It is a positive day for the freedom of information and I am happy to support it, make the calls and emails, and tell friends about it. I also think framing it as a one day campaign where the “fighting” involves passive action at the individual level is not a game winning strategy. It is still a great rallying signal though, and its effects have already gone beyond the single day, and for every person too lazy to cha…
Today is The Day We Fight Back
171–180 of 267 posts
Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back
#172Here is great post from reddit by SomeKindOfMutant: "Right idea; wrong methods. Let me explain. An email to your legislators may result in a form letter response and a phone call to the office may amount to a tally mark on an administrative assistant's notepad. But, if you want to get their attention, a letter to the editor published in one of your state's 5-10 biggest newspapers that mentions them specifically BY NA…
Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
No problems, I can see one or two bits that I think could do with clarifying (not least to get rid of emacs :P ). I'll have a go at it this evening and take notes.
The particular editor isn't all that important. You could just use nano or vi. I don't think any of the instructions contain anything really Emacs specific. I happen to use Emacs and the source for the site is an org-mode document, which makes editing it very easy. Exporting it as HTML is a few key presses.
Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back
#174Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
History's not the only one. This is just adorable. I'm sure everyone involved feels like a really, really good person, though.
People are trying to get the law changed in the USA. It needs a show of support to help get this done. It's much harder work than writing snarky one liners on some internet forum for nerds whilst you sip your expensive coffee. This is the day to ask them to stop spying, and to ask our leaders to make them stop spying.
The only vote any of the mass majority has is where we spend our dollars & labors. These kinds of movements make everyone involved feel good and I do not deny this campaign is for a cause the participants feel is just...I agree in principal. However, joining another mineable database feels like doing the same thing that we are talking about curtailing, with the added potential of making participants part of a larger target if anyone threatened decides to go on the offensive. Legislators only listen to the hoi polloi when reading scripts in front of cameras or they are drumming up votes for the next election. Even more pertinent, the corporate environment that exists in the Western world has morphed to influence our every waking moment and would never allow an organized collective get too big or gain too much traction before well-publicized character attacks and disinformation fill the airwaves(or the startup is 'incorporated'). The status quo owns the media(even Reddit), the 'tubez(backbone) & most western governments(lobbying is corruption, whatever the laws have been tailored to say), thus they have the loudest message and currently control all infrastructure in this global society(think 'good ol boy' network rather than conspiracy theory). The antagonists and would-be 'movements' of late are diminishing from the public consciousness faster than other entities can make noticeable ripples: Wikileaks, Occupy Wall Street, Manning, Snowden... This is how group dynamics has worked since the dawn of tribalism. Adding sentience to the equation has potential to improve the human race above limbic compulsions but so far has only worked to increase the polarization to meet the desires of the controlling interests(most powerful? influential? smartest?).
I am sentient and have principals I believe in. These principals require me to make sacrifices sometimes, and that includes how I earn & spend my monies. I walked off a job in October that would have multiplied my income by a factor of 10, problem is they asked me to endanger myself, compromise my principals and break some really well-founded national safety codes, never mind the organizations' 'professed' safety policies. Instead, I'm living hand-to-mouth in a shack making a small fraction of my potential earnings and reading/commenting on HN. C'est la vie, I have made my choices and still sleep really well at night. Of the few dollars I make, I spend them just as judiciously as I earn them. There are unavoidable expenses in a modern society; housing, utilities, food. Other spending may seem crucial, but ultimately distill down to wants or conveniences and I've minimizing or eschewed those, too; ISP, TV signal, formal education. Then, of course, there's the disposable income and all that encompasses. How I earn & spend my money(times a factor of a few billion others), this is what drives the world economy and this is what I determined I can influence to create or realize meaningful change within 'my circle of influence'[1]. I must change myself first in order to change the world. I encourage anyone who reads this to contemplate doing the same. It's the only way to scale up a paradigm change, IMO.
PS: I also exercise my own tools that sometimes sacrifice useability in order to maintain my privacy and spread disinformation to those who believe they value my privacy more than I do; NoScript/AdBlock/Blender/UserAgent Switcher/HTTPS Everywhere/bleachbit/firewall monitoring/On+Offline switch/disposable accounts/disposable emails/old & tired maemo phone, etc... Even after two decades I still smile when a clerk says "Thank you for shopping with us today, Mr. Revell"[2].
Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back
#176The point about things like this is that by raising awareness and getting people on board to do concrete action, we move the "collective consciousness" in the direction we'd like to see it go. Imagine if 20 years ago everyone had that attitude about gay and lesbian rights. Imagine if 80 years ago everyone had the same attitude about equal rights for minorities.
You people are jackasses. Just because someone can't dedicate their full time job to fighting this doesn't mean they don't care or are lazy. And even if they did dedicate their full time job to it, what exactly do you suggest they do? The first thing that comes to mind to me is that they should start trying to rally others. Which is, as it turns out, exactly what is being done here.
Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want some quick-and-dirty CSS to make that slightly cleaner: http://pastebin.com/7sGiHBwF ... it's just a set of styles I slap on blank pages myself. Consider it GPL v2 or better, BSD / MIT licensed, though honestly, I couldn't care less how it's used or by whom.
Needs some work, but that makes quite a difference. Thanks.
Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
'Internet "Blackout" is already forgotten and just pissed people of, it didn't encouraged anyone to resolve or change anything.' SOPA and PIPA were defeated after several legislators changed their stance, purportedly in response to phone calls surrounding the blackout.
Yes, SOPA and PIPA were defeated with much fanfare and attention, while some different laws doing the same damn thing were passed just a month or two afterward. Victory?!
Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back
#179Including a third party javascript to protest and spread awareness about mass surveillance... That seems a little ironic.
Re: Today is The Day We Fight Back
#180So the suggestion here is to "fight back" by asking politely the people who are abusing you to please stop.
Thats what it seems like to me too. Can someone explain how this is not just another slacktivism thing? Hashtags and banners on a website...
The objective of this is to generate awareness, and it is achieving it's goal.
My mother knows what the NSA is and sees the problem.
The only thing that might get us to a better place is to slowly change awareness and with it, will start the political pressure.
Why one day? a focused campaign will generate much more visibility.
Think of how fast the zeitgeist has changed for civil right to minorities, you'd be surprised, maybe in 10, 15 years privacy might be on it's way to being respected again.