(This point was made clear in the actual page, but some of the comments suggest that not everyone understood it.)
The title to this posting (and the name of the website) are misleading. This is not a proposal to block funding for the NSA. And that's good, because such a proposal would have NO chance of passing, and would probably be a bad idea anyhow. Instead, this is a proposal to block funding for NSA collecting records on American citizens that are not being investigated. Which is a much more reasonable position.
This is something real, tangible, and valuable that we can all actually do. All of this month I have felt powerless. This is something within everyone's power to do, and it can definitely help start the ball rolling back the way it came.
It is pretty unfortunate that there is such a short window of time in which this information can be disseminated. I can imagine if there were a bit more time, this could really spread over the whole Web, as the SOPA outroar did. Anyway, we have to do the best we can, with the time we have.
I disagree, it is not something real or tangible. I'm all for defunding NSA, but it's not like a regular business which you can boycott by not giving them money. You have to go and ask permission from the government to not give the money (which they previously extracted from you by force for the "good of society") to some of the government agencies. It's pretty much like going to NSA itself and ask them to defund themselves. Voting is just a suggestion, it's not binding. Presidential candidates promise stuff, get votes and then are not obliged to deliver what was promised. It works the same way in every country today.
Real and tangible way to defund NSA is this:
1. Withhold your taxes.
2. Protect yourself against the police and the military who will try to extract them by force (possibly by having crowdfunded guards).
3. Switch from using US Dollar as most of the money government generates comes from inflation (gov sells "bonds" that it will never repay in exchange for new money). Since all national currencies are inflationary and controlled by similar institutions all over the world, only Bitcoin is a good alternative. Or gold, if we can protect the vaults properly and build trust in a company that keeps it (but history shows it doesn't work).
4. Pay only what you think is fair and where you think it's fair. E.g. if you like social security, pay there directly as much as you want.
Only voluntary payments will guarantee that people who you don't like get as much money as someone is willing to give them explicitly and voluntarily. You should not ask for permission to not participate in what you don't approve.
I still feel powerless, but of course, that's because I'm not a US citizen (though my children are, but they cannot yet speak), while my communications are also spied on by the NSA.
I hope you'll be able to make a difference. Good luck on this.
Just a quick note to add that this was built over the course of 5 hours by four developers as part of http://taskforce.is, which was pretty much assembled here on Hacker News.
Please take a few minutes to call. It's amazing how low conversion rates are on calling campaigns like this one - a factor of 100 lower than email asks - but this is really critical. We only have one day to make this happen.
If you're interested in helping with campaigns like this in the future, you can sign up here: http://sina.is/rritf.html
A big thanks to Thomas Davis, Jens Nockert, and Beau Gunderson for building the site.
A feature that would be really nice: A way for me to give them my email address and zip code and then get an email when vote results are posted with how my Representative voted.
No, no, a thousand times no. Hey, I'm the biggest fan of anonymity and privacy you can find. This is not an answer. It's an emotional over-reaction.
Countries need intelligence agencies -- they are the best way NOT to fight future wars. SIGINT is a useful function when used against foreign leaders. It's just a terrible idea when used against the population as a whole. Separate the parts that work and are useful from the parts that are destroying the country. Just don't lump it all together.
Unilaterally disarming is not a way forward. The only thing you accomplish by doing that is allowing dozens of other countries to spy on you without your knowledge. How is that a solution? These movements are in real danger of becoming "useful idiots" for others who wish us harm [1]
The only solution here is parity, i.e., whatever blanket surveillance is going on by corporations and the government regarding every citizen should be available to all citizens. This policy would naturally severely limit these kinds of operations without asking us to make broad decisions about delicate matters.
If you insist on defunding something, de-fund and kill the TSA. Then eliminate DHS and have the work go back to the separate agencies. But don't take a flamethrower to something which has a useful, important purpose because the politicians changed their mission to something terrible.
Read the website. Despite the name, it is not about defunding the entire nsa, but instead about removing the authorization and funding for blanket data collection
We elected Bush in 2004 when he had Tom Ridge upping the terror alert every week before the election. It never seemed to go down. But it always managed to go up to red every week.
I think we have hit the point that you can't really roll anything back. If you do and 9/11 v.2.0 happens you are politically screwed. And, unfortunately, it is all about the next election and soccer moms.
The laws do NOT enable the programs. The laws had specific clauses stating that they could not be used for this sort of widespread surveillance of innocent citizens. But the administration has an "interpretation" of the laws which apparently is at odds with the plain text of the law. I can't say HOW they came by this interpretation, because the interpretation of the law is secret. (Yeah... really.)
So maybe the power of the purse will still be effective. We can hope.
Because that would be a concrete step that would actually change something and would be a clear signal as to how each representative stands on the issue of unlimited domestic surveillance.
How can you repeal secret laws? There were report so secret laws and secret interpretations being used for 'justification' of unconstitutional activities.
This won't work. Even if they defund the existing programs, the IC will just change the codenames and move them around between departments, as they did with TIA. The technology will live on.
The only way to really end these programs would be a full public debate followed by a statute that outright bans them. Anything less is a PR move.
In politics, partial victories can snowball. And vice versa: repeated loss teaches helplessness. The direct real effect of this would be small, but I'd expect it to be much more useful than a loss.
Added: If you read about Watergate, the scandal wasn't any one event or one reaction: it took over two years from the break-in to the resignation, and people weren't sitting still. Some of the important action was in Congress. (Admittedly it was a different country then.)
Even if it ultimately doesn't work, don't you think it's worth trying rather than just going around saying it won't work? It's likely going to be a long, slow process to change this, and we need all the wins we can get, if only to prevent apathy and show others who are on the fence that there's enough public outrage over this that they should get involved too. If we do manage to get it passed and then there are new leaks a few years down the road that they did what you describe—move the programs around and keep running them—I think that would cause far greater outrage, because Congress explicitly banned them from continuing the programs and they ignored it.
Do we really believe that "a vote" can change such things? Do we really believe that we can avoid such situations (= non-transparent governments) within the current system?
I mean, when did you actually vote FOR the NSA funding in the first place so that you can now believe that you can defund it by voting against?
Nearly everything that the NSA does is Top Secret, so can we claim to know anything about its activities? Why do we believe that we have the power to defund it, when we don't actually know where it gets its money, or how much it receives? Are posters here aware that the CIA has long been accused of being involved in the global drug trade, as a means of self-financing and leveraging power?
Despite the recent revelations having vindicated the world's tin-foil-hats, we still seem to collectively lack the stomach for darker conspiratorial notions. To be in step with reality, it may be important to build up a bit of tolerance. I'm not making any claims (because I just don't know), but I see absolutely no reason to assume that democratic process applies to these agencies. They may have gone rogue; they may have always been rogue. Their global network may be the actual, de-facto world government. Would it really surprise anyone at this point if a convincing leak exposed such notions? What would we do then?
Let's stop imagining that Law will take care of this problem so we can at least assume a proper direction for our efforts. Which is to say, let's dispense with some of our convenience and fashions and start writing software the right way -- the paranoid way.
To quote the eternal R. Buckminster Fuller:
"In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete."
The NSA is the heart of the intelligence gathering apparatus of the US Military Industrial Complex. Like it or not, this bill will pass either tomorrow or another day, tacked on to another bill. It is strategic to the military and the country.
There is no way in hell, this bill will not pass. You can scream, occupy the streets, protest, do whatever but it will not change a thing. It will go through.
The US military Industrial Complex is vast. It lobby’s hard. To vote against it is to be called “un-American”- you know its BS but the talking heads will say it. Its powerful but that isn’t the point of this post.
Truthfully, our governments have been spying on us for a long time. My country, the UK was reading the mail and telegrams long before the US. Then it was listening and recording phone calls. This is just a step up. As technology increased capabilities, the net has grown wider. From ECHELON to this.
Civil liberties does not mean anything to them as the mindset has stayed the same no matter how much you may scream or complain, realistically it will not change a thing because at the end of the day, the country will have enemies and it needs an intelligence gathering capability. It won’t give a damn about our rights as it tries to secure itself.
Your post accomplishes nothing except to persuade people to give up the fight for civil liberties. You propose no solution or do you give any additional insight into developing a solution.
Regardless of your actual intentions, you might as well be performing psychological propaganda. It's not helpful.
In theory it sounds nice, but how many black ops and secret budgets already exist? "Defunding the NSA", will just mean its "official" budget will be cut, and under everyone's noses, they will keep being funded through secret budgets.
I'm not saying it shouldn't happen - eventually - but first the priority should be to repeal the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act, and end the secret FISA Court, or at least overhaul it in such a way that it's public, judges get elected in a much more democratic way than simply having one person naming them, as it is right now, and allow adversarial hearings, and for people to be able to use FOIA against this sort of spying.
If it's done on an American citizen (under a proper warrant - and not en masse), then that citizen should be able to request a FOIA for it, and get an almost completely unredacted document. If there's an investigation done on him currently, then at most he can get a few months delay, to a year. After that everyone should be able to use FOIA to get these documents.
It's pretty much a safe bet that the NSA runs Open Source Software. You can't do anything on the internet these days without using FLOSS.
I'm not an expert in software licenses but can't GNU, Linus, Mozilla and all other Open Source contributers revoke the NSA's license to use their software?
Surely Open Source licenses, just like any other license, can be revoked?
The Soviet Union went out of business in 1991. Why do we still have a mechanism that was built to target a closed totalitarian system armed with 20 megaton hydrogen bombs? The NSA is out of date and out of place.
Just called my representative! I spoke the receptionist, who was very nice. I told her repeatedly to support Representative Amash's amendment to HR-2397. She requested my full name, zip code, and email address. Happy to help, from Restore the Fourth San Francisco!
"The bill gives taxpayer money to fund defense programs, including NSA surveillance."
Why does it take money to defund an operation? Doesn't "defund" mean to not allocate money for.
Obama says he will veto. So what? If no money is allocated for said programs where is the budget for them coming from?
These NSA programs are only the tip of the iceberg of intrusions. <a href="The http://www.govexec.com/technology/2013/04/consumer-bureau-de... Credit Bureau</a> collects all financial data on US citizens and obamacare will be collecting and sharing everything medical with numerous federal agencies.
> remember that threats from the US are the only thing that prevents many countries from doing more horrible shit than they already do.
You mean horrible shit like drone strikes that kill innocent civilians, illegally detaining "terrorists" and torturing them, spying on the whole world, and commanding other countries to ground a president's plane? Is that the kind of shit "they" already do?
The stock market doesn't get hacked? Are you kidding? Did I miss a /sarcasam tag? The stock market is a hack. If the stock market doesn't get technologically "hacked" it's only because it's so easy for the well-connected to hack already. And you want to make our government itself exactly that easy to hack?
The vast majority of Americans don't care about most issues. In fact, I would go so far as to speculate that there is no American who cares deeply about more than a handful of issues. But giving everyone a vote would give everyone the opportunity to sell that vote to the highest bidder, whether literally or figuratively.
You know who will vote on every single solitary proposal? Old people. Old people who think a monitor is a computer and the Internet is a series of tubes that young people use to give each other venereal diseases. As it stands today, we can shine light on corruption, Snowden helped with this. In a HUGE direct democracy, how would we even begin to figure out if someone had usurped control? Would it even be illegal to do so? Instead of writing letters to our representatives we'd all just end up sending daily letters to our grandparents begging them not to blindly do whatever Rupert Murdoch tells them to do.
Also "Don't take away their ability to wrong, lest someone else does the same wrongs or worse" is a strawman. Others are going to try to do bad things no matter what. Giving our government unethical powers to somehow overcome this is not OK.
The US isn't a direct democracy and, if I understand history correctly, that was on purpose and not just a matter of practicality. A direct democracy allows the majority to pass laws that benefit themselves while punishing the minority. We already have politicians passing ridiculous laws just to pander for votes; I can't see how it wouldn't be worse if the people being pandered to made the laws instead.
The internet has given us a front row seat to witness the fact that, regardless of which side of an issue they're on, there are a lot of people who don't arrive at their opinions through any sort of research, discussion, or consideration. This is probably confirmation bias on my part, but there seems to be a lot more people who'd vote how Wil Wheaton or Justin Bieber told them to than those who'd spend ten minutes reading a few different news sources about a particular ballot initiative to form their own opinion.
One would hope, if things were working ideally, that representatives in congress would consider the constitution, existing laws, and their constituents best interests when passing new laws. I'm not so naive to think that things are anywhere close to ideal, but I'm not sure that direct democracy is a better solution.
This is a straw man. The campaign is not to defund the entire NSA, it is to defund collection of records "that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215".
The problem is that ignorant masses can be easily tricked into voting particular way. Some would say that direct democracy simply would not work. But, well, look at Switzerland...
A direct democracy would probably be even more shortsighted than today's flawed system. It would almost certainly be hell on earth.
No, the answer is NOT direct democracy. For samples of what your average fellow human thinks about the world and whether you think it's a good idea to entrust them with governance, please search a random keyword on Twitter and see what you find. It will not be pretty.
Didn't congress say no to funding the stealth MH-60 SOF variant and later see tail rotor of a stealth MH-60 SOF variant in someone's backyard in Abbottabad?
Agreed. The people you call know exactly what to expect and make it as quick and painless as possible. They're also very pleasant. I'm young and shy but this was probably the easiest social interaction I've ever done. Worth a shot, worth 30 seconds.
[+] [-] mcherm|12 years ago|reply
(This point was made clear in the actual page, but some of the comments suggest that not everyone understood it.)
The title to this posting (and the name of the website) are misleading. This is not a proposal to block funding for the NSA. And that's good, because such a proposal would have NO chance of passing, and would probably be a bad idea anyhow. Instead, this is a proposal to block funding for NSA collecting records on American citizens that are not being investigated. Which is a much more reasonable position.
[+] [-] nakedrobot2|12 years ago|reply
It is pretty unfortunate that there is such a short window of time in which this information can be disseminated. I can imagine if there were a bit more time, this could really spread over the whole Web, as the SOPA outroar did. Anyway, we have to do the best we can, with the time we have.
[+] [-] oleganza|12 years ago|reply
Real and tangible way to defund NSA is this:
1. Withhold your taxes.
2. Protect yourself against the police and the military who will try to extract them by force (possibly by having crowdfunded guards).
3. Switch from using US Dollar as most of the money government generates comes from inflation (gov sells "bonds" that it will never repay in exchange for new money). Since all national currencies are inflationary and controlled by similar institutions all over the world, only Bitcoin is a good alternative. Or gold, if we can protect the vaults properly and build trust in a company that keeps it (but history shows it doesn't work).
4. Pay only what you think is fair and where you think it's fair. E.g. if you like social security, pay there directly as much as you want.
Only voluntary payments will guarantee that people who you don't like get as much money as someone is willing to give them explicitly and voluntarily. You should not ask for permission to not participate in what you don't approve.
[+] [-] cyphax|12 years ago|reply
I hope you'll be able to make a difference. Good luck on this.
[+] [-] icantthinkofone|12 years ago|reply
Will there be beer?
[+] [-] sinak|12 years ago|reply
Please take a few minutes to call. It's amazing how low conversion rates are on calling campaigns like this one - a factor of 100 lower than email asks - but this is really critical. We only have one day to make this happen.
If you're interested in helping with campaigns like this in the future, you can sign up here: http://sina.is/rritf.html
A big thanks to Thomas Davis, Jens Nockert, and Beau Gunderson for building the site.
[+] [-] triplepoint217|12 years ago|reply
A feature that would be really nice: A way for me to give them my email address and zip code and then get an email when vote results are posted with how my Representative voted.
[+] [-] andyakb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MorningInfidel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|12 years ago|reply
Countries need intelligence agencies -- they are the best way NOT to fight future wars. SIGINT is a useful function when used against foreign leaders. It's just a terrible idea when used against the population as a whole. Separate the parts that work and are useful from the parts that are destroying the country. Just don't lump it all together.
Unilaterally disarming is not a way forward. The only thing you accomplish by doing that is allowing dozens of other countries to spy on you without your knowledge. How is that a solution? These movements are in real danger of becoming "useful idiots" for others who wish us harm [1]
The only solution here is parity, i.e., whatever blanket surveillance is going on by corporations and the government regarding every citizen should be available to all citizens. This policy would naturally severely limit these kinds of operations without asking us to make broad decisions about delicate matters.
If you insist on defunding something, de-fund and kill the TSA. Then eliminate DHS and have the work go back to the separate agencies. But don't take a flamethrower to something which has a useful, important purpose because the politicians changed their mission to something terrible.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
[+] [-] andyakb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnpowell|12 years ago|reply
I think we have hit the point that you can't really roll anything back. If you do and 9/11 v.2.0 happens you are politically screwed. And, unfortunately, it is all about the next election and soccer moms.
[+] [-] falk|12 years ago|reply
You hit the nail right on the head. The problem in America isn't the politicians, it's the people.
[+] [-] brown9-2|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcherm|12 years ago|reply
So maybe the power of the purse will still be effective. We can hope.
[+] [-] glesica|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perlpimp|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clicks|12 years ago|reply
Wonderful job guys. I think this is going to be a pretty effective grassroots campaign.
[+] [-] s_q_b|12 years ago|reply
The only way to really end these programs would be a full public debate followed by a statute that outright bans them. Anything less is a PR move.
[+] [-] abecedarius|12 years ago|reply
Added: If you read about Watergate, the scandal wasn't any one event or one reaction: it took over two years from the break-in to the resignation, and people weren't sitting still. Some of the important action was in Congress. (Admittedly it was a different country then.)
[+] [-] LoganCale|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sebkomianos|12 years ago|reply
I mean, when did you actually vote FOR the NSA funding in the first place so that you can now believe that you can defund it by voting against?
[+] [-] grabhive|12 years ago|reply
Despite the recent revelations having vindicated the world's tin-foil-hats, we still seem to collectively lack the stomach for darker conspiratorial notions. To be in step with reality, it may be important to build up a bit of tolerance. I'm not making any claims (because I just don't know), but I see absolutely no reason to assume that democratic process applies to these agencies. They may have gone rogue; they may have always been rogue. Their global network may be the actual, de-facto world government. Would it really surprise anyone at this point if a convincing leak exposed such notions? What would we do then?
Let's stop imagining that Law will take care of this problem so we can at least assume a proper direction for our efforts. Which is to say, let's dispense with some of our convenience and fashions and start writing software the right way -- the paranoid way.
To quote the eternal R. Buckminster Fuller:
"In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete."
[+] [-] rb2e|12 years ago|reply
There is no way in hell, this bill will not pass. You can scream, occupy the streets, protest, do whatever but it will not change a thing. It will go through.
The US military Industrial Complex is vast. It lobby’s hard. To vote against it is to be called “un-American”- you know its BS but the talking heads will say it. Its powerful but that isn’t the point of this post.
Truthfully, our governments have been spying on us for a long time. My country, the UK was reading the mail and telegrams long before the US. Then it was listening and recording phone calls. This is just a step up. As technology increased capabilities, the net has grown wider. From ECHELON to this.
Civil liberties does not mean anything to them as the mindset has stayed the same no matter how much you may scream or complain, realistically it will not change a thing because at the end of the day, the country will have enemies and it needs an intelligence gathering capability. It won’t give a damn about our rights as it tries to secure itself.
[+] [-] infinity0|12 years ago|reply
Regardless of your actual intentions, you might as well be performing psychological propaganda. It's not helpful.
[+] [-] mtgx|12 years ago|reply
I'm not saying it shouldn't happen - eventually - but first the priority should be to repeal the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act, and end the secret FISA Court, or at least overhaul it in such a way that it's public, judges get elected in a much more democratic way than simply having one person naming them, as it is right now, and allow adversarial hearings, and for people to be able to use FOIA against this sort of spying.
If it's done on an American citizen (under a proper warrant - and not en masse), then that citizen should be able to request a FOIA for it, and get an almost completely unredacted document. If there's an investigation done on him currently, then at most he can get a few months delay, to a year. After that everyone should be able to use FOIA to get these documents.
[+] [-] Yuioup|12 years ago|reply
It's pretty much a safe bet that the NSA runs Open Source Software. You can't do anything on the internet these days without using FLOSS.
I'm not an expert in software licenses but can't GNU, Linus, Mozilla and all other Open Source contributers revoke the NSA's license to use their software?
Surely Open Source licenses, just like any other license, can be revoked?
[+] [-] spaznode|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] culshaw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ndesaulniers|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mnemonik|12 years ago|reply
Hopefully, this means we are flooding the lines!
[+] [-] vaadu|12 years ago|reply
Why does it take money to defund an operation? Doesn't "defund" mean to not allocate money for.
Obama says he will veto. So what? If no money is allocated for said programs where is the budget for them coming from?
These NSA programs are only the tip of the iceberg of intrusions. <a href="The http://www.govexec.com/technology/2013/04/consumer-bureau-de... Credit Bureau</a> collects all financial data on US citizens and obamacare will be collecting and sharing everything medical with numerous federal agencies.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MisterWebz|12 years ago|reply
You mean horrible shit like drone strikes that kill innocent civilians, illegally detaining "terrorists" and torturing them, spying on the whole world, and commanding other countries to ground a president's plane? Is that the kind of shit "they" already do?
[+] [-] glesica|12 years ago|reply
The vast majority of Americans don't care about most issues. In fact, I would go so far as to speculate that there is no American who cares deeply about more than a handful of issues. But giving everyone a vote would give everyone the opportunity to sell that vote to the highest bidder, whether literally or figuratively.
You know who will vote on every single solitary proposal? Old people. Old people who think a monitor is a computer and the Internet is a series of tubes that young people use to give each other venereal diseases. As it stands today, we can shine light on corruption, Snowden helped with this. In a HUGE direct democracy, how would we even begin to figure out if someone had usurped control? Would it even be illegal to do so? Instead of writing letters to our representatives we'd all just end up sending daily letters to our grandparents begging them not to blindly do whatever Rupert Murdoch tells them to do.
[+] [-] binarymax|12 years ago|reply
Also "Don't take away their ability to wrong, lest someone else does the same wrongs or worse" is a strawman. Others are going to try to do bad things no matter what. Giving our government unethical powers to somehow overcome this is not OK.
[+] [-] healsdata|12 years ago|reply
The internet has given us a front row seat to witness the fact that, regardless of which side of an issue they're on, there are a lot of people who don't arrive at their opinions through any sort of research, discussion, or consideration. This is probably confirmation bias on my part, but there seems to be a lot more people who'd vote how Wil Wheaton or Justin Bieber told them to than those who'd spend ten minutes reading a few different news sources about a particular ballot initiative to form their own opinion.
One would hope, if things were working ideally, that representatives in congress would consider the constitution, existing laws, and their constituents best interests when passing new laws. I'm not so naive to think that things are anywhere close to ideal, but I'm not sure that direct democracy is a better solution.
[+] [-] ajb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lrem|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nakedrobot2|12 years ago|reply
No, the answer is NOT direct democracy. For samples of what your average fellow human thinks about the world and whether you think it's a good idea to entrust them with governance, please search a random keyword on Twitter and see what you find. It will not be pretty.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eeky|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dfc|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donohoe|12 years ago|reply
It took less than 5 minutes of my time. It may even take you less. It was quite pleasant.
Do it now!
[+] [-] jaxbot|12 years ago|reply