Independence Day, NSA leaks inspire 'Fourth Amendment' rallies
usnews.nbcnews.com
usnews.nbcnews.com
That's depressing.
most of the people are waving it goodbye by being at home browsing facebook.
And then the next question:
What must future potential whistleblowers feel, when they're forced to think "the public doesn't give a f##k".
I feel, as a whole, we're currently just not worth the brave wo/men.
I think people do care, but not if they have to give up spending time with their families.
So in the end, it all comes down to economic pressure.
People don't earn enough/can't/won't take holidays and therefor have no time to defend themselves and democracy.
The next question then becomes:
Who creates and maintains this economic pressure? Who wants the middle class gone?
Was it a failure or a success?
And most of all: Where should we go from here?
In it, they talk about how Washington (politically speaking) feel like they "lost" to the SOPA/PIPA protesters because they where backed by "internet giants" like Google and Wikipedia. They figured, as long as they keep these giants happy, things will work out just fine.
I believe yesterday proved them right. No real internet-giants where involved in this protest, and I don't think it will have caused any politician to change their minds.
Sometimes, I am remembered what a sad state of affairs todays politics are.
Tech solutions (encryption everywhere, VPNs, etc.) are necessary, but will only help us let people to work on "real" solutions (meaning: without being suppressed by the gov't along the way).
And the only way to make sure this kind of mass surveillance can be kept from happening again, would be to set up a new government structure that guarantees that budgets are kept so low that it's not possible to create it again and keep it running.
Of course, that would imply that this apparatus has to be stopped, first.
As for the kind of government structure required, I'm thinking:
Cut the central government to a strict minimum and give the states back their power: Decentralize as much as you can.
As a bonus, this also leads us away from the single-point-of-corruption-and-failure which a powerful central government is (just like with the Internet).
No matter your opinion of them, the Tea Party was very successful at staging effective protests. Occupy was a total failure. (At least in ATL, most people supported OWS until Occupy ATL, at which point they were almost universally hated. Living a block from the park occupied, and having my bldg regularly used as a urinal by a group who, due to no decision making structure, could not agree whether or not they should have violent protests, I agree.)
The difference? Tea party protests in every city were orchestrated by some group (that was likely more astro-turfing than grass roots) that chose the speakers, invited guests with name recognition to speak, and kept the "fringe looking types" in the crowd and not the stage, and were generally more like attending a concert than protesting in the street.
For a protest to be effective, you need to get turn out from the mass population. The Occupy style no leadership sadly does not seem to work. I believe the unfortunate reality is you need a stable legal organization like the Tea Party, the NRA, MADD, etc to actually create long term political change. If we had a National Privacy Association with millions of dues paying members, we could have congress blocking the NSA at every step.