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posted by martyb on Thursday July 30 2015, @03:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the dragnet dept.

Washington cybersecurity bill [protesters] are hitting Congress where it hurts: right in the fax machine.

Protesters have programmed eight separate phone lines to convert emails sent from a handy box at FaxBigBrother.com (as well as tweets with the hashtag #faxbigbrother) to individual faxes and send them to all 100 members of the US Senate.

The rationale, said Evan Greer of activist group Fight for the Future, is that Congress doesn’t appear to understand technology invented in the current century.

“Groups like Fight for the Future have sent millions of emails, and they still don’t seem to get it,” said Greer. “Maybe they don’t get it because they’re stuck in 1984, and we figured we’d use some 80s technology to try to get our point across.” All 100 members of Congress will receive each of the faxes.
...
Do US senators really use their fax machines that often, though? “Yes, sadly,” one former Senate staffer told the Guardian. They love their pagers as well. Faxes “all get digitized by the time they get to the office, though”, which bodes ill for senatorial email inboxes.

And why is 1979’s hottest tech trend still so popular on Capitol Hill? “One thing that makes faxes – and pagers, for that matter – still good tech is that they are analog and difficult to search. Members love them, especially to transmit data for things like campaign financing records.”

… so, if you're looking for an explanation for why government does things the way it does, the explanation that assumes maximum weasel … factor is nearly always correct?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @05:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @05:20AM (#215748)

    Send Big Brother a breakup fax! Tell him you don't love him anymore, and you think you should pay your taxes to another government instead. It's not you, Big Bro, it's me.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @05:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2015, @05:32AM (#215752)

    Can I get a whole litre of Victory Gin, as a parting gift, before the bullet to the head? I have a powerful thirst.