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Tuesday's protest is unlikely to have the same effect. It doesn't have the backing and reach of Internet powerhouses, the way the SOPA strike did. For example, while Google reportedly supports the bill — and sent out an email today about it to a few million users — Google isn't talking about it on its homepage.

And the end result won't be as drastic: Lawmakers aren't voting on this immediately, though it already has significant bipartisan support in the House.

"We're not expecting this to stop a bill that's about to pass, like in the case of SOPA and PIPA," April Glaser of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told NBC Bay Area last week.

But Segal says the organizers hope the protest will show lawmakers "that there's going to be ongoing public pressure until these reforms are instituted."

The USA Freedom Act could end government mass surveillance programs like the NSA's call records collection, the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in November. But it also warned that "the NSA has a long history of twisting the language of statutes to argue for surveillance authority."

The bill's two sponsors — Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. — weren't always working alongside open-Internet activists. Leahy authored PIPA, one of the bills at the root of the 2012 protests, and in 2005 Sensenbrenner introduced the USA Patriot Act, which the Freedom Act would amend. Sensenbrenner said last July that he was "extremely troubled" that the FBI had used the Patriot Act to justify collecting phone records in bulk from Verizon.

All Tech Considered

Feds Can't Enforce Net Neutrality: What This Means For You

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This is the second in a very occasional series of posts in which we interview inanimate objects during fever dreams. This particular interview is with a paper bag that actor Shia LaBeouf put over his head during the premiere of Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac: Volume I at the Berlin International Film Festival.

What's that written on you?

It says "I AM NOT FAMOUS ANYMORE."

Huh.

I didn't write it.

No, I know. I'm just ... I'm thinking about it. It's perplexing.

You're telling me. You get to get up and leave this interview and never think about me again. This is permanent marker. Permanent.

So the intent is not to attract attention?

You're asking about the intent? I'm a bag. Ask me a bag question.

Oh. Sure. So ... how long have you been a bag?

Are you serious? This is your question? Why am I even here?

No, no, no. Sorry. So what were you doing before the film festival?

I was folded up, Cronkite.

Oh. Right. Okay. Well, was it fun being part of the festival?

It was ... well, I don't want to get philosophical.

That's okay. That's okay. Everybody wants to know how you feel.

The thing is, it's not what I was made for, you know? A bag, you know, its true purpose is to hold things. And I'm sort of a special bag; I'm a little bigger than a lunch bag, or what we call a "peewee," and I'm smaller than a big grocery bag, which we call a "venti." I'm right there in the middle. I'm good for takeout, I'm good for, like, picking up a few groceries on the way home. What I am not made for is being part of some actor's publicity stunt.

Gee ... that's sort of sad.

And he cut holes. He cut holes in my side. He cut holes for his little eyes, and he wrote all over me — I can see it when I look in a mirror — and now I'm ruined for actually holding anything. I can no longer do bag work. I'm like some kind of monster.

Do you talk to your friends about it?

I don't have a lot of friends. I'm in a dumpster right now.

Oh my gosh, are you okay?

It smells.

Can I ... do you need me to contact your family and tell them where you are?

You don't want to talk to them.

Why not?

My mother's an old bag.

Er.

That was a joke.

Oh, oh, right. Sure.

See? I'm funny. I can do comedy. I'm wasted sitting here in this dumpster with writing all over me. That dude, I swear.

When the federal government hits its debt ceiling at the end of the month, don't expect another big red-on-blue confrontation.

The appetite in the House Republican conference for that kind of debt-defying standoff isn't what it was last fall when the nation was hit by the double whammy of the debt limit and partial federal government shutdown.

And the House GOP can't even agree on what points to negotiate with President Obama — who has said he's not willing to negotiate on the debt ceiling anyway.

As a result, there's now the possibility that the GOP failure to find intraparty agreement may lead to the very thing Obama has been wanted all along — a clean debt ceiling bill. But he would get it by default, so to speak.

Steve Bell, a fiscal expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former Republican Senate aide who's familiar with House Republican discussions, says the two likeliest options at this point are a clean debt-ceiling bill or legislation linking an increase in the government's borrowing authority to restoration of recent cuts to military pension benefits.

The lowered cost-of-living adjustments for retired military was part of the budget agreement reached last year by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

"It was the only entitlement savings in the whole damn plan that Murray and Ryan put together," Bell said. "Republicans and Democrats alike have been trying to kill it," even though Pentagon officials have said the modest COLA reductions are essential for the military to maintain its war-fighting readiness over the coming decade. Growing pension costs are crowding out other defense spending.

"I think the one thing they will do will be disheartening," Bell said. "They will pass the debt bill on time and they will attach to it a reversal of the only retirement savings in the entire... budget plan. So for guys like me who've been doing this since 1979, this a time when you have a choice between crying and laughing. And I'm just laughing. You can't blame it on one party or the other."

The smart money is on the debt ceiling being raised perhaps for as long as a year. That would put the next vote to raise it safely past the mid-term elections and perhaps into the next Congress. If the vote came just after the elections instead, it would mean a lame duck Congress, with its many retiring members, would vote on a higher debt ceiling — removing the controversy at least from the new Congress' immediate to-do list.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Budget, also expects that a debt-ceiling boost will happen in a remarkably straightforward way given the turbulence of recent years.

"It looks as though the debt ceiling is likely to be increased without any last minute soap operas," she said. "Ironically, it looks like it will be a clean debt ceiling increase because Republicans are having such a hard time coming up with any viable policy to attach to it," she said.

Instead of a protracted fight, then, what House Republicans are up against is time, the House calendar to be exact. The House only has one full work day this week since the House Democrats' retreat starts Wednesday and goes through Friday.

The House is out the following President's Day week and returns the Tuesday of the last week of February. That leaves no time for dawdling on on their return since Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said the debt ceiling must be raised by Feb. 27 if the nation is to avoid a historic default on its obligations.

One thing a clean debt-ceiling bill, or one with legislation restoring the full military pension COLA, would do is make it likelier House GOP leaders could get most Democrats to join with a few dozen Republicans to reach the 218 votes needed to pass a debt-ceiling hike.

MacGuineas, a debt hawk, is glad to see the end — at least for now — of the recent practice of holding the nation's credit rating hostage. But she fears what may happen now, or won't happen, now that policymakers have don't have the "forcing mechanism" of raising the debt ceiling to make them consider the nation's indebtedness.

"The debt ceiling used to be used as a reminder that we had to focus on debt levels when they were too high," she said. "But at this point, Congress is unable to make any real policy progress that the debt ceiling is likely to be lifted without any effort to try to get control of the fiscal situation."