A more practical approach: contribute to open source projects that enable privacy and security on the internet (Tor, Truecrypt, et al.). In addition to technical work, these projects need UI work badly. Long term success depends on whether non-technical people can understand how to use these technologies effectively.
If the quality of these open source technologies is high enough, it wont matter what legislation any government passes.
Tor in particular is a target of mine once I get out of college (two classes I'm taking should help directly with it). It's in a rather frightful state.
I've essentially made it my goal to make sure privacy is out of the hands of anybody but the individual. Without it, there's no guarantee of free speech. With it, there's always a line of communication. Ease-of-use is one of the biggest cliffs to scale, as plenty of tech exists to make things secure, it just needs to be put in everyone's hands, and made simple enough to be the default instead of for geeks-only.
A not-insignificant fly in the ointment is that Tor gets used a lot right now by spammers. So much in fact that we had to ban Tor nodes from connecting to any justin.tv server. I wouldn't be surprised if many other websites have the same system in place - it's technically easy to arrange - see http://www.ahbl.org/
Yeah, I've been pondering over similar problems with anything totally anonymous. I think a combination of asymmetric keys for verification and intelligent throttling might do enough to prevent most of the damagers.
If nothing else, picture an internet where your upload location is totally anonymous (TOR), but you can sign everything you do with a key (already in place, but nothing does it easily, much less free and ubiquitous). Journalists / investigators can be anywhere, but verify that they're them, without fear of being discovered by their uploading data. Undercover journalist heaven.
I can definitely respect that point of view. My view is that people need to play their strengths. Personally my ability as a programmer is stronger than my ability as a political activist. So I choose to donate my time to free software and my money to the EFF. I also choose to invest my money in companies that have a proven progressive stance on patents and copyright (ex: Red Hat [1, 2]). The only direct political thing I do is vote. Everything else is by proxy.
Definitely, but hopefully it'll be too late by that stage for governments to do anything. Personally, I realized a few years ago that I feel no bond with America in particular, and I value ethical government more than I fear running from unethical ones. If guaranteeing they can't control certain things has a cost, I'm happy to pay it.
As to speaking out now, I've already sent off a few emails, and encourage everyone to do everything they can to fight opaque governing. In a (idealized as a) democracy, keeping information away from voters is downright unethical, and goes against its core principles.
Sheeple are not governing bodies, they're weapons for people who want more power. The only way to prevent that in a democratic-styled government is education, and more (healthy) distrust of the government.
Short of that, what do you think we can do? I'm extremely disappointed in the US govt. for pushing this, and especially in secret, but I'm not sure what can be done directly.
My strategy is to convince people outside of the US to stop voting for political parties that do whatever the US tells them to do. Voting doesn't matter in the US, but it seems like some EU countries really have their act together. And the EU is big enough to tell the US to fuck off. If only they would...
Sadly, there appears to be more than an element of truth in this. The secret ACTA negotiations began under the Bush administration and have continued seemlessly under Obama. In both cases, corporate interests (the MPAA and RIAA) are running the show behind the political frontmen.
The most effective political response in the USA may be to organise people in primary elections to select candidates based on their stance on these issues.
> it seems like some EU countries really have their act together
The European parliament uses proportional voting systems, which mean it's practical for people like the Pirate Party to seek election. The same is true for many European national legislatures. If enough Pirates get elected, they may find themselves part of ruling coalitions and will have real power to change things.
Also, if enough people vote Pirate, other parties may start to realise that support for ACTA and similar is a vote loser.
> And the EU is big enough to tell the US to fuck off.
The way I see it is that Pirates are likely to gain power in Europe first, and will then use that to spread Pirate ideals around the world.
