I’m a film-maker by trade, so heading to Capitol Hill the other week was a new experience for me. I was there to talk privacy, and in essence, to advocate. I didn’t have the first clue where to begin. The architecture, both impressive and oppressive, made me feel simultaneously important and meagre, and as I was later told, this was intentional.

For the past month we have accrued about 20,000 signatures at our site trackoff.us, from people who want their Congressmen to see my film about digital privacy: Terms and Conditions May Apply.

I had a feeling a lot of people on the Hill didn’t really understand how privacy has been eroded through the digital corporate/government alliance. It’s not because these Representatives are dummies, it’s because the unholy alliance of the surveillance-industrial complex is just that: complex.

Everything in our digital lives now comes with this legally binding contract, a contract designed to take away fundamental rights. And with 30 or more pages of undecipherable legalese at many sites, how is anyone supposed to understand the nature of the trade for digital services?

These contracts had largely evolved after the Patriot Act, designed to take as much from the user as possible, while simultaneously protecting the company from any and all legal recourse. Who was bargaining on behalf of the user? I suppose I had made a film, and I was now in Washington to change that.

Slowly but surely I got my bearings straight: meet with staffers (the guys who work for the Congressmen behind the scenes), not Congressmen, and talk to those with a vested interest in privacy reform.

Staffers were surprised to hear my refrain: “A private internet experience will be impossible until we get rid of the FISA amendments and overhaul the Patriot Act.” They thought I would be advocating some specific form of legislation, perhaps tied to terms and conditions.

“Sure,” I’d say. “I’d love to see users at least have access to information a company has on them, then I’d like for them to have control over that data. But that’s not the priority".

Not that reforming the way corporations use our data isn't important. I actually have a pithy phrase I like to say: The right to know, the right to control.

Terms and Conditions May Apply – trailer Guardian

It’s pretty simple, really. The right to know means that we should be able to audit any company that has information on us. For example, there’s a scene in my film where an Austrian student manages to get all the information that Facebook has on him (you can’t normally, but he found a loophole): over 1,200 pages of PDF searchable data in less than three years. And he was a light user.

Basically, when you know how much a company has stored on you, it helps you understand the nature of what is, in fact, a trade rather than a gift. You might think twice before clicking 'I agree'.

The right to control means that we should own our personal data, not the company. And when a company betrays our trust, we should be able to take that data with us, either to another company, or eradicate it, as we see fit.

But so long as data retention is required by FISA and the Patriot Act, we will never be able to control our data. And let’s be clear, our data is really our digital identity. So for now, the right to know, the right to control is not my priority.

After walking by the roads with bomb blockades, passing through the metal detectors, then meandering through the endless corridors of a House building, I discovered a surprising refrain: a lot of members of Congress are fed up with the surveillance state as well. Behind closed doors, I even heard a common phrase from staffers: “It’s time to sunset the Patriot Act”.

This was coming from both sides of the aisle. I was shocked.

At our DC premiere of Terms and Conditions May Apply, Congressman Dennis Kucinich made a surprise appearance in the crowd and went a step further, standing up after the screening and saying the “NSA should be abolished", and that Edward Snowden should get a “ticker-tape parade".

While this speech tickled users on Reddit and got a lot of press, open criticism of the surveillance-industrial complex is far from the norm. And supporting Edward Snowden as a public official seems to be politically cancerous.

But I have hope, and here’s why:

While in DC, I was reminded of something that stuck with me: Congressmen are just people too. When 9/11 happened, they were rushed to protected sites in what must have been a terrifying moment for them. They surely felt like the next target. And then they were asked to pass a bill that would protect America from the kind of horror they had just been put through, first-hand - a bill called 'The Patriot Act'.

It wasn’t passed because they got together and said, “Let’s gut the Constitution". It happened partially from fear and partially from a misguided sense of duty.

Now, over a decade later, the father of the Patriot Act, Representative Sensenbrenner, has even come out saying that the legislation has been applied in ways it never should have been. The near passage of the Amash Amendment showed that it is possible to get bipartisan support to end aspects of the surveillance state. A recent Pew poll showed that 68% of people think privacy protections online don’t go far enough. There is a social and political climate right now that demands change.

In fact, this may be the issue that gets Washington working again. Sunsetting the Patriot Act would restore faith in a flailing institution, proving that it can atone for its sins. It would move the conversation from the emotional to the concrete, focusing on an idea on which Americans seem to agree: The Constitution matters.

One can wage a war against privacy, just like one can wage a war against terror, or a war against drugs. And that is exactly what governments and corporations have done - waged a war against yet another idea. And because it's been done so secretly, and with our implicit consent (often through terms and conditions), privacy has taken a nasty beating - but it’s not dead.

People are realising that 9/11 was used as a weapon to subterfuge the Constitution, and they’re becoming fed up with it. But is it really impossible to think that we could sunset the Patriot Act?

The first step is awareness. That’s what my new film Terms and Conditions May Apply is about - helping people understand the relationship between how corporations use our data and how the government accesses it. Once we understand the stakes, we can understand what needs to change.

• Terms & Conditions May Apply is being screened to staffers and Congressmen in Washington DC later this month. The film is currently available internationally through iTunes.

Watch an exclusive edit for the Guardian here