, Citizen, that the same standard applies both to the oppressor and the oppressed? Have a care, Citizen; such regressionist attitudes court accusations of reactionism.
What does left-wing have to do with this?, stupidity doesn't requires a political affiliation. Actually all governements in the world are left-wing by American standards.
In what way - I agree that responding with violence would not be a good first response at some point you do have to take a stand.
Maybe the bus drivers from all the tech company could protest against this threat to their livelihood and stage a drive in and shutdown the city like the french farmers do by driving extremely slowly though the city.
We need more of this.