Anyone who throws their hands up in the air (and I'm talking to you yodsanklai and JoeAltmaier, dobbsbob...and basically 80% of the people on this thread) but YOU are a big part of the problem. It doesn't matter even if the petition is totally ineffectual to change things on it's own: it's value is in it's very existence, and it signals a strong position against something that is very, very wrong with our society at the moment. No movement ever started fully formed like Aphrodite from the head of Zues - they all must start somewhere.<p>So please, if you agree with the desired outcome, why would you naysay ANY attempt to change things, no matter how "naive" or "ineffectual" or "pointless"? Is it not better to have good people speaking truth to power, even if they are not listened to?<p>All I ask is that you consider this question before criticizing someone else's attempt to <i>advocate for positions that you yourselves agree with</i>.
I suppose pretty much everybody is against mass surveillance, academics or not. But what choice do we have? I think the problem is that we don't really live in democracies. It's not only mass surveillance, but also wars, inequalities and so on...
I don't agree with petitions. Not only do they get ignored but here they use it against you in politics later when public opinion changes, plus it's a list for marketers. Instead harass your local representative mercilessly with letters and espcially angry phone calls those get noticed eventually.
While I agree in principle, opposing surveillance is like pissing into the wind. Privacy is becoming extinct. Soon devices and technologies will be impossible to regulate - specks of dust that record sound and location; recorders that stick to clothing, hair, skin; phones and tablets that come pre-infected in their OS and hardware.<p>We can oppose it, and maybe stave off for a few years, but inevitably we are all going under the microscope. Better to design new social mechanisms to protect against misuse of the data, than try and prevent its collection.