> If it works for guns and the tea-party, then why can't it work for tech?
Because a viable critical mass of people are willing to be single-issue voters when it comes to guns. And that's the case because gun ownership is deeply ingrained into the culture of many parts of the country.
I remember being somewhat surprised by the regional success of the various Pirate Parties, which seem to be close to single-issue parties, at least if you consider the constellation of things around copyright/privacy/patents to be one issue. In fact their main problem seemed to be that they tried to turn into more than single-issue parties, at which point they collapsed into in-fighting because they didn't agree on anything else. But it suggests that, at least in some regions, there's a significant minority of people willing to single-issue vote on those issues. The U.S. so far doesn't seem to be one of them, but I'm not 100% confident that an organization rating candidates on EFF issues in a scorecard-style way couldn't have at least some influence, if it got enough recognition/PR, even if obviously not as big as the NRA's.
That doesn't work in a system like in the United States where we directly vote for a candidate who needs 50.1% of the vote. In most (all?) if the European countries where the pirate party has experienced success, 15% of the vote equals ~15% of the representation. In the US 15% gets you 0% representation.
> That doesn't work in a system like in the United States where we directly vote for a candidate who needs 50.1% of the vote.
First, 50.1% (or 51% or 50% + 1, more common alternative descriptions) is an inaccurate description of the requirement in a majority/runoff election, "greater than 50%" is correct (since votes are always in whole numbers, 50% + 0.5 would also be a correct minimum threshold.)
Second, many single-winner elections in the US are plurality rather than majority/runoff, for which the threshold is actually "greater than any other candidate" not "greater than 50%".
Third, the system used for elections is subject to change (in many states, through citizen initiative, so the "but the incumbents will never vote for it" objection doesn't apply), so, "it doesn't work in the existing electoral system" isn't really a reason something won't work, just a reason why making it workable also involves advocating for change in the electoral system.
You know what I meant on the 50.1 thing, so I'm not going to get into that.
I'm not saying the system we have now is the best one or that it can't be changed. I was just responding to the parent's question of whether a small single issue party could gain traction in the US like the Pirate Party has in other places. Our current system makes that nearly impossible at the national level.
There is only one obvious issue that could get the masses to fight the anti-privacy bills - the one they usually come bundled with, i.e. copyright. Most people will start to care when you deny them their pirated Game of Thrones or threaten to actually put them to jail for that House of Cards download. Obviously, this is something EFF can't get behind.
Incidentally, what started the huge European movement against SOPA was, AFAIR unrelated, coincidence - the FBI riding Megaupload. Most popular video streaming sites (which were using Megavideo as a video source) suddenly stopped working and the population of Poland went to the streets to fight against SOPA, realizing that the thing is serious. It's amazing how much activism you can get by depriving someone of the next episode of their favourite show.
The NRA is a good model for EFF in that the EFF really needs to grow their rank and file membership. Right now, not enough non-techie people care, or even know what EFF is. It is why what Snowden did was important (agree with it or not), because it pushed the tech privacy issues into mainstream awareness.
The reason for that lag is not some campaign which loses to the mainstream media, but a market driver. Think of all the people who were shocked after it was discovered that Samsung TVs could arbitrarily send background voice data back to a C&C. EFF done a good job there, but they always make it some rare thing. Parker Higgins' tweet about that seeped into the consumer space and Samsung probably suffered greatly, and the public were better off.
Now there are stories of Intel chipsets having all kinds of weirdness in them, and it is not sufficient to sit on the fence here. Things are changing
Because a viable critical mass of people are willing to be single-issue voters when it comes to guns. And that's the case because gun ownership is deeply ingrained into the culture of many parts of the country.
Neither is true for electronic privacy.