holmesworcester

I'm no fan of Ajit Pai, but the way corruption works here is a bit different. Each party gets to decide who their nominees are, and the ISPs focused on gaining traction with Republican leaders in the mid 2000s.

Then Pai got the position probably because of his views on net neutrality and his commitment to oppose it, because he'd worked in industry at Verizon and they knew his perspective.

And then if he wants to return to industry at some point he needs to follow through.

It's still bullshit that he's doing this, but it's not for his direct financial benefit right now, I don't think... though gutting net neutrality is good for his future career prospects, unless we destroy those prospects, together. Onward! :)

oh we will.

sincerely, https://battleforthenet.com

The most serious problem is that even if you can't donate to politicians, there are still extremely effective way to turn money into political influence.

For example, you can hire a bunch of really nice, smart, appealing people to visit them all the time and tell them what they should think about public policy.

You can also fund a ton of think tanks to publish studies, pretending to be impartial sources.

The list goes on..

The only real cure is for real people to understand the issues deeply and engage with the process in such large numbers and in such a visible, organized, compelling fashion that it drowns out the influence of the paid operatives. That's what we need to do! And that's what's happening here on the thread.

For ES: Has the NSA ever used its hacking capacity to kill someone? Are you aware of that, or any attempt to develop that capability at the NSA (e.g. hacking to down a plane, cause car brake failure, etc?)

To what extent does the NSA use its surveillance capacity on its critics or US political leaders? Are you aware of anything like that?

I'm interested in both what you've seen, and your overall sense of what's likely to be on the table in the next few years.

Holmes Wilson here from Fight for the Future. Especially in light of the approaching recess and last night's epic filibuster by Rand Paul, we feel very sure that we should be aiming for full sunset.

In light of shocking and supposedly "impossible" victories on SOPA and net neutrality thanks to the really unexpected dynamics the Internet is introducing to politics, I'm very skeptical of limiting options to "lesser of two evils" framework. We have no idea what's possible, these days. Online communities like Reddit are literally rewriting the rules in real time.

This is a very good and important question though.

Another thing to remember is that the WH and NSA know exactly what's in USA Freedom. So it's passed through our adversaries' filter of "okay, what can we live with", which means they've done the math and know it won't cost them much in terms of capabilities. Cruder, less negotiated results like the Amash/Conyers "defund NSA" approach or letting 215 sunset are less negotiated, less predictable, and thus more likely to actually set back the surveillance machine.