[regis]

I am still outraged but I don't know what to do about it. I don't think the restore the 4th/1984 day stuff is the right way to go about it. That is a great way to spread a message but has about a 0% chance of shutting down the NSA etc...

This stuff has recently caused me to fall into a bit of depression because I feel totally helpless.

Does anyone else feel this way? What could we do?

[jmccree]

Until the NSA issue actually has an effect on the every day lives of the american population, it's going to be hard to get much support, when there are issues will actually make a difference in people's lives. We, the hackers and geeks, all see the frightening potential for abuse, but as it is now... the NSA does not make one bit of difference in the life of the average american. Taxes, health care, gun control, immigration, minimum wage, etc.. These are issues that will (or people feel will) have an impact in their day to day life.

Furthermore, as a political issue, it's actually a problem that this is not a partisan issue. In the current polarized political climate, what politician wants to be seen working with the enemy? The democrats can't go after the spying as it's their party and president who are currently doing it. The republicans can't go against it as they originally started it and are the tough on terrorism party. When it comes to the NSA, the political machine is attempting to divide by zero.

[verandaguy]

The distressing part about all this is that there is, in fact, very little to be done about this. For now, the best thing anyone can do is to keep the issue from dying. Raise awareness. Find reliable data to back up claims against PRISM and XKeyscore (data of which, I'm sure there are respectable amounts). The more people know, the more can be done about the issue. Protests, speeches, walkouts, boycotts, and, should worse come to worse, riots can be organized. Maybe more people working on the projects can be convinced to defect or sabotage the project.

Just fight to keep this relevant.

[regis]

Definitely.... However, I have been working to keeping this subject alive but at a certain point people don't want to hear it and even more disturbingly I've found that many people don't think that our government would really do something like that even after reading about it.

[oftenwrong]

What you need is more people outraged and willing to make a stand. Lives will have to be less comfortable in the US before that happens on a large enough scale. The harder the average citizen must struggle for survival, the more likely you are to hit the breaking point. You are trying to come up with a way to improve your situation, but that may require worsening the situation for others. The US government knows this, which is why they always work to keep the proles happy and complacent.

[00rion]

Organize ourselves. The people need a way to influence the government more. We can do this through collecting money for specific causes and deciding, as a group, how best to influence politics, be it through billboard advertisements that shame particular representatives into acting in the interests of their constituents or by funding lobbyists to meet with congressmen etc. We need better tools to act as groups.