The Tek homepage has the following link for trying to stop portions of the Patriot Act:
https://fight215.org/
I clicked it and the Electric Frontier Foundation connected me to each of my state representative's voice mailboxes in sequence with one call. Took me about 5 minutes to leave a bunch of voice mails from a script.
Thought it was a badass way to give a crap. Anybody try it? Also, since this is a forum topic, can it really accomplish anything?
Everyone in the US reading this really should be calling their reps. You know all that horrible stuff the NSA has been doing that we know about thanks to Edward Snowden? Yeah, it's all been done because of the PATRIOT Act. The same PATRIOT Act that was supposed to merely be temporary. It's time for it to expire.
Totally agree.
The Patriot Act says the government does not need probable cause to invade your home or person, they just need to say they are defending the country against terrorism. This is why all our phone communications, internet communications, credit card purchases, etc. are all being documented and profiled.
The Patriot Act has transitioned our government into an authoritarian police state that views civilians as the enemy. This is unconstitutional and illegal.
Richard Stallman during an interview calls it the Pat-Riot Act since it's anything other than patriotic.
The author of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, said that the administration's and the FISA court's use of the act was a "bunch of bunk" and that he originally drafted a section to prevent data mining. He even said that he wouldn't have known about the abuse of the act if Edward Snowden hadn't blown the whistle.
It's kinda frustrating because right now all we're really able to do online is preach to the choir. I'm hoping more people call their reps and tell them to vote no on the Pat-Riot renewal.
Even if we did speak up, as one nation, against this. They would just respond "sometimes the people don't know what's best for them" and continue ignoring us.
At this point, it's going to take removing every single member of congress and their cronies, from the country, to change anything.
Then, change the rules governing politicians. No political donations. All elections must take place in public forums subsidized by the tax payers (including rallies, voting, ACTUAL DEBATES and not just talking points with someone asking predecided questions, etc). Oh, and no more career politicians, you get two terms in one elected office, then you're done for life.
I know, so many people are uniformed or just passively throw their hands up and accept unconstitutional laws, or worst, agree with the erosion of our liberty for alarmist reasons.
Cheers to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for their work on leveraging tools for citizens to speak out with.
The founding fathers would really be appalled that a political class has emerged and created a wall between the citizenry and the government. The whole point was that the citizenry controlled the government and not that the government controlled the citizenry.
Campaign finance is so ridiculous and allows money to create or remove law. This totally erodes the integrity of our entire system and I agree, needs to be heavily regulated.
Just emailed my representative. Never done it before, but I guess it's a good time to start.
The only thing we can hope for is that they all just die of old age.
Ha, the ridiculous thing is older generations (ruling lawmakers) can't even get that you "only click once" on a damn url or the "OK" button. They just click their way into malware constantly and then think they need protection...insane.
That's why I try to educate my grandparents and parents are these things. Hopefully it'll end today though, I've been following EFF Live Tweets all day.
Here's a link to Rand Paul's speech on the Patriot Act a few hours ago - and they even tried to stop him from doing it...
He starts at 5 minutes in:
high drama
God forbid the Patriot Act from being continued....
More like a single rational voice amidst demonstrable congressional neglect
http://www.c-span.org/video/?326227-1/us-senate-debate-nsa-surveillance part 2...... http://www.c-span.org/video/?326227-2/us-senate-debate-nsa-surveillance
Ha, who made this video?!? They either worked for the WWF or helped make Kung Fury