(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.

Hey mkl,

So they'll be a shorter version of this on the main site soon, but I can spell it out at greater length and more informally here. (I'm EFF's International Director, btw)

The short answer is that you're signing your support for a set of 13 principles on the application of human rights to communications surveillance ( see https://necessaryandproportionate.net/ ), that were worked out last year (pre-Snowden, actually) by a coalition of technologists, privacy activists, and legal scholars.

The long answer: We've been using this language to push the idea in international venues and among key lawmakers in various countries that mass surveillance (as well as a bunch of other practices conducted by the NSA and other spooks, including corruption of crypto standards and backdoors) is a violation of existing human rights standards.

This is important internationally because if the NSA gets away with its current behaviour, it'll establish a norm that such surveillance is okay for any government to conduct. We need to push back against that norm.

To do so, diplomats, policymakers and others need language and arguments to back that up.

The Principles give them that language in a familiar context (and we're working together to provide more detailed arguments and other legal guides). It has found favor among politicians, experts and other influential people I think partly because the smarter ones are genuinely worried that pervasive surveillance really could undermine their own societies -- they recognise what it could do in the wrong hands as much as anyone else.

In providing that leverage, it helps to convey that it's not just a bunch of domain experts that think forbidding mass surveillance is a bad idea, but that an increasingly large number of citizens find it abhorrent. That's what the signatures will do. It really makes a difference in this arena, because so few obscure technical documents have hundreds of thousands of supporters :)

I'd encourage anyone who wants to understand better how we're trying to get all governments, not just the US, to craft better surveillance legislation to read the full text of the principles at https://necessaryandproportionate.net/text You can also ask me questions at [email protected] . It's a long haul project, and we're conducting it alongside legal actions in the US and abroad, shoring up and disseminating crypto tools, and other non-policy defences. But it's pretty amazing to get unanimity with hundreds of privacy groups on some basic principles with which to start building proper, 21st century, surveillance law.

A (unofficial and probably wrong) precis of those 13 Principles:

1. Legality - privacy restrictions must be prescribed by law.

2. Legitimate Aim - What you want to break privacy for must be to support laws.

3. Necessity: We cannot (reasonably) achieve the aim without breaching privacy.

4. Adequacy: Listening to your phone calls must reasonably allow us to achieve the aim.

5. Proportionality: Don't listen to everyone when only some will do.

6. Competent Judicial Authority: Any breach of privacy must be authorised by Independant, capable judges.

7. Due process: Who follow a clear process

8. User notification: and tell you you are being watched (unless that might hurt the Aim)

9. Transparency: We get to see the metadata on their phone tapping

10. Public oversight: and a few of us get to see everything not just the metadata

11. Integrity of communications and systems: backdoors are not allowed, if you are bugging us legally, you dont need a back door

12: Safeguards for international cooperation: No playing arbitrage with different jurisdictions

13: Safeguards against illegitimate access: and secure your stuff.

I hope those help

It's a great action - and technically speaking takes us to a new level I think - I look forward to adapting the code for other campaigns I'm involved with. I appreciate the background and your work involved in bringing groups together internationally.

But my question is, with the publication/confirmation yesterday of the basis of the US drone assassination program in NSA cellphone spying (see https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-ns...), will you be incorporating a demand to reign in the NSA because their surveillance is killing innocent people? I think it is a real opportunity to reach out to many other groups and individuals who are opposed to and organizing against the drones both in the US and abroad.

> The short answer is that you're signing your support for a set of 13 principles on the application of human rights to communications surveillance

Yesterday, I was this close to putting my name+email there, until I thought "wait, what am I even signing for, either this might actually accomplish something important and I really should know what exactly before I can honestly give my support, or it's a rather meaningless gesture carrying just a vague anti-surveillance sentiment" (given the names and people involved I was pretty sure it was the former, but not knowing what I'd feel disingenuous about just adding my name to a list "just, make it better, or something").

Knowing this now, I signed it right away.

That's a really valid criticism, we're just pushing some changes that we hope address those concerns (will be up in about 10 minutes).

Edit: Changes are up. It's not perfect, but hopefully it addresses some of your concerns.

Your point is very good! It needs to be specified how our signatures will help in the fight against mass surveillance. We signed, and now what? Spread the word. But what is next?

I think the solution to this has to be on multiple fronts. It would be a good idea to push for laws which forbid certain kinds of surveillance. In the US the situation with the constitutionality of the NSA activity needs to be clarified. In the UK it would appear that the activities of GCHQ - particularly using DDoS and other "dirty" methods - is against the existing computer misuse laws. Investigating and following up on that would be useful. Probably they will make all of that retroactively legal, but there might be an opportunity to challenge and stop that in parliament.

On the technical front if you're a software engineer you can spend some of your time helping to develop, test and debug the various encrypted communication systems. Often security audits are needed. If you're not a software engineer then find out how to use encryption tools - PGP, XMPP/OTR, Tor, Bitmessage, etc and encourage your friends to use them.

First off I love the "we'll call you and do all the work" implementation. Really lowers the barriers to entry.

Second there are two tricky bits of the workflow that didn't quite work for me.

1. Feinstein doesn't have a mailbox, and if you wait on hold for more than 2 minutes the line hangs up.

There was no mechanism to have tdwfb "try again later." So now the burden is on me again. (tiny violin)

2. I was connected to two congresspeeps.

Only one is valid, but zip is ambiguous. I suggest that if someone spends time talking to the first rep, then the second shouldn't even be mentioned.

Re: 1., we've just raised the time limit for calls to 20 minutes. Thanks for using the tool!

I'm sorry 1 was ambiguous. Feinstein's office hangs up and asks you to call back. The higher limit on your side is good though!

Assuming these comments are being watched. The "thirteen principles" link on the main page gives a 404, it looks like there was a copy/paste error, it goes to:

https://thedaywefightback.org/international/”https://necessa...

Fixed. Thanks :).

excellent! well, i guess i played my part in the fight against surveillance today. ;)

Your comments were being watched.

Everyone's comments were being watched, now he's been escalated to a contributor and added targeting! :p

You'll probably go on the no fly list for that.

I think this is really great.

Since you are asking for feedback, I heard this on IRC when I mentioned adding thedaywefightback.js to a site I manage.

    <Erkan_Yilmaz> lukeshu did you tell 'em already:
        #findTheError "The Day We Fight Back" against mass
        surveillance has on its website #twitter and
        #facebook offered (only) thedaywefightback.org

That said, I'm not personally sure what's popular these days in terms of decentralized social networking.

Great site and resource, thanks!

When I shared the link with a friend he mentioned he was uncomfortable giving his number and email address. Maybe consider having a link close to those fields to help the visitor find the number or email address of their Representative. That way if someone doesn't want to give out that information there is a quick alternative available.

Yes, this is always what I look for when I see one of these sites. As well-intentioned as you may be, I have no way of verifying that you're not putting me on a bother/solicit list, so the thing that is most likely to get me to participate is if you take all the "we do it for you" machinery and have an option where I can walk through the flowchart myself. Provide me a way of doing the mapping from my home address to the relevant phone numbers myself, then coach me on exactly what to say when I call.

Exactly. It's asking to help get back privacy by giving private information. I understand why it's done, and it's quite useful to a lot of people. Still, having another option would be nice.

"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."

Why do you feel this is the most impactful thing that [I] can do? Specifically, do you believe that putting a banner on webpages will prompt more phone calls to legislators, which will in turn lead to the reduction of surveillance?

The video is heavy handed (actors and names-the-common-person-would-know with sweeping music) saying that surveillance is bad, but it's never clearly articulated _why_ one should believe that data mining by the government is wrong (besides unqualified claims of it being unconstitutional and against imagined civil liberties).

I personally think that there's risk in allowing a government to harvest and store data indefinitely (primarily because an unscrupulous politique could perform a character assassination to push a narrative), but I'm not the target audience for this advertisement.

I'll preface by saying that the USA freedom act will pass because congress does not like finding out when an agency is going behind their backs, and also voting against it is electoral suicide in close districts. So, in my opinion a calling campaign is a gestural action.

That said, fighting an information war against intelligence apparatus is a losing battle. This will only push the program deeper into the classified bowels of the massive US intelligence machine. They are currently operating through classified intelligence and loopholes, and once the FISA court loophole is closed they will find or produce another.

Next time you do this, you should create a widget for calling Congressmen directly, the way Tumblr did it with SOPA last year I think. Calls are much more effective than signatures or emails and I barely even see a 2-step call to action for it. It should be the big immediate and obvious call to action right on the front.

So a congressman is going to pickup all these calls with a pen and pencil ready?

Congressional staffers answer the phones and keep a tally of issues that have generated phone calls from constituents.

Oh, and this shouldn't be only a single day thing. I mean I see no reason why this couldn't have gone for a whole month, or even in perpetuity, and ask websites to keep it until we see real change from Congress.

I'm actually curious how long it takes before Google adds it to their frontpage :)

They seem to be celebrating "Safer Internet Day"

no doodle, when I Feel Lucky! https://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

Google's in, along with a few others, but no App for that... http://www.reformgovernmentsurveillance.com/

Push even harder during elections.

What does that buy us, when politicians ignore campaign promises and so much of this is secret enough that it takes more than 4 years to come out?

politicians ignore campaign promises You should back or elect different candidates. Don't simply choose the candidate others have chosen for you, get involved earlier in the process to make sure the person you're voting for has a greater chance of voting for the issues you care deeply for.

That worked really poorly with the last "Hope & Change" candidate.

If you suggest voting for an independent... That is sort of a pipedream in the current US election climate. Noble thought and effort to push for such a candidate, but they have little to no chance of actually being electable. And even if they do get elected... Whats to stop them from being totally corrupted, or just overtly ignored by the rest of the government?

You think Obama had a hard time pushing through legislation? Just wait till some independent has to fight both Dems & Repubs on every issue because he/she isn't part of either party (and basically a slap in the face to their power structure.)

Edit: The biggest issue (in my opinion) at this point is the two party system that is entrenched beyond belief.

> Edit: The biggest issue (in my opinion) at this point is the two party system that is entrenched beyond belief.

Entrenched to hopelessness.

Money buys politicians so much power and there is no amount of regulation (which would have to be passed by those in power and getting the money, HA!) that could curtail it. Eventually you are going to step on someone's first amendment right to "say" (buy ads upon ads upon ads) what they want for/against another candidate.

I think the only way I can hope for actual change is for more people to get involved and not be so easily swayed by various types of media. But the majority is lazy..

There are 3rd party candidates...

In the election of my local representative there are only two realistic contenders - both from the 2 main parties. No one else has the resources to send out all the junk mail and recruit all the college kids to harass people.

And the funny thing is - just like probably most of the congress people - our representative isn't really all that bad. She's just not really good. She's just a nice old lady that's a vanilla career democrat. The chances she'll be voted out are effectively zero.

So I just don't vote for people any more (i leave it blank). However, I still go to the polls to do the ballot initiatives

But that only works if what they say at the outset correlates sufficiently with what they'll do in office.

It's as if real political change requires investment in the process throughout various means for an extended period of time, isn't it?

I know, right?

> We're really interested in getting feedback on how future campaigns can be better

I'd recommend addressing the actual problem, which the all-encompassing surveillance is a symptom of. The actual problem is that there is a government in place. For more information, look up Stefan Molyneux, Larken Rose, Michael Huemer, Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, etc.

And the actual problem that cancer is a symptom of is that we have bodies. So we should really be working towards the Matrix, not doing dead-end research on curing or treating diseases.

You're not following, but that's expected. It's not exactly difficult to see reasons for why governments should not exist. They're all around you, and there are countless of them.

As a very simple example, why are laws like SOPA and CISPA passed in secret, unless there's a massive uprising against them? Obviously, they're passed in secret, or stealthily, or all of a sudden - they're just rammed through exactly because they know the people would be against these laws if they only fucking KNEW ABOUT THEM.

Did you think defeating SOPA would be meaningful in the grand scheme of things? If they're passing one law that's harmful to the masses and against their will, why wouldn't they pass another? .. and another, and another?

Well, if they're passing harmful and unnecessary laws all the fucking time, do you think they just might not be on your side? I mean, how difficult is it to figure out that "your" representatives don't actually represent you? They're constantly passing laws that are against your will, after all. Oh, and they're extorting you too! (It's called "taxation" to make it more palatable)

Now then, since it's obvious that the government and its legislators are not on your side - contrary to what people commonly believe, strangely enough - doesn't it make you wonder whether having a government is a good idea in the first place?

It's not difficult to see that government should not exist ... Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound? No one should take you seriously; I don't see what espousing that ideology is going to get you.

> Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?

Did you even read what I wrote? But I get it. It's difficult to process this information.

> No one should take you seriously

Don't just take my word for it. Go investigate the collective works of the people I listed above. If you do that, you'll agree with me (unless you've been severely traumatized as a child).

> I don't see what espousing that ideology is going to get you.

Me? -Possibly nothing. But it's good if I can help ordinary people everywhere avoid whatever seriously unpleasant fate awaits us all if we don't wake up in time. People not being subjected to coercion is not much of an ideology by the way.

Yeah, having roads and running water are just awful. Schools, sanitation, energy, parks, rights for minorities and laborers. I just HATE that stuff.

Ah, this again. Is there something special about all those services that makes them impossible to provide with money that has not been extorted from millions of people?

Yes. It's called a coordination problem: http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html#coordination_problems

That FUD is not relevant to my question, and I don't have the time and energy to dissect his contrived, unrealistic fearmongering scenario now.

But for example, why would other people let Mike pollute the water despite everyone else having signed the "Filter Pact"? Mike's selfish actions would directly affect other people making a living, and therefore, some kind of intervention would be warranted - and would happen too! After that, everything is fine again.

Even if you're silly enough to argue against your own freedom, you can't just leave things at presenting a problem, expecting it would not get solved, and thinking you've proven that freedom "doesn't work".

Government exists for all animals. It is an immutable fact of the universe. Ants have government. Termites have government. Naked mole rats have government. Wolves and caribou have government.

It's not up to us. All we can do is decide what structure the government will take.

> Government exists for all animals. It is an immutable fact of the universe. Ants have government. Termites have government.

Wow. At least you're being original :p

> All we can do is decide what structure the government will take.

Actually, as long as we have rulers, we can't even do that. You may be aware of the US quickly turning into a nasty police state. Do you think the people being "governed" had a say in that?

The only possible solution is to have no rulers.

Saying "let's get rid of rulers" is like saying "let's get rid of the ends of a piece of string." It's a logical impossibility. All you can do is replace rulers.

All it takes is for the belief in political authority to dispel. Unfortunately, that's a massive change from where we are today.

And how does massive social change come about? Via organized campaigns. Which have leaders. Who become the new rulers if they succeed.

In the last century the Chinese and Russians collectively agreed to give up concepts of property and privilege for the betterment of all. Except, some of them only pretended to do that. So they ended up with everyone else's property and privilege.

It's not hard to convince every single person that they should not be ruled. It's impossible to convince every single person that they should not rule. There's always someone who thinks they could do it better if they were in charge.

%29

I switched into writing Markdown by accident. We've got the site frontend running on jekyll so it's static and easy to scale, and I've gotten too used to using the syntax.

I can't edit that comment any more (time expired), but the correct link is https://whispersystems.org