The NY times article got a very basic point wrong.
Q: How do you judge the success of the campaign to raise awareness by calling congress people?
A: By the number of calls/contacts made.
Instead they compared it to the SOPA protest that "stopped" the bills and hence declared it a failure.
The goal of raising awareness was most certainly achieved (because the frikkin NYT wrote a whole article about it)
This is just the first salvo in a long war - no need to declare victors & losers already.
The reason so many campaigns use "raising awareness" as a goal is because it is trivially, almost tautologically achievable. Let's say the numbers were 10% of what they are. Hey, raised awareness, success! Let's say they were 10x what they are. Hey, awareness!
Furthermore, to be more brutal about this, I think "getting an article in the NYT" can no longer be a success outcome for awareness in a world with such fast attention cycles. There's an adage in politics that an issue has to be in the press for something like 5 consecutive days for it to have real electoral impact. Seems like that is more akin to the target here.
Yes, it means we can't automatically declare victory, but it also defines a victory that's earned.
I'd be willing to bet that the article was written on the 11th or even before that. The campaign started with a nearly impossible goal, unless Obama himself had come out to declare surrender, they were always going to be able to print that.
The reason the NYTimes author (and others) compared 'The Day We Fight Back" to the SOPA protests is likely because 'The Day We Fight Back' used the success against SOPA as its primary example of what online protests can do. The campaign set SOPA as the benchmark, not The New York Times. Its website, before the current updated version, repeatedly evoked the defeat of SOPA as the measuring stick. It did so in the text on the site and the promotional video.
Even the name "The Day We Fight Back" implies that this is a fight that can be won in a day. Supporters later pointed out that this is a long war, not a fight for a day. But the initial promotion of this campaign did little to encourage people to take this fight and make it part of their lives for the foreseeable future. And the fact that supporters are justifying the legitimacy and effectiveness of this campaign by citing one-day numbers only furthers the notion that a single day can make a difference in what will inevitably be an ongoing battle for the rest of our lives.
Setting a specific date for the action was wrong. In reality it was critical to getting any participation at all. If we'd have themed this as "Fight Back For The Foreseeable Future," I assure you we'd have gotten very little participation. Any large movement is made up of a series of smaller actions.
For example, in the buildup to SOPA we had Internet Censorship Day in November, the Godaddy boycott in December, and then the blackout in January. To see this on a larger scale, simply skim the timeline of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 [1].
Keep in mind, for many people, the scariest thing about this whole mass surveillance issue is the potential to blackmail elected officials. It takes courage for them to stand up to something like the NSA. We need to show our reps we have their backs. 89,000 calls is pretty impressive.
Anyone who doesn't believe this needs to watch Client 9 [1] about Eliot Spitzer.
It's very convincing that someone powerful targetted him for his anti-wallstreet policies and sought to catch him with a high paid prostitute. The weird part starts happening when they interview the madam and brothel hustlers who she hired, and find out tons of famous politicians and Wall st execs uses them... but noone else got brought down despite all the private investigations, wiretaps, and FBI investigations, except the one guy pissing off people in power.
Now in 2014 we're back down to nearly zero reputable prominent people in office calling out Wall st or political corruption. Except maybe the crazy fringe types like Rand Paul.
It's hardly productive to call crazy one of the very few senators who has consistently and without compromise opposed the kind of things the fightback in question was referring to. It's no wonder America's in the state it is, when someone is called crazy for opposing war, but the presidents who readily kill children and innocents by proxy (drones) are seen as perfectly sane.
Lets be honest here, Spitzer was using prostitutes of his own free will. Just someone either put some effort into catching him or got lucky while he was getting lucky. So I am not going to jump on the conspiracy bandwagon when the party in question is supplying the gun.
Your conclusion doesn't logically follow, given what the GP said: "tons of famous politicians and Wall st execs uses them... but noone else got brought down despite all the private investigations, wiretaps, and FBI investigations, except the one guy", clearly suggests a conspiracy to get to this particular person regardless of whether they brought their own rope.
You're basically saying "I don't care, he went to a prostitute of his own free will", which is no rational reason to discount the theory that they targeted him specifically, because if he hadn't done so, they'd have either found something else, or made something happen. The fact that they didn't have to, doesn't suggest they did not target him, while the fact that they also didn't out any of the tons of other people, suggests that there might be a reason for this particular person other than mere chance.
It is not only the fringe. It's almost a rite of passage for ambitious prosecutors/attorney generals to take on Wall Street and/or corruption. Guiliani, Spitzer & now Bharara (he took the lead on Galleon, SAC, etc)
Keep in mind it's scary for the individual to call as well for fear of being put on a list. So 89,000 is definitely impressive. I wouldn't be surprised if I was put on a list yesterday after saying something along the lines of "the government's actions are turning people against the government and creating enemies of their own citizens". Oh well I don't care about being on a list anymore. It's time to stand up.
He didn't speculate on anything; he said he wouldn't be surprised if he was put on a list. And given all of the information that has come out over the past few years, would you be surprised that such a list were in place?
You must be kidding. Nobody did a pencil and paper list. But according to Snowden leaks this list is easily retrievable with a few clicks. These might had been speculations in 2000. Today this is a fact.
First, the parent suggested that they were put on a list not only for calling, but "after saying something along the lines of" something. That is, that either the content of the call was being recorded by the NSA, or whatever phone system Congress has set up is both recording and being used to compile a list of people. The leaks strongly suggest that there is no mass recording of the content of calls by the NSA; although it is possible that the phone number used to contact Congress is being tapped, this would be illegal (since the NSA is not supposed to target communication between US persons) and there isn't evidence that it is happening. As for Congress itself doing it, I guess it's possible, but I think lawmakers have better things to do than go after random constituents.
The leaks do state that metadata about the call, including that it was made between the parent and Twilio, would have been stored in a database, so theoretically the parent could be targeted for calling on that day "with a few clicks", as you say. News outlets have published theories based on the leaks under which this would happen:
But they sound pretty hyperbolic to me. Note that according to the official procedures, the data is supposed to be destroyed immediately unless it "is reasonably believed to contain significant foreign intelligence information", etc.:
and the NSA was/is certainly not supposed to intentionally go after this type of information. But to be fair, I might not have been so skeptical if the parent had only mentioned metadata.
The parent responded and brought up COINTELPRO. Yes, if something like COINTELPRO were happening now, then such fears would be warranted. I cannot rule that scenario out, but it's worth noting that the leaks make it significantly less likely, since the NSA would probably be involved in such a program (as it was in COINTELPRO), yet nothing of the sort came up in the leaks. I guess the proven ability of the government to keep misconduct secret in general means that it is rational to suspect that some kind of misconduct is happening somewhere, but I wouldn't say there's enough evidence to rationally specifically fear being targeted for contacting Congress.
They and another person also reiterated that the wording was "wouldn't be surprised" that something is happening, which is a more general standard than thinking it is actually likely to be happening. And I admit that even a small chance of it happening can still make it "scary" to call, since the repercussions if it were true could potentially be much larger than the benefits of calling; moreover, some of the people who might call may not be rational or well-informed but still should be entitled to call and state their views on what ought to be happening. Still, I do not think it's unreasonable to ask for evidence either.
Didn't claim to have evidence. The reasoning for why I wouldn't be surprised [1]. The source talks about a break in at the FBI during the Vietnam war by protesters who felt the FBI had been targeting them. It turned out that the FBI had indeed been spying on them and compiling documents about these individuals.
tl;dr The NYT post was inaccurate in lots of ways. It's true that Tuesday was much smaller than SOPA. But judging campaign success by the most important online activist moment in history sets an almost impossibly high bar. Also, SOPA didn't just happen, it was built up to. American Censorship Day happened 2 months before and was much smaller.
"Also, SOPA didn't just happen, it was built up to."
That's one of the biggest points missed by the NYT piece, in my opinion. To play devil's advocate, I do think it raised a good point: namely, that this particular fight is more abstract in the public eye. But in the set of all possible points to be made about TDWFB, that was a relatively minor one.
SOPA and PIPA had much higher general awareness before the blackouts, and the blackouts were built up to for weeks on end. (Maybe even months, judging from a quick look back at my own HN history from the time.)
I had kind of low expectations for this (because it's creating artificial time pressure on a long-term issue, which is necessary, but very difficult), and was amazed by how well it went. Congratulations.
It was kind of awesome calling a rep and being told "oh, she is an original co-sponsor of the legislation you're calling about...".
It's pretty clear this is going to be a sustained battle through the press, in the courts, through the legislature (especially in 2014 and 2016 elections), and in technology development. Thanks for this step!
America has a population of 317+ million. Somewhere between .33% to .66% of America's population even bothered to click through to the day we fight back site. And we all know that is generous, a large portion of those visits were most likely from people outside of the US. Even if they were all from citizens of the US it's still a super tiny minority of people who even were aware of this. I wish it was better, but frankly it was the day that we didn't care.
Seeing the numbers like that does make me realize what a huge deal this was. I hope this will be the start of a movement truly bringing positive change.
I wish there was something meaningful for me to do, as a non-american, to help this campaign. It's only sane to assume that surveillance efforts similar to those of the US exist in most other countries, but it's hard to act when no concrete information is available.
Sign the thing at https://necessaryandproportionate.net/ and check out which of the international sponsoring organisations are near you, visit their websites and see how you can help and/or donate.
For instance, for me that is Bits of Freedom in NL. They do good things and provide tangible local things to do, help with, or raise awareness about.
Does anyone know if any politicians have publicly stated a change of opinion after the protest? In the wake of the SOPA/PIPA protest, there were a lot of politicians who came out against those bills who were either supporting it or neutral before the protests. Isn't that, not something like raw number of tweets, the true watermark for success or failure?
I think this was very important for them to publish. With the articles yesterday coining the term "The Day The Internet Didn't Fight Back" and even personally feeling like we failed a bit after seeing the initial numbers. This changes my perception that we had a bigger impact than I initially thought. Definitely a strong step forward.
The problem is that only a certain of percentage of Americans can legally vote, only a percentage of those (50%-60%) will actually vote, and a much smaller percentage of those will ever vote outside their party line (swing voters).
So the percentage of Americans is small, but the impact may be much larger. Or it might be much smaller. Who knows.
Aside: I would vote outside of party lines. However, I am forced to choose a very slightly smaller evil at every turn. Democrats gave me a president that started doing smart things for the economy and rights of minorities, yet brought about drone strikes, codified the Wild West that arose from the Bush era and allowed the NSA to blossom further.
The Republicans gave me a non functioning Congress and a presidential candidate unable to pull his head out of his ass.
No other party matters unless you live in a specific district where an old time independent is an incumbent.
As far as I can tell, Obama has been basically ignoring the economy as much as he can get away with. Especially the parts of it he directly controls, like who's on the Fed's Board of Governors (where it took him a year to get around to even nominating anyone for the two positions that were empty at the start of his first term). As a result, during the most critical part of the recession the FOMC was made up of 5 regional bank presidents and 5 appointed governors, instead of the 7 appointed governors it should have had, and therefore Fed policy was much more strongly biased towards the bank presidents than it should have been.
The rest of your analysis is about right, though.
> No other party matters
And both of the incumbent parties write legislation to make sure it stays that way...
Could you devote 100% of the effort focused on only one goal - pressuring Google or Facebook to put up the banner. Then, in 1 day, a billion people see the banner. The email, phone support is then invariably much higher.
So, as a person who decided to put the banner up on a couple of the sites that I run/co-run, I'm curious if I actually made an impact, and which sites have more politically actionable users.
Did you collect analytics about calls and which domains they came from? I would be curious to see what sites generated the most calls/emails or the best call/email ratio or the best action/view ratio. Is that possible, or would that be too… privacy violate-y?
Truth, I must be an ostrich...I had not heard of this campaign nor was it on my radar or in my inbox. SOPA was something I heard about, was on my radar, and was in my inbox. I fail at knowing what the NYT thinks I should know (but I was all about Stop SOPA (but please use soap)).
You think a video with 37,000,000 views is moderately popular? Looks like the most popular YouTube videos of the past 2 days all have under 6m views, so you're not even remotely accurate.
A banner impression is not the same thing as watching a video; not at all. A banner impression has very little value. It's more accurate to look at page views.
Nothing will change. This campaign was a complete waste of everyones time.
You would be better off spending the money on developing new encryption solutions, antiforensic tools, anonymity networks and legal defenses for those caught in their snares.
The five eyes will never stop their global surveillance of planet Earth.
Learn to work around it, not complaining to government to make things change. Technology never regresses. You poor bastards ain't seen nothing yet.
Q: How do you judge the success of the campaign to raise awareness by calling congress people?
A: By the number of calls/contacts made. Instead they compared it to the SOPA protest that "stopped" the bills and hence declared it a failure.
The goal of raising awareness was most certainly achieved (because the frikkin NYT wrote a whole article about it) This is just the first salvo in a long war - no need to declare victors & losers already.