While your recommendations are great - keep talking about it and DON'T CODE BAD SHIT (if you do, no matter if you think its just to feed your kids or whatever, you're a bad person).... there's more we can do.
The NSA and their ilk think they can take the knowledge of CS, and other aspects of information science, and use it against us. But what is preventing us from defending ourselves with that same knowledge? Surely there's enough public information out there to, say, build a system which uses the public news stories and communications from politicians previously busted for adultery to train a machine learning system that will also monitor contemporary news stories and communications and let anyone check their politicians "aduletery score" to see what % likelihood there is that they're a cheat (according to the system, of course).
There are many projects like that which could be done that would help the public, and the politicians, understand why the things the NSA wants to do are radically dangerous and must be stopped.
Yes I'd rather have a politician who regularly attended brothels than voted for SOPA. Raising alarm over OMG sex is a great way for media to control the dialog away from actual issues.
The NSA and their ilk think they can take the knowledge of CS, and other aspects of information science, and use it against us. But what is preventing us from defending ourselves with that same knowledge? Surely there's enough public information out there to, say, build a system which uses the public news stories and communications from politicians previously busted for adultery to train a machine learning system that will also monitor contemporary news stories and communications and let anyone check their politicians "aduletery score" to see what % likelihood there is that they're a cheat (according to the system, of course).
There are many projects like that which could be done that would help the public, and the politicians, understand why the things the NSA wants to do are radically dangerous and must be stopped.