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Today is The Day We Fight Back

thedaywefightback.org

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Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back

#21

Post by chalst »

brokenparser wrote: post #19
chalst wrote: post #17

Oh, a flash protest, one that seems to have been announced with a press release only yesterday and pushed by the EFF just one hour ago. Well, it is too short notice for me to invest the time to black out my website, so I will not be supporting this. Maybe there will be a similar action next year that I will support, if it is better advertised beforehand.

It was announced here a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037548

What did that page say back then? I missed that story. I subscribe to several EFF feeds and I recall nothing about a Swartz anniversary protest.

Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back

#22

Post by lpolovets »

thomasfromcdnjs wrote: post #12
lpolovets wrote: post #10

I think it's interesting that there are ~200k Twitter/Facebook shares at the time of this comment, but less than 10k calls/emails. The message seems to be, "I think contacting legislators is a great idea! I hope some of my friends do that.."

Chiming in as one of the developers, these share totals are the total from when the campaign first started. The tools for calling/emailing/petitioning have only been active for two or so hours.

Ah, got it. Thanks for the explanation and good luck with the campaign.

Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back

#23

Post by suprgeek »

Why don't we (as the hacker/programmer community) also "fight back" in the meaningful & legal way that is our core strength?

Resolve to push for encryption if there is any PII data in an app that you work with especially if it is a e-mail/mobile/social app. at scale

Refuse to work with/at NSA until their policies change

Refuse to participate in any committee/standards body, conferences, with NSA employees (or their cohort companies who have willingly forsaken the public's interests)

Encourage non-tech folks to adopt stronger privacy practices

etc etc...

Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back

#24

Post by lelandbatey »

kumarski wrote: post #18

Can we be a little more digitally violent in our protest? For example, crowdsourced black hat hacking bad links to any companies funding NSA loving politicians?

To your call for violence, I make a similar call: let's make sure we don't and instead adopt a more visible but equally peaceful approach.

Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back

#25

Post by sinak »

All of the people who built the site and the banner are volunteers who met on HN across various threads, and not members of any of the advocacy orgs or companies listed on the site. We're really interested in getting feedback on how future campaigns can be better, and happy to discuss some of the decisions we made. The non-profits involved did all the legal and organization lifting, and this is a great opportunity to donate to the EFF and Demand Progress if you haven't recently.

Likely the most impactful thing you can do right now is to add the banner to your own site and ask the companies you work for to do the same. We've tried to make it as easy as possible to add the banner; you can find all the options (including a Cloudflare app and Wordpress plugins) here: https://github.com/tfrce/thedaywefightback.js

Pushing for technical solutions to the surveillance is also really important. Friends at Fight for the Future are launching a campaign along those lines as soon as this one wraps up, and there are a lot of open source projects (e.g. the great work done by [Whisper Systems](https://whispersystems.org)) that deserve attention.

But legislation and technology need to work hand in hand for things to change in the long run. Even if we have decent technical solutions, legal measures can easily limit the scope of their success (see Lavabit).

Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back

#26

Post by cLeEOGPw »

suprgeek wrote: post #23

Why don't we (as the hacker/programmer community) also "fight back" in the meaningful & legal way that is our core strength? Resolve to push for encryption if there is any PII data in an app that you work with especially if it is a e-mail/mobile/social app. at scale Refuse to work with/at NSA until their policies change Refuse to participate in any committee/standards body, conferences, with NSA employees (or their c…

> Refuse to work with/at NSA until their policies change

Don't agree with this. Boycotts relying on cooperation and trust between unorganized members are doomed to fail and only hurts those that take part in such boycott.

Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back

#27

Post by SyneRyder »

chalst wrote: post #21
brokenparser wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was announced here a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7037548

What did that page say back then? I missed that story. I subscribe to several EFF feeds and I recall nothing about a Swartz anniversary protest.

Maybe you're not on the EFF email list or Facebook group? They've been promoting this for several weeks (actually too much for my liking, so it's interesting for me to hear that others weren't aware of it).

Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back

#28

Post by ElDiablo666 »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #26
suprgeek wrote: post #23

Why don't we (as the hacker/programmer community) also "fight back" in the meaningful & legal way that is our core strength? Resolve to push for encryption if there is any PII data in an app that you work with especially if it is a e-mail/mobile/social app. at scale Refuse to work with/at NSA until their policies change Refuse to participate in any committee/standards body, conferences, with NSA employees (or their c…

> Refuse to work with/at NSA until their policies change Don't agree with this. Boycotts relying on cooperation and trust between unorganized members are doomed to fail and only hurts those that take part in such boycott.

There's also such a thing as having a conscience. I agree that organizing and solidarity are necessary for effective political action but let's not discount the power of resistance against the moral turpitude of the day.

Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back

#29

Post by mkl »

sinak wrote: post #25

All of the people who built the site and the banner are volunteers who met on HN across various threads, and not members of any of the advocacy orgs or companies listed on the site. We're really interested in getting feedback on how future campaigns can be better, and happy to discuss some of the decisions we made. The non-profits involved did all the legal and organization lifting, and this is a great opportunity to…

(My comment here is about the international version of the site - the USA one is much clearer in its purpose.)

One crucial piece of information I haven't been able to find is what happens to the names and email addresses people enter. How does filling in those boxes amount to taking action?

I am strongly opposed to mass surveillance, but thedaywefightback.org doesn't seem to be communicating successfully how exactly it is going to help. If it is doing something that will truly help (which seems likely, but I can't really tell), that needs to be clear in its message, and it isn't.

Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back

#30

Post by logicallee »

kumarski wrote: post #18

Can we be a little more digitally violent in our protest? For example, crowdsourced black hat hacking bad links to any companies funding NSA loving politicians?

This is the only comment in any of the NSA articles that actually justifies the existence and mission of the NSA. You should delete it.
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