[chrisacree]

I'm not surprised by this. Getting the public at large's attention concentrated in the first place is hard enough; keeping it there is impossible. However, that's not to say that all this has been in vain.

The snooping revelations sent huge ripples through the tech community, and that is the community both most affected and most poised to make a change. A small group of dedicated people is all it takes to enact change, and it's clear to me there has been significant increase in the scrutiny of both government surveillance and existing businesses privacy policies and software. Maybe the public at large has moved on, but some people have adopted the cause, and a small focused group can be far more potent than a vague, if large, mass of people. Just ask Occupy Wall Street.

The main take-away here is that yes, the public will move on. As it always does. Nothing is going to hold the country's attention more than a couple weeks, and even that is pushing it. So use that momentum if appears, but don't depend on it staying. More important is whether a subgroup is galvanized to action and will commit to the long fight.

Parallels to consider: - the political influence of relatively small interest groups via lobbyists - the oft-repeated wisdom that for a startup it's better to have a core group that loves you than a million that think you're just pretty good

[themartorana]

I'm also interested in the effect companies pushing for and enacting better privacy and encryption had. For instance, Google made sweeping and immediate changes, and Apple tightened encryption in iMessage and iOS, to the vocal chagrin of govnt agencies. Did visible actions like these help speed the public decline in interest because the public at large felt that major influencers had become their champions (naive though it may be)?