Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US

Alright then. What do you recommend we do about it?

Honestly. You've got the top comment on a top-10 topic. The floor is yours. What do you want to say?

This is why I hate the Occupy movement - congrats, you've raised awareness. Now what?

Remember - we've already got https://concentrationcamps.us - and the same agency has enough fentanyl stockpiled (admittedly, it is hard to break down) to execute each person in the US 2.5x over.

This is looking less and less like coincidence that Donny Drumpf had "Mein Kampf" by his bedside.

Come on comrade. Where do we meet to discuss it privately? Is there more to be done than "call your senator" or such? Keep tabs with RTL-SDRs? Launch improvised drones with hand-to-hand combat tech and solar panels?

Or shall we don the tinfoil hats of our forefathers, adorn them with IR-LEDs, and watch the world end in an every-hacker-for-theirself cluserfuck?

I'd really rather this world and humanity go on, rather than make our climate, our country, our freedom untenable. But its not up to just me. It takes a team to do much of anything worth doing - and our culture isolates us rather neatly.

So what'll it be comrade? If you wanna "meet for discussion" on some no-logging, private means of discussion, I'm in. Make sure to use a semi-private mid-layer meetpoint to gather, and point the team to somewhere even more private. If there's any dox involved in signing up for any of it, you're doing it wrong.

So, where's the first meet? And the vetting?

I bet there is a direct correlation between how much good will someone extends DOD and how much they believe their history books.

The only way to do what you suggest is...you know. That's the only thing that will roll it back even a little. I'm available whenever, but I have no misconceptions about how brutal it will be.

Just locally where I live I've watched the total state moving forward. Police are moving in unmarked/low marked vehicles a la Gestapo, intersections all suddenly have cameras, I've read articles about how LE have tracked people via their cell phones--there is a "digital fence" that the police automatically get notified if someone prohibited enters with their phone. Is that not total surveillance state? When you can't even move around without someone tracking you? Granted, they can turn off the phone or put it in a Faraday bag, but the point is, we should not have to!

Slippery slope may be a fallacy, but damn, it sure doesn't seem like it when all the dots start getting connected.

I'm not on board with any of it. I am not some kind of serf, peon, or resource to be exploited. If some shit has to burn down to make that point, well, that's what will have to happen.

Duct tape is a hack.

Low-tech hack, but a hack nonetheless.

> I can't believe how stupid the "Hacker" "News" community is--commenting on things that don't matter, then shutting up for matters of grave importance.

Topics like mass surveillance are considered by HN moderators to be "political" and any commentary about them is considered the equivalent of graffiti that defaces the site for everyone else.

As hackers we have a social responsibility to participate in important political issues that we have insight about.

People's political beliefs are typically quite different when the issue is something they actually know about. Most HN content is technology focused and so there is (in my opinion) a desirable kind of political discussion that is backed up by experience and knowledge.

Surely one of the mods will chime in that my comment is a flame, which is their special word for comments that discuss content they wish to censor. My comments are always polite and respectful, so obviously the issue is content and not tone.

> ... this currently has a 36:1 vote-to-comment ratio.

HN is becoming the sort of benign, bland environment the mods want it to be.