<story><title>We need an NRA for privacy</title><text>A software company shuts its secure email service pre-emptively so that they wouldn&amp;#x27;t be forced to comply with government orders to ... what? insert back doors? hand over encryption keys?&lt;p&gt;What country did this happen in? Soviet Russia? Cuba? Iran?&lt;p&gt;No the United States of America. Truly chilling.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m talking about Silent Circle. see:&lt;p&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=6183059&lt;p&gt;and&lt;p&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=6183352&lt;p&gt;If this had been about a gun-making&amp;#x2F;selling company shutting down its operation because they were afraid the government come to them and force them to violate the privacy of their customers, or for example insert, surreptitiously, some sort of tracking device into the guns themselves, the country (and the mainstream media, by the way) would be UP IN ARMS.&lt;p&gt;What we need is a &amp;quot;National Privacy Association&amp;quot; like the &amp;quot;National Rifle Association&amp;quot;. Celebrity spokespeople, tons of money, lobbying congress, etc.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>Privacy advocates need to get their act together and form a single-issue organization. I need to be seeing teenagers coming to my house peddling privacy the way they do for churches and baby seals. The tech industry needs to sack up and realize that their business interests are at stake, and put some serious money in PACs behind the whole effort. It needs to have a focused mission, no getting distracted in related issues (e.g. copyright reform or reform of hacking laws), but be a big tent (don&amp;#x27;t care what else your other viewpoints are). There needs to be a diversity of messages, targeted at different demographics. There has to be something in it not just for techie yuppies in San Francisco, but also church-going grandmothers in small-town Iowa (any political movement that can&amp;#x27;t capture at least some old people is dead on arrival). That&amp;#x27;s a key strength of the NRA: it has vigorous support across a wide diversity of voting demographics.&lt;p&gt;The EFF and the ACLU are fine for what they are, but they&amp;#x27;ve got too broad of a mandate to have the kind of focused impact you want. You can&amp;#x27;t be an effective mainstream advocacy organization when you&amp;#x27;re off defending unsympathetic people for principled purposes. That&amp;#x27;s an important thing too, but it&amp;#x27;s a different thing.&lt;p&gt;For people interested in effecting real political change, I seriously recommend watching this documentary on the Prohibition: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pbs.org&amp;#x2F;kenburns&amp;#x2F;prohibition&lt;/a&gt;. One group of people got a nation that until (and during and after!) prohibition drank 140 million gallons of liquor a year to outlaw alcohol. The money wasn&amp;#x27;t on their side (the government made 1&amp;#x2F;3 of its revenues from liquor taxes and the beer makers had tremendous power), but they accomplished their goal by masterful politicking: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Wheeler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wayne_Wheeler&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Under Wheeler&amp;#x27;s leadership, the League focused entirely on the goal of achieving Prohibition. It organized at the grass-roots level and worked extensively through churches. It supported or opposed candidates based entirely on their position regarding prohibition, completely disregarding political party affiliation or other issues. Unlike other temperance groups, the Anti-Saloon League worked with the two major parties rather than backing the smaller Prohibition Party.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>snowwrestler</author><text>&amp;gt; Privacy advocates need to get their act together and form a single-issue organization. I need to be seeing teenagers coming to my house peddling privacy the way they do for churches and baby seals. The tech industry needs to sack up and realize that their business interests are at stake, and put some serious money in PACs behind the whole effort.&lt;p&gt;But privacy advocates are frequently at odds with tech companies over privacy issues. See CISPA for example, which pretty much every major tech company supported, but privacy advocates hated.&lt;p&gt;The NRA&amp;#x27;s issue aligns gun manufacturers, gun retailers, and gun enthusiasts, which makes fundraising a lot easier. I don&amp;#x27;t think privacy is like that, though. No one makes or sells privacy.&lt;p&gt;The labor or environmental movements might be better models for a privacy movement--both started out as grassroots campaigns without any substantial corporate support. The environmental movement in particular has done a good job of turning their issue into a popular cause, forcing companies to go along, at least publicly.&lt;p&gt;Edit to add:
What the environmental movement did so well was to create a personal sense of danger--YOUR kid might get sick from pollution. YOUR favorite animal might go extinct. Etc.&lt;p&gt;Privacy advocates have, IMO, done a terrible job of this so far. To many of them just take it for granted that awareness is enough--that everyone agrees with them that it is horrifying for personal information to get collected and aggregated. Most people don&amp;#x27;t care, though, because they don&amp;#x27;t have a reason to care.&lt;p&gt;What privacy advocates need are personal stories that demonstrate how impingements on privacy led to direct harm to innocent people--and they need to be the sort of thing that make John Q. Public think, &amp;quot;that could happen to me!&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;That could be my child!&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>We need an NRA for privacy</title><text>A software company shuts its secure email service pre-emptively so that they wouldn&amp;#x27;t be forced to comply with government orders to ... what? insert back doors? hand over encryption keys?&lt;p&gt;What country did this happen in? Soviet Russia? Cuba? Iran?&lt;p&gt;No the United States of America. Truly chilling.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m talking about Silent Circle. see:&lt;p&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=6183059&lt;p&gt;and&lt;p&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=6183352&lt;p&gt;If this had been about a gun-making&amp;#x2F;selling company shutting down its operation because they were afraid the government come to them and force them to violate the privacy of their customers, or for example insert, surreptitiously, some sort of tracking device into the guns themselves, the country (and the mainstream media, by the way) would be UP IN ARMS.&lt;p&gt;What we need is a &amp;quot;National Privacy Association&amp;quot; like the &amp;quot;National Rifle Association&amp;quot;. Celebrity spokespeople, tons of money, lobbying congress, etc.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>Privacy advocates need to get their act together and form a single-issue organization. I need to be seeing teenagers coming to my house peddling privacy the way they do for churches and baby seals. The tech industry needs to sack up and realize that their business interests are at stake, and put some serious money in PACs behind the whole effort. It needs to have a focused mission, no getting distracted in related issues (e.g. copyright reform or reform of hacking laws), but be a big tent (don&amp;#x27;t care what else your other viewpoints are). There needs to be a diversity of messages, targeted at different demographics. There has to be something in it not just for techie yuppies in San Francisco, but also church-going grandmothers in small-town Iowa (any political movement that can&amp;#x27;t capture at least some old people is dead on arrival). That&amp;#x27;s a key strength of the NRA: it has vigorous support across a wide diversity of voting demographics.&lt;p&gt;The EFF and the ACLU are fine for what they are, but they&amp;#x27;ve got too broad of a mandate to have the kind of focused impact you want. You can&amp;#x27;t be an effective mainstream advocacy organization when you&amp;#x27;re off defending unsympathetic people for principled purposes. That&amp;#x27;s an important thing too, but it&amp;#x27;s a different thing.&lt;p&gt;For people interested in effecting real political change, I seriously recommend watching this documentary on the Prohibition: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pbs.org&amp;#x2F;kenburns&amp;#x2F;prohibition&lt;/a&gt;. One group of people got a nation that until (and during and after!) prohibition drank 140 million gallons of liquor a year to outlaw alcohol. The money wasn&amp;#x27;t on their side (the government made 1&amp;#x2F;3 of its revenues from liquor taxes and the beer makers had tremendous power), but they accomplished their goal by masterful politicking: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Wheeler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Wayne_Wheeler&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Under Wheeler&amp;#x27;s leadership, the League focused entirely on the goal of achieving Prohibition. It organized at the grass-roots level and worked extensively through churches. It supported or opposed candidates based entirely on their position regarding prohibition, completely disregarding political party affiliation or other issues. Unlike other temperance groups, the Anti-Saloon League worked with the two major parties rather than backing the smaller Prohibition Party.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>the_watcher</author><text>The problem I see with the ACLU and EFF is exactly what you mention - you&amp;#x27;ve got to get older people involved.  Fairly or unfairly (generally unfairly, in my opinion), both of those organizations have pretty negative connotations with the church going grandmother you reference.  The ACLU&amp;#x27;s sometimes mindless pursuit of &amp;quot;civil rights&amp;quot; (which I think they do a good job of generally, but it does grate when everything is compared to the plight of African Americans, something that is almost becoming the Goodwin&amp;#x27;s Law of civil rights).  The EFF trying to save &amp;quot;hackers&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;pirates&amp;quot; - which is completely unfair, but it&amp;#x27;s what the small town older people without computers hear and fear.  A new organization that could start from scratch would make a huge difference, and could focus on educating people that this is seriously the equivalent of the government reading snail mail.</text></comment>