What will break the surveillance state?

[Taverner]

Enough trying to get DC to try and be nice and play Constitutional

How do we destroy it?

How do we put ourselves in the cogs and wheels and get it to grind to a halt?

[cantbeserious]

1. Only One Way - Massive Civil Disobedience

eom

[Taverner]

2. General Strike

Shut EVERYTHING down

[burnodo]

3. an EMP

no technology, no technological snooping

[NaturalCommunist]

4. Why shut it down

Most have no problem with what's going on. This has been going on since 2001, why be upset now?

[Taverner]

13. I've been upset since 2001

And I am still upset

Now that there's a little more momentum, perhaps we can kill it

[Cleita]

5. Stop using technology?

I don't think it will make a difference. Back in the days of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, government encouraged neighbors to spy on each other and children to spy on their parents. That's how Ann Frank and her family got ratted out. There was no technology back then like we know it today but any rogue government will find a way. The problem is getting people to admit that this is no better than what the Soviets and Nazis did back then or more recently what happened to the disappeared in Chile and Argentina. We need to prosecute them for this, to make them understand that this is not how a free and democratic government operates.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

6. The only way is to get judges, CEOs, and people w real power to get paranoid re the spying on them.

[reformist2]

7. Overload the database with cat videos?

[Brigid]

8. We have our winner.

[LisaLynne]

10. The internet is a series of tubes and those tubes ...

are full of cats.

[burnodo]

11. LOLCats ad absurdum!

[scarletwoman]

9. Publicly funded election campaigns. Seriously.

Our Congresscritters spend 4-6 hours a DAY soliciting donations for their next campaign. The corporate lobbyists step up and offer endless variations of quid pro quo. Government contracts are the motherlode, especially Defense Department contracts.

Congress doesn't vote on legislation that will benefit US, they vote for legislation that benefits their corporate benefactors. Their corporate benefactors benefit VERY well from a state of perpetual war, which justifies the continued expansion of the Surveillance State, which in turn provides even more fat contracts.

The other important element is the revolving door between the private sector and government officials. Perhaps, if private money were completely removed from politics, we might eventually create a class of legislators who actually want to work on behalf of We the People. Such legislators would be of little interest to the private sector, and the revolving door might eventually rust into immobility from disuse.

Such legislators might also decide to de-fund the perpetual war, which would lead to a drying up of all those lucrative Defense Department contracts, which would then begin the process of starving the beast - the Surveillance State - out of existance.

Just my thoughts...

sw

[marions ghost]

12. Everyone opposed

stand up.

That is a LOT of people. Here and around the world.

I have hope for the first time that maybe we can shine a light on this profound betrayal of public trust.

[HardTimes99]

14. A person after my own way of thinking. Congress could easily put a stop to it by

pulling funding for it. (See the end days of our involvement in Vietnam.) Accordingly, tomorrow, I shall be calling my Rep and two Senators yet again (3rd time) to let my evolving views be known.

Related question: what to do with a bunch of suddenly out-of-work spooks?

In one of these weird security state paradoxes, though, any serious discussion of specific countermeasures probably should not take place in an open electronic or telephonic forum.

Just a couple thoughts I've been having.

[marions ghost]

15. let our views be known

[Taverner]

16. Out of work spooks? Have them ferret out government corruption...

That is...if they aren't already corrupt

[HardTimes99]

18. Well, FDR had the infinite wisdom to put Joseph Kennedy (Sr.) in

charge of the SEC, IIRC, so there may be some possibilities in that regard

[MrSlayer]

17. Nothing short of revolution.

And that's not happening anytime soon.

[cherokeeprogressive]

19. Nothing will break or stop it. The government is an entity unto itself now.

The surveillance state is the government's guarantee of survival. Scare it, and it will turn its eyes on you. Poke it, and it will turn its eyes and ears on you. Threaten it, and it will turn its friends on you.