The number one hurdle to changing these laws is apathy. A narrow majority of Americans oppose mass surveillance [1], but the intensity of their support is weak. Meanwhile--anecdotally--those who intensely care about the issue are largely apathetic. As a result the other side, which is equally opinionated but less apathetic, wins.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americ...

I mean really, what are you supposed to do? Call your representative? Most don't care and the person you talk to is usually just a proxy who's job is to answer, nod their head, and make you feel like you're being heard.

Maybe protest? Good luck, you'll be demonized by the media calling you a bunch of homeless people because the only ones that have the time to protest are largely those who don't have jobs. There's also laws made that keep you from protesting in various areas so you can't even inconvenience the decision makers into noticing you. When they've had enough you either just saw it's a public health hazard to have people protesting because they're sleeping there and use that as an excuse to break it up by force, or you can just pay an actor to pretend to be part of the crowd to act violently towards the police and use that as an excuse to break up the protests.

Bottom lines is that I believe we've reached a tipping point where the people have lost control of the country.

I once offered to help to host a breakfast for my Congresswoman to show there was a base of motivated people, in New York, who would back her if she put forward anti-NSA legislation. This was post-Snowden. Her office was open minded. Attendance was dismal. We all agreed to re-focus on other issues.

Another example! Two bills in Albany. One regarding Equifax. One regarding something with teachers. I'm helping with the Equifax bill. Guess which one had phones ringing off the hook with supporters calling in? Guess which one I had to concede had a more-motivated base, and was therefore--politically--the policy to put forward?

People still control the country. It's just the people who show up. If you don't show up and participate, that's fine, that's your choice. But it's a choice.

The people who talk about opposing mass surveillance are, on average, better educated and higher paid than the average American. When they can't bother to show up, it's noted.

In order for something to be divided it must first exist as a unit. It takes a shockingly-small number of people organizing to a shockingly-little extent to exert change on representatives. Particularly if those people are geographically spread out.

It’s expected, because they are a minute fraction of the population and concentrated on the coasts. They are not needed to win elections, and generally have the most to lose through radical action.

In order for something to be divided it must first exist as a unit. It takes a shockingly-small number of people organizing to a shockingly-little extent to exert change on representatives. Particularly if those people are geographically spread out.

It depends on what that change is. If it’s some minor policy issue or a social issue, you can be right. If it touches the MIC then frankly you haven’t paid attention to the last century of American politics. We are divided, and we are conquered, and showing up at your shindig isn’t changing that. For most people life is too hard and their place in society is too tenuous to care so deeply about mass surveillance. If you want them to care, improve their lives in tangible ways first. People struggling with two jobs and a mountain of debt, who are one hospitalization away from bankruptcy have more immediate concerns.

Boom. You really hit the nail on the head there.

For example, if "you" means the singular poster then you are correct and your comment is a truism.

However, if "you" means the citizenry then the cost of parallel construction at scale clearly exceeds the cost of using the mass collection program currently under discussion.

Edit: clarification

Since the impetus is always on NSA to gather intelligence and prevent the next disaster all they can say is "We need more data". No, they don't. No amount of data will prevent every criminal act. Instead we need to revisit the trade offs made between freedom, privacy and bringing criminals to justice.

If you do prevent everything, people claim you did nothing. Your organization gets its funding cut because it isn't needed.

(America has had to ramp up it's military repeatedly for new wars. We routinely shrink our armed forces during peace time, feeling it isn't needed. I strongly suspect this shrinkage has helped make us a target at times. Then we ramp back up.)

Though I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion.

Hopefully some people conquer the multi-planetary challenge before we completely conquer ourselves.

This is why the terrorists have won on 9/11. They wanted to damage the US, erode its institutions, make it weaker and less attractive in the eyes of people, and they achieved it. Not through killing people, of course, but through the continued reaction of those who stayed alive. This makes me sad.

Also, there was plenty of talk about who and where, yet close to zero discussion as to why. Why is important. The truth is, more than once, UBL warned "Get out of our neighborhood." The USA ignored those requests. That doesn't justify the attacks, but it certainly creates a case of "I'm surprised you're surprised." Yet the (American) public never got the true clear story.

Instead, someone cooked up a like about WMD's, a sovereign nation was invaded in that same area, and in the end over 100,000 __civilians__ were killed. Does that solve why, or re-enforce? And still no transparency?

Just a for instance, but I think the patriot act passed the senate 99 to 1.

And we got rid of that one guy who voted against, and we replaced him with a more "law and order" type guy.

So you gotta figure almost every American has at least had opportunities to vote for their senators. (We can agree that not everyone did, but the opportunities were there.) And those votes resulted in a senate where something like the patriot act could pass without more than a single vote against it.

I personally blame Hoover for the state of things, but as a whole, our government is used to control, and complete control relies on complete information. If something is missed because it fell between the cracks in the IC's sampling rate, the executives publicly blame the IC for not informing them, which ends with demands for a higher sampling rate. Look deeply into the causes of our most recent invasion of Iraq, and you'll see this pattern pretty clearly.

The reason Intel dragnets exist is that politicians always feel compelled to do SOMETHING after a domestic crisis, even if they know the ensuing compromise of civil liberties will accomplish nothing toward preventing the same crisis from recurring. But voters who don't pay attention (and don't really care) are appeased by bold reaction (and the thought that bad guys can't keep secrets from US). A symbolic knee-jerk usually violent reaction all they really wanted (like invading Iraq).

Frankly, after 75 years of 99% fruitless and increasingly expensive machinations by the OSS and CIA and NSA, all of us who are paying attention know know damn well that US Intel agencies really don't accomplish much that's useful to peacetime national security. That is, unless Intel's unblinking eye is turned toward targets who are of personal interest, domestically like MLK or PETA, or internationally like Saddam Hussein or Manuel Noriega. Then politicians unconcerned with due process like Nixon and Cheney can freely use that intel to attack their personal "enemies of the state".

30 years after the end of the cold war, THAT's why domestic Intel agencies continue to exist. All of the US military services have their own Intel agencies for use during war. They don't need the CIA or NSA. Only Presidents do. And IMHO, for all the wrong reasons.

Just because it's not in the headlines doesn't mean they didn't do anything. It's just that if the successfully stopped a terrorist attack for example, you wouldn't hear about it, both because it's no longer big news (nothing happened), and because those agencies would want to prevent the lose of assets as much as they can, so they wouldn't publish the information either.

I think the CIA and NSA have probably done a lot for the safety of America and US citizens (especially in times of peace). However (based on no evidence, just a hunch) I think that most of those cases, they just needed the basic tools already in their disposal (like monitoring suspects based on actual evidence and following a court order approval), and that the extreme means they use don't have a big impact when it comes to the security of lives (US or global).

To correct this, politicians must be at least as susceptible to surveillance as the general public, if not more so.

One way to do this is to make all collected information public after 25 years. Long enough to avoid compromising ongoing investigations, but short enough that politicians will be thinking of themselves.

Even if society was willing to exchange more privacy for a higher number of unpredictable 'negative' incidents, the question changes from what, to how many. For example, how many incidents of X magnitude would be required for people to change their minds? What if you only need 1 incident of Y magnitude to change the shape of your society in a negative way, potentially rocking its very core? Would you take the risk for your individual's privacy? You have to remember that an event can be come in different ways such as a terror attack, a semi-natural disaster, a cyber attack, an espionage that rocks the foundation of a key industry in your country, etc.

I think some of the questions society should be asking are: What is an acceptable degree of personal privacy that we should strive for? What are the blockers to ensure the material is not used for nefarious reasons? Are the right institutions in place and are they solid enough? How can society engage more and have a better understanding of the issues at hand?

I think it's a rookie mistake for newly minted officers in the armed forces to delay decisions because they want perfect information.

In the same way, commercial entities collecting information don't NEED it, but they're collecting it and swapping it and screwing up society by doing it.

I think scaling back all this nonsense will make us all happier and healther.

They are essentially siphoning up the entire internet, what is the point of this stunt?

Even if that was a real problem, it's obviously impossible for a law to “take care of it”, only to outlaw it, which, as we’re discussing “illegal spying”, it already has, by definition.