These turn key totalitarian infrastructures have broad bipartisan support, especially among old hat insider politicians like Clinton and Feinstein.
What is the motivation? Is it just the typical thing bureaucracies do to try to grow their size and power? Or is there a capital-R Reason there is such a global push to put these things into place.
Do the inside players at the top know something?
I've toyed around with two speculations. One is that there is concern over natural resource depletion leading to serious economic collapse in the mid-term future, and these systems are there to deal with the mass unrest of a "permanent recession." Another is that present day oligarchs simply know their history. Major transformations in communication tend to be followed by serious social upheaval and a changing of the guard. The printing press more or less indirectly beheaded quite a few European royals.
Any other speculations? Informed ones would be particularly interesting.
IMHO, there's no need for specific scenarios. From a benevolent desire to protect society against any upheaval, power becomes a goal in and of itself.
One player will worry about resource depletion while another about financial crises and yet another about terrorism. They'll find common ground in needing more power in general.
From their perspective, there are no downsides to implementing a capability because they can always choose not to use it.
That's excuse making. The Clinton's have had plenty of misdeeds exposed, they still have millions of dollars and no one cares. They aren't being cowed to silence by the NSA.
That is distinctly possible-- the cart pulling the horse. There's a lot of money in these programs, not to mention the possible profits in insider trading and corporate espionage.
I don't think there is a politician that hasn't said "If we only had knew..." Large amounts of raw information represent a solution to almost every problem a professional politician has, and it only look more attractive the older and the more political mistakes the person has made.
Imagine if you could know beforehand whom will become a political rival, or what issues are becoming important, or what trends are happening in the economy. If you ever end up in court, what if you knew everything about the judge, jury members, or the lawyers. What if you knew beforehand what the media find interesting and will use as a headline the day after, as knowing this might give you the ability to prepare blame, or minimize damage, or destroy documents.
On election day, this information is even more valuable. if you knew how people will vote and whom is influenceable, maybe you can start try get voters to change the vote or to not vote at all.
And if all that wasn't enough for a reason to be supportive of totalitarian infrastructures, information access is also a kind of currency between different government departments. The state department wants it for trade, The secret police wants it, the army wants it, the regular police wants it, the tax department wants it, health department wants it, the motor vehicle department wants it, and so many lobby groups from military contractors and insurance companies wants it too. By controlling the access, you gain power over those groups.
Having access to every communication made by most of the population is a hugely powerful tool. People in power want to stay in power. They know they can run these surveillance programs with impunity, so why not do it? It doesn't cost them anything.
If you gave anyone the ability to get insider information on something deeply important to them, they would almost certainly take it.
> Do the inside players at the top know something?
The "inside players" are the ones who are empowered by the established order, so does it really surprise you that they all agree that the established order should be maintained by whatever means necessary?
I'm not sure what this is supposed to do. You're showing a congress a list of people who disapprove of privacy violations. Then what? Congress knows people disapprove and they don't seem to care.
I dislike slacktivism like this. I feel that it's damaging because it wastes attention and effort that could be put to good use. Instead of taking a photo of yourself and writing a hashtag, become an informed and educated voter who actually votes, votes for people who represent the majority of your beliefs (don't be a single issue voter), and votes for someone who has a track record of governing as they promised they would. Encourage others to do the same. It's literally the only thing that will fix these problems.
> I dislike slacktivism like this. I feel that it's damaging because it wastes attention and effort that could be put to good use.
I don't think it's a waste of attention. This is also something you should share after you've done -- the hope is to raise awareness. In addition, they want to put faces to the constituents who are against privacy violations. Ethos is a valid appeal.
"Slacktivism" is a word that devalues small contributions on the part of constituents who might otherwise do nothing to express their voice. Behind every group of "slacktivists" is a passionate group whose goal is to make unheard voices apparent. To decry "slacktivisism" is to decry the work of those people, to say it doesn't matter when in reality it has a measurable effect. E.g online activism against SOPA/PIPA, Aaron's Law, these are outgrowths.
> become an informed and educated voter who actually votes... Encourage others to do the same. It's literally the only thing that will fix these problems.
The people running these campaigns are doing exactly that, encouraging people to vote if they can. Barring that, signing petitions is the next best thing. Anecdotally I've become better informed because of projects like these, and in doing so become a better voter.
The issue is not a lack of awareness. The vast majority of the voting-capable population has heard, to at least some extent, that the NSA/others are surveilling communications. The issue is either they don't care, they agree with the surveillance, or they are too lazy to become informed and vote to change it.
There is literally nothing on this site about being involved in voting or the politicians supporting or fighting this type of activity. If they at the very least gave visitors some way to continue their participation and become informed, I would be fine with it. Right now it's just attention for the sake of attention. It needs to be channeled into something useful.
> The issue is not a lack of awareness. The vast majority of the voting-capable population has heard, to at least some extent, that the NSA/others are surveilling communications.
"at least to some extent" is quite a qualifier. Fact is awareness is always important, and projects like these do exactly that.
> The issue is either they don't care, they agree with the surveillance, or they are too lazy to become informed and vote to change it.
"Awareness" also involves grabbing the attention of otherwise "lazy" people who aren't incentivized to care.
> There is literally nothing on this site about being involved in voting or the politicians supporting or fighting this type of activity. If they at the very least gave visitors some way to continue their participation and become informed, I would be fine with it. Right now it's just attention for the sake of attention. It needs to be channeled into something useful.
This app is part of FightForTheFuture (https://www.fightforthefuture.org), it gives visitors a way to donate and the organization has lots of info. It is useful.
The site is a showcase for the organizer to get attention to win a job at a big tech company. See also: the online self-appointed leaders of Occupy who went to work for Google on adtech.
> See also: the online self-appointed leaders of Occupy who went to work for Google on adtech.
I don't know about the veracity of that but it doesn't seem relevant. Some people care / try to effect social change. These people are some of them. This is one of the main groups that helped bring SOPA / PIPA to light (see: Aaron Swartz)
If that's all the part someone is willing to do, fine. If a lot of people are like that, OK. But some decide to do more when they become aware, and that's why this is important.
> votes for people who represent the majority of your beliefs
This is currently very close to impossible in the US. We have a two-party system, solidified by our First Past the Post voting system. I am forced to cast one vote for the candidate who represents my views the most, which ends up being about 10-20% of my views.
On top of this, once someone does get elected, our political system is such that politicians listen to the highest payers first, constituents at a distant second.
Going out and voting does very little. Yes, we should still do it, and not give up, but until we fix our broken voting system such that citizens can vote for people who actually represent them without the spoiler effect and until we fix our political system so politicians are accountable to their constituents again, internet activism, public shaming, and what comes down to basically pestering the hell out of these people is a perfectly good line of defense.
Narcotizing dysfunction is a theory that as mass media inundates people on a particular issue they become apathetic to it, substituting knowledge for action.
That's a nice thing you can do for yourselves as US citizens. What can I do as a non-US citizen to help out? I don't want to see your large-militaried country become an authoritarian regime any more than you do. :)
Are you concerned about privacy in your own country? You should be voting for leaders who don't allow the US to put their fingers in your pie. As an individual you should be taking steps to protecting your online activity and data.
You phrased education and voting as an alternative to participating in this campaign. They are not mutually exclusive, and I suspect that people who participate are likely to also educate themselves and vote.
I agree they are not exclusive, but I can see how my comment suggests they are. There's no harm in people doing both, and I agree they're more likely to vote if they participate, but mostly only due to correlation and not causation.
Who is behind this? Is it the EFF? Because it should be the EFF. I gave money to them years ago to do exactly this kind of lobbying, but they haven't been doing much that I can see-- except posting a lot of blog articles. The EFF seems to have gone the way of greenpeace. (I once gave greenpeace a bit of money and then they spent 10 times that hounding me over the next 5 years for more.)
It's worth mentioning that the EFF sued the NSA long before the Snowden leaks were revealed. They've been fighting this fight far longer than most people realized just how important it was.
They've also been involved in suits against the NSA after the Snowden leaks as well, but it's not even like they just jumped on the bandwagon. They've been committed to this fight for ages.
You'd rather see the EFF support slacktivist programs than pursue court cases that create legal precendent (which is what they are doing)? Yeah, no thanks.
The EFF has been involved in a number of lawsuits to lobby for and protect our rights. They've been offering legal support to a number of defenses including targets in Bitcoin, DRM, and CFAA prosecutions.
I haven't seen gratuitous spending on the part of EFF for marketing / promotional purposes -- they seem like one of the organizations who utilize their resources well.
You realize that you are complaining that EFF takes your money and does real work in the legal system , instead of blowing it on ad campaigns fornthemsef.
These turn key totalitarian infrastructures have broad bipartisan support, especially among old hat insider politicians like Clinton and Feinstein.
What is the motivation? Is it just the typical thing bureaucracies do to try to grow their size and power? Or is there a capital-R Reason there is such a global push to put these things into place.
Do the inside players at the top know something?
I've toyed around with two speculations. One is that there is concern over natural resource depletion leading to serious economic collapse in the mid-term future, and these systems are there to deal with the mass unrest of a "permanent recession." Another is that present day oligarchs simply know their history. Major transformations in communication tend to be followed by serious social upheaval and a changing of the guard. The printing press more or less indirectly beheaded quite a few European royals.
Any other speculations? Informed ones would be particularly interesting.