All your database are belong to U.S.

I'm sure everyone's sick to death of hearing about the NSA whistleblower and his revelations of precisely the massive global and domestic spying operations undertaken by the NSA, and I'm sure someone will chime in with the ever-so-stupid, "I don't have anything to hide so they should be able to do what they want," fallacy at some point, so let me preemptively snipe your potential whine misinformed and otherwise pretentious literary ejaculations with some logic and some facts. In otherwords: READ THE WHOLE THING.

"I don't have anything to hide, so it's okay if the US government spies on everyone." To the people who believe that, let me ask you a few simple questions:
- Why do you have curtains on your window?
- Why do you wear clothes in public?
- Why don't you share your bank credentials with complete strangers?
- Why don't you invite strange men/women to join you for a conversation as you do your business in public restrooms?

You probably had an answer for at least one of those that was along the lines of, "It wouldn't be appropriate," or "It's none of their business" or even more honest and to my point, "Because I value my privacy."

We, as a society, need to recognize the simple difference between privacy and secrecy.

Privacy is the power to selectively reveal yourself to the world. We all know what we do in the bathroom, yet we still close the stall behind us when we take a shit. We know, more-or-less, the gist of each others' anatomies, yet we still wear clothing. Our houses are filled with many of the same products in similar arrangements, yet we still hang curtains (for many reasons, including keeping people from looking in). And of course we don't trust complete strangers with our bank credentials, because other people are greedy, selfish, disloyal, and opportunistic. They would rob us blind in a heartbeat.

To reiterate: Privacy is not secrecy. You may not share your social security number and bank credentials with me, but would you share them with your husband or wife? Most Americans would. Ideally, a secret matter is never shared, a private matter is shared as a result of your informed consent.

Legally, privacy is guaranteed by many laws and judicial rulings. The two most important ones for American citizens are the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, and Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Privacy is necessary for any polite or democratic society to function. Secrecy is a situational necessity and is only good or bad in certain lights. I cannot stress enough that they are two different things. And I furthermore cannot stress that the National Security Agency just violated the former.

Here's what we know:
- The NSA has been collection phone call information from Verizon customers for a while
- The NSA has a massive spying program called "... Section 702" (running on a computer system called PRISM, which became the popular term for the program)
- Public officials have been operating in secret to deprive human beings around the world of their basic privacy
- After a secret briefing of the NSA's domestic spying capabilities, one congressperson went on record stating what the media reported is just the tip of the iceberg.

Americans, your Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the leaked program and many more that we are not allowed to know about by the powers that be. Non-Americans, your Article 12 rights were violated by our country, and they proceeded to justify their decisions with, "No i's okay, they're not American citizens," as if that makes you sub-human.

It's time for action. By action I don't mean whining, petitioning, complaining, moaning, groaning, and lobbying corrupt politicians to weasel empty promises of reform (a maneuver I like to call "dangling the carrot closer"). By action I don't mean giving your hard-earned money to some dubious political action committee or mainstream and successful non-profit.

By action, I mean do each of the following:

1. Remove yourself from the surveillance state. Go dark. Learn to encrypt your communications, learn to anonymize your network traffic. If you're engaged with anything a corrupt fascist government (like the one the USA is rapidly approaching) could use against you, learn to compartmentalize it away from the rest of your life. Consider the following links for further information (highly recommended):
- https://keenot.es/read/going-dark-how-to-attain-privacy-on-internet (How to Go Dark, with video tutorials for many of the tools discussed)
- http://prism-break.org (PRISM Break - A collection of surveillance-free software alternatives that EVERYONE should peruse)
- http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/06/13/ignorance-is-strength/
- http://grugq.github.io/blog/2013/06/14/you-cant-get-there-from-here/

2. Share your newfound knowledge with everyone you can; get all your friends, family members, business partners, customers, employers, and acquaintances in the habit of using software that won't violate their human rights. The more people go dark, the larger the surface area of the darknet; meaning that it will be harder to deanonymize someone if we're all using these tools.

3. Give these assholes more work to do:
- Call your congressmen, senators, state governors, district judges, mayors, police chiefs, religious leaders, prostitutes-- anyone who holds any political power-- and tell them you think this is unacceptable and want something done about it.
- Americans: File FOIA requests to the NSA and the FBI. If your file is substantial, they are legally required to produce all of it. Deluge them with paperwork.
- Non-Americans: Complain to your ambassadors. Overload your politicans' switchboards. We need a global outrage over this program. Create diplomatic tension, put pressure on America and other countries to stop committing human rights abuses.

4. Bloggers and webmasters who have their own domain name (.com, .net, et al.): Go to https://startssl.com, get a free SSL/TLS certificate, and install it on your blog's webserver. The more websites that use HTTPS, the better. The more traffic is encrypted, the harder it will be for anyone's privacy to be violated by a government or a hacker.

5. Programmers and tech geeks: Having learned about the available tools in Step 1, improve what's available:
- Audit the code used in open source software (including operating systems)
- Help finish the mpOTR specification
- Improve onion routing technology
- Strengthen elliptic curve cryptography
- Find weaknesses in AES, Camellia, Triple-DES, Twofish, Serpent, and IDEA and make them public (because if any government knows about them and we don't, they can use it against us all)
- Improve full disk encryption
- Implement cryptography (such as OTR and related protocols) into every application you have. Remember: the less usable data you store, the less you risk being an accessory to a human rights violation
- Join telecomix, help them perfect their meshnet technology
- Build free wifi repeaters out of Raspberry Pi computers, rechargable batteries, and solar panels; and make sure they act as Tor exit nodes and i2p routers (and change their MAC address and hostname frequently)

6. Activists: Organize concerted efforts to make sure the American government sees what they're doing is wrong and corrects their course.

7. People with security clearances: Privately leak as much evidence of human rights violations as you can without harming your safety.

8. BLOGGERS: Write about the crimes against humanity and don't let this story fade away from everyone's purview.

I firmly believe this cannot be allowed to continue uncontested. If you actually read the whole thing, examined the linked material, and put some thought into your opinion on this matter, I thank you for being a better person than the majority of Americans.