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.