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EFF Warns Not to Use Google Desktop
neelm writes "The EFF is asking users not to use the new version of Google Desktop that has a 'search across computers' option. The option will store copies of documents on your hard drive on Google servers, where the government or anyone who wants to may subpoena (i.e. no search warrants) the information. Google says it is not yet scanning the files for advertising, but it hasn't ruled out the possibility."
If I had to count on one company to stand up and fight for personal privacy, human rights and not bow down to political pressures, it would have to be teh Google.
Meanwhile, Chinese users please click here.
Hey now, people, don't you know Google is GOOD, not EVIL?
I thought it stored an index. I know this is bad enough, but if it was actual copies would be at least get a free back up out of it.
are said 'files' able to be traced to certain people?
I guess if google already stored and indexed all your files then "Comrade! Where are your papers?" won't be necessary.
Double-plus good!
I use Copernic instead of Google Desktop. I used GDS until I got a new laptop for work. Then I tried Copernic. I'm not sure if it is any better than GDS. The one aspect of Copernic I really appreciate is that it isn't integrated into my web browser. It has its own search application that looks like what I expect an indexing application to look like.
By user demand, Google introduces Google Anal Probe Beta (hereafter GAP). GAP searches that last gap of yours that we haven't been able to reach. We will be able to recommend foods you might like, various restaurants and whether you've ever been abducted by aliens.
"Google, is this painful?" you might ask. Not anymore! Thanks to GooLube Beta you won't feel a thing.
Folks, I'm not overly inclined to paranoia, but be careful. Unique application identifiers? Uploading information for across-machine search? Google never deletes anything. Ever. They might not be doing anything insidious with it now. But in five years, ten years? Who can say.
The new Google Desktop sends "copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents [to] Google's own servers"?
That's scary. What happened to "do no evil"?
Either Google is dropping that premise, or the EFF is overreacting. I wouldn't rule out the latter, in the least..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
It kind of makes one wonder how long it will be until we simply stop thinking about where our documents are stored. I've kind of assumed that, soon enough, we'll simply have our key that we'll use to access our information anywhere, anytime. Seeing the things coming out of 37Signals and other likeminded businesses that allow you to store and edit information online from anywhere, it really seems like this is the way we're headed. The only thing is, will we find some way to keep our information more secure, or will the average joe just stop caring?
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
Double standards boggle my mind. Microsoft would be lynched for half the things Google gets away from. Can someone please tell me why having your all private correspondence (gmail) or your file system (desktop) searchable by someone OTHER THAN ORIGINAL OWNER is a good idea? I know Google not suppose to extract any information, but if they CAN at some point they WILL.
I briefly used Google Desktop because everyone raved about its amazing versatility. I also wanted a desktop search similar to Spotlight. When Google Desktop started bookmarking sites for me and linking to things I didn't ask for, I stopped using it almost immediately. I'm not interested in having a computer moderate my life for me. I wouldn't trust any company with personal data, even if it is Google. Hell, I don't really even trust Google that much. It seems like they're growing too big too fast, built on too many creative yet economically-tenuous technologies. When will the house of cards collapse?
Don't enable the "search across computers" option. I doubt Google would enable it by default, as that would suck up a terrible amount of bandwidth and server storage, unless they're confident that they have the resources to burn on a feature that nobody will use (to search computers they own [bad pun]).
Well it depends. Do you care if the police can go through your stuff without a warrant? If not, then no problem. But many people do believe in privacy from the government (the founding fathers believed in it enough to include it in the constitution) and wish to keep their privacy. For them, this article would certainly be an eye-opener.
Well, if everyone has two GB of space, it makes sense to use it somehow. These guys sure do want to get their hands on a lot of data.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Why should I avoid using software that makes my life easier just because of the threat of my privacy being "violated" . . .
Because you have never been refered to as "The Defendant."
Oh, but you will be. You will be!
KFG
Do Know Evil
There, fixed that for ya.
The "search across computers" options is DISABLED by default. The user has to turn it on, and only then is any data stored on Google servers (and then it is only stored on the servers for no more than a month). CNN was repeating the same inaccurate statement this morning.
Are you serious? The only reason Bush is in hot water is because he didn't get a warrant, but had he asked, some judge would have given it to him anyway... Judges almost always rubber stamp warrants, after all, if "Law Enforcement" asks, they must need it, right?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I guess anyone can easily upload copyrighted MP3's? Does that mean Google is a RIAA target now?
I'm using google desktop right now and for a while I've been wondering if there's anything better. What I really want is something that searches file/folder names for strings or words. I dont care a whole lot about the contents.
.jpg files for the above example. And something thats faster than that awefully slow windows search. Windows search usually does more of what I want than google desktop does, but dang is it slow, and not very flexible. Heck, I'd keep google if it had something to limit its searching to filenames instead of the insides of files.
For instance if I had a file names "my family pics from vacation to hawaii in 2006 2314.jpg"
I'd like to be able to find that with a search of keywords like:
family pics
hawaii vacation
2006 pics
etc. Currently google desktop turns up way too many hits, when all I want are files with those words in the filename.
So I want more of a filename (and foldername!) searcher than anything else. Bonus if it can only search
It's disabled by default. It's no threat unless you choose to use it, in which case it's still mostly benign. BTW, OF COURSE everything Google does is used for advertising data gathering. That's how their business works. If you don't like it, don't use it. It's been that way from day one.
The article seems to be blaming Google for doing this. What the government takes from Google is not Google's fault, people should be gleaming their eye at the government for trying to delve into people's personal lives. Google is trying to create a service, and a very good service at that. Google is a privacy advocate, they are not destroying your privacy. All data they collect is very secure, and Google has shown they are willing to fight in court for users' privacy.
People should be looking at the government. In my opinion, if US Government uses Google to watch what people do on the internet, they aren't much better than China.
This is not Google's fault. Stop blaming them.
As for this statement:
"...while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password."
Google is pretty good about passwords. If someone gets your password, it's your fault. Second, I'm not convinced you can search your records remotely. The Google Desktop search runs directly from your computer, you can't access or search your files remotely using this feature. Proof: If you have it installed, what IP does it go to when you search your files? 127.0.0.1:4664 Oh snap, what a concept!
It's all bullshit. People need to start giving people the facts and stop praying on their ignorance.
The end.
google.slashdot
If they can get every file on your desktop, and you are working on a new project you want to patent, how exactly do you prevent Google or someone working for Google from deciding they want to patent it first?
Google's not fighting for individual rights in that court case. Google's fighting for Google's rights, or, at its broadest, corporate rights. There's no issue of individual rights involved. So your pick of Google, and its nonsensical false choice against the EFF (why choose?), doesn't hold any weight earned by legal insight on your part. In fact, since the story we're discussing shows that Google's desktop search puts your privacy at serious risk, your sticking to them seems to have no merit at all, beyond your adorable belief in the power of a (nonbinding) corporate motto like "don't be evil".
--
make install -not war
I read about this earlier and my first thought was: This is going to be a nightmare for businesses.
Can you imagine the kind of trouble employees and companies could get in if confidential data is being stored on Google's servers?
God help the company that accidentally gets medical or financial data stored on Google's servers.
This is a huge gaping security hole for companies. Google's Desktop Search is going to end up on the list of unnaceptable software... even if the feature is disabled by default.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
> Just because this can be used this way doesn't mean it will.
Yeah, that's what they said about street-light cams and automobile black boxes.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
With all the recent commotion about domestic wiretapping without a court order I've developed an instinct to want to protect my privacy. I simply can't stand the idea that even if google as a corporation is doing no evil with the users' data, some evil employee might want to spy on his ex girlfriend or that guy in high school who boinked his first love.
Sieg heil! You're an awesome 1930s German! Please don't mind the smog; we all know it's burning the bodies of dead dogs that got infected with a rabbies plague.
Promote freedom; fight fascism.
Remember, they have to send this using your personal internet connection. They obviously can't be sending the gigabytes of data required for a regular GDS search nor required to reconstruct that much. Then again, it's probably enough just to get some import documents.
I say to reverse engineer the protocol and use it as essentially an inifnite internet storage space. Encrypt your data, of course.
Oh yeah, couldn't google encrypt the information client side to prevent abuse?
If you have a gmail account, Google already knows who your friends and family are. That's okay if you can trust the company, and the political system.
Now Google seems to be becoming one of those amoral companies. The new Google Desktop takes advantage of people who don't understand what is happening. Is Google going from "Do no harm" to "Anything if it makes money"?
Unfortunately, the U.S. government believes that it can perform surveillance anywhere and can keep the reasons secret. The U.S. government often forces companies not to disclose that they have given information to the government. So, maybe no company can be trusted.
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & you pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
The EFF isn't advising people to avoid Google Desktop, just not to enable the feature, which IMHO makes complete sense. Google can't prevent the files from being taken if they're subpoenaed and a court orders them to make them available, now can they? It's not up to Google and the EFF knows this. They're not saying anything against Google here, just that people should be careful who they let have access to their files.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
http://desktop.google.com/about.html
...
12. What about my privacy? Does Google Desktop share my content with anyone?
We treat your privacy with the utmost respect. Google Desktop doesn't make your computer's content accessible to Google or anyone else without your explicit consent. The application also offers privacy options such as locking search, encrypting the index, and not indexing password-protected Office files or secure (HTTPS) web pages.
If you activate the Search Across Computers feature, your indexed files will be sent to Google Desktop servers for copying to your other computers on which you've also activated Search Across Computers. Your index and data files are never accessible to anyone via a Google web search. And if you don't activate Search Across Computers, your Google Desktop index and data files never leave your computer.
You can learn more by reading the Google Desktop privacy policy or about the Search Across Computers feature.
One's right to protect own privacy doesn't come with footnote saying "If you don't lock your door, you'll loose your right." One's right to protect own privacy should be honored wheather door is open or locked. Feature hindered to enable and a distance one has to go to take advantage of those features which is to protect privacy, cannot be viewed anything less than to evade one's privacy.
Google shouldn't make it as an "Optional Feature" to protect the privacy of its users, but make it ONLY feature to protect privacy. There is no room for hypocricy when it comes to where one stands in a land of bullshit.
Google's intent is clear. Google may "do no evil," but it surely does a lot of "think evil" and I'm more afraid of that.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
First they came for my email and I did not speak out because I use Thunderbird. Then they came for Word Doc's and I did not speak out because I use Open Office. Then they came for Pay Pal and I did not speak out because I use Craig's List. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
It is easy to forget that by agreeing to censor its search engine in cahoots with the Chinese dictatorship, Google is now also helping repress millions of Tibetans who have suffered under harsh military occupation by the Chinese since 1950.
Since people tend to be more familiar with the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust or Stalin's invasions and gulags, what if Google had made a business pact with the Nazis or Stalin providing their ignorant populations with entertainment and "harmless legitimate-looking facts" while suppressing all knowledge of the horrors those regimes caused to the people they oppressed?
This is what Google (and Microsoft and Yahoo) are doing in China today. All knowledge of the Chinese crimes against the Tibetan nation or the Tibetan people's struggle to regain their independence are systematically wiped out from their search results as if none of it ever happened, at the behest of the ruling Chinese Communist Party dictatorship.
What is the point of having an "information service" which covers up the most crucial information relating to massive human rights violations? A glorified pacifier to placate the ignorant masses while their ruling regime is busy carrying out genocide to its horrible conclusion?
An estimated 1,500,000 Tibetans (!!) have already perished under the Chinese occupation (nearly a fifth of total population), Tibetan language, buddhist religion, identity and history are systematically suppressed while the CCP is promoting Chinese settlers to overrun Tibet demographically. Not to mention Tibetan natural resources being stolen, nuclear waste dumped there and more nuclear missile sites being built to threaten all democracies south of the Himalayas. Or the brutality of the CCP's paramilitary police against the large number of Tibetan political prisoners being held in secret camps across Tibet. The Chinese population should be allowed to compare these facts to the current feed of Communist Party-driven anti-Japanese propaganda over that brutal, if partial invasion that ceased to take place over sixty years ago. Which invasion is supposed to be less evil and why?
Google's Chinese (dis)service will compliantly keep any of this information from reaching the Chinese or the Tibetans under Chinese occupation because an unelected and expansionist regime wanted them to collaborate.
This shouldn't be only about self-centered westerners worrying about their god-given personal privacy, although privacy is of course extremely important even in democracies with other safety mechanisms against abuse. No, it is far more sinister when corporations from the "democratic world" are helping cover up a holocaust or genocide being committed by their business partners!
What we need is search, webmail etc. services which are guaranteed to remain neutral and safe without turning evil at the first profit-motive. Or which are not subject to American "shareholders uber alles" mentality which corrupted Google. Could/should such services be based in Switzerland or Sweden, both historically neutral territories without track record of collaborating with dictatorial regimes? Would they need massive financing, thereby potentially subjecting them to the whims of the moral-free financial markets, or could enough of their functions (CPU load, distributed and encrypted storage) be offloaded, a la bittorrent, to contributing users and neutral, respectable institutions?
How could the OSS communities help build safe alternatives to Google's morality and privacy-compromised offerings?
In the meanwhile some Tibetan support groups are promoting
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
I put my very private stuff in a safe deposit box in a bank. I do not actually own the deposit box. Is the bank hurting my privacy? Can the bank hurt my privacy?
I rent an apartment and do all the private stuff (including the extremely private stuff) in this apartment. I do not actually own the apartment. Is the apartment owner hurting my privacy? Can the apartment owner hurt my privacy?
I have my emails containing private information stored in a server. I do not actually own the server. Is the sevice provider hurting my privacy? Can the service provider hurt my privacy?
I believe storing your index in Google server is the same thing. Think the few megabytes Google uses to store your index as your rented storage space.
It is stupid to only trust stuff you own. If you need extreme privacy, get an isolated island. Oh, sorry for those satellites
When China demands Google censor searches, they agree. So if China asks Google to search user's desktops for keywords (Democracy, Revolution, Freedom, etc), will Google agree there?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Had you RTFA, you would notice the EFF did exactly that. Blame your misunderstanding on Slashdot's editors not knowing how to check links before posting stories, not on the EFF. From TFA:
San Francisco - Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password.
"Rather than telling people not to use any of these products and convincing a few people with privacy paranoia they should be concentrating on improving the protections that information will have."
EFF is concentrating on this: they've announced a major lawsuit against AT&T for participating in the government's illegal wiretapping program.
But the surveillance powers of the state have expanded many times through the Bush Administration (and Clinton was hardly a friend of privacy, for that matter). So while it's important to put corporations on notice that their participation in surveillance might land them in hot water, it's likewise important to let the public know that corporations are often left with no choice, and required to surveil them secretly (e.g., because of FISA warrants, or through CALEA wiretapping).
EFF isn't pursuing a monotonic "stop sharing your information" strategy. It's approaching this on many prongs: lobbying the government to sunset the PATRIOT Act, asking the Supreme Court to strike it down, suing companies that participate in surveillance, publishing best-practices documents for privacy-friendly server-logging, and warning the public about the potential for privacy ruptures arising from law and practice.
It's unfair to characterize EFF as merely wagging its fingers at the public. The organization is pursuing this on every possible front.
(Disclosure: I am a former EFF employee)
GDS actually doesn't call home unless you tell it to.
GDS doesn't display ads ever. Not once have I ever seen an ad using GDS.
Simply don't enable the feature (which is disabled by default, but try telling that to the tards running this site) and don't enable Advanced Features. Done, no problems.
Yes:
Is it on by default?
No:
Most people won't go out of their way to enable this feature, considering it is disabled by default, so I doubt it will be much of an issue.
As Google's power grows, that power starts corrupting Google. It's inevitable. Those idealistic founders may still hug trees and wear heart-warming slogans on their shirts, but seasoned business executives know better how to milk the cash cow. And they are in charge now.
Yet, have they really ever betrayed us?
You are assuming a dichotomy where none exists. Hardly ever betrayals are so clear-cut. Your local politician may promise $foo, but after one month on the job he says $bar is better - did he betray you, or he simply knows better now? If in a war a soldier tells his girlfriend that his unit is short on ammo, and the GF is with resistance, is it a betrayal? I would expect a smooth, gentle slide from "do no evil" to "do no evil unless you don't mind, and we give you a candy for that" to then "do no evil unless you fail to enter a 26-digit prime number here and now to opt out" to ... you see my point. And that's what is happening.
I, for one, believe that Google is on the side of the users.
You are personifying a company - a collective organism who does not think as humans do, and does not behave as humans do. It is genetically hardwired to get as much money out of you, me and everyone as it legally can. I would be wary of such an animal.
By going from nothing to superstar based almost entirely on word-of-mouth, Google demonstrated how powerful cultivating user trust can be
Mixing the "Google as a startup in a garage" with the "Google as a billion dollar publicly owned business" here. They are not the same, and different people are at the helm now. They don't care what the founders thought back then. They are not the founders.
I'm beginning to think that I'm the only person who creates directory hierarchies for my documents, and names them with meaningful names.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
*sigh* I'm getting really tired of seeing this kind of bullcrap spouted all over slashdot whenever Google gets mentioned. Believing point blank that google is evil because they now have a china specific version of their search engine is ludicrous.
Firstly the chinese specific portal was created because the experience delivered by their worldwide portal was less than adequate (whether this is the result of filtering thanks to the great firewall of china I don't know). As a result people in china now have a search engine that works. Does it filter out some content? Yes, but it clearly indicates when it has. As a result people in China now get a search engine that lets them know clearly that information is being censored (which may spur some to try and find what that is), and they are being given a resource which cannot possibly filter out everything, there will undoubtedly be holes through which the chinese people can educate themselves.
Ultimately the chinese people see a gain from Google opening its china specific search, which is what it's really about isn't it; the good of the chinese people.
What I find distressing about all the anti-Google stuff going on is that people seem to have so little faith in Google.
Newsflash: Google != God ; faith is highly inappropriate here.
Why should anyone have faith in a company that has as its sole purpose to make money for its shareholders? (They may have had high ideals in the past, but those went out the window with the IPO, such is the nature of publicly owned companies. Any loyalty toward their users, which by the way are NOT their customers just "eyeballs" to sell to the advertisers, has gotten transferred to the shareholders.)
The correct attitude towards big companies, even the cool ones, is a healthy skepicism, not blind faith, for they will screw you over the moment you turn your back.
>Google is now also helping repress millions of
& btnG=Google+%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2&meta=
>Tibetans who have suffered under harsh military
>occupation by the Chinese since 1950.
man I'm giving up my moderator points but what the heck.
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=free+tibet
I can't understand why people spring to Google's defence as if they are employees or shareholders whenever issues regarding the search giant pop up here. There are two issues here that people seem to be upset about:
As has been mentioned here, Google, while a large influential company that makes our lives simpler, is still bound by the laws of the countries in which they operate. The company is run by individuals who are open to corruption (since nobody's perfect). Most people would think twice before leaving their PCs unlocked if they walk away from their desks (rather than trusting their colleagues), but a disturbing majority of people here seem to have blind faith in a company simply because they have a "Don't be evil" motto.
Good luck finding one. There's a reason why searches are free, and search companies are most often tied with advertising. If you don't want to be logged, use Tor
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
Granted Google Desktop is free (as is enterprise edition for now too, except support is $10K/yr), there is a very funny side to this too. Most people these days have *way* too much memory and CPU, considering the tasks for which they are using their machines. I mean computing, not realtime 3D rendering, sound synthesis or maneuvering bloated app bits around. The computing side of machines. Personal computers these days have enough power these days to run powerful search engines of their own without farming it across the net. I myself am very happy Google is doing this since last year I designed a simple program that has some of the same functionality and now I can point to Google and say "but my system is safer". How long until those neat ethernet equipped hard disks come with similar searching/rsyncing features? Anyway I keep rating everything I see against the BeOS (now Zeta) live search query folders. So far that is the best darned thing I've seen.
Anyway, if your point was to show how "google.cn" will proudly display honest search results for queries forbidden by the Chinese regime, you'd be better off (well actually worse off but hey...) trying that search from the other side of the Chinese Communist Party's fancy censorship filters, built with the courteous help by certain Cisco Corp.
Not only would do you fail to get uncensored results but the Party's own "Public Security" paramilitary police would be likely to learn where such "illegal" queries originated from. The small number of anti-dictatorship activists who are not only brave enough but also capable of finding and using outside proxies and tunnels but who have no way of communicating to the wider masses are currently not the primary worry for the regime which has itself admitted to "policing" a record 70 thousand uprisings, most of them against corruption and official abuse within the party itself, only last year alone.
Naturally most search results in Beijing's simplified Chinese tend to parrot the pro-regime party line even outside Chinese controlled territories. Very few Chinese within or outside China are able or willing to recognize the brutal reality about their powerful masters.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
I'm strongly tempted to say that if you are putting new Dell systems (with the default Dell disk image and all its assorted cruft) into production, you deserve to be surveilled, and should probably also be forced to wear a padded helmet for your own protection. But maybe I only mean the protective helmet part. In a production environment, it is incumbent upon those responsible for the machines to know what is on them. The drill is as follows: receive the box, wipe the fucker clean, reinstall the OS without Dell's extensive fluff and mung (or better yet slap your organization's own custom OS image onto it), and THEN put the machine into production. If you are responsible for the machines, be responsible.
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
I find it kind of amusing how they're saying "don't use Google Desktop", "Google is storing your info that can be accessed easily by the government" and such, yet if you go to eff.org the search is "Powered by Google". Just funny...
Maybe it's time to start calling some of my files "Tiananmen Square", "Falun Gong", or "Dalai Lama". That should keep at least one quarter of the world's population out of my hard drive...
I agree, however the average joe blow that is buying a new dell that has Google desktop installed when it arrives, don't get the option to choose, nor are very many people informed about the data collection they perform.
Joe Blow may not have the option to choose whether or not Goodle Desktop is installed on his new Dell, but he certainly has the choice of whether or not to purchase that Dell. If Joe Blow chooses to purchase a computer and he chooses to buy a Dell specifically and he chooses not to read the list of software pre-installed on the machine and he chooses to leave the software on the machine after he receives it, how can he not be personally responsible for Google getting information about him.
This is kind of like the tiny fine print on a contract. Also there isn't an 'I Agree' button on the Google Search website, people think they are just looking up information.
There may not be an "I Agree" button, but there is a link to "About Google" where there are links to little things called "Privacy Policy" and "Terms of Service."
When will people understand that Google isn't hiding out in a dark alley hitting passerbys over the head and stealing information. They put out a big colorful sign that says, "Our goal is to organize the world's information" and people come to the big colorful sign and throw information at it. Google has bills to pay and they pay those bills by harvesting, organizing, and re-selling (in a way) that information. Everybody wants something for free, but don't want to believe the reality that nothing is truly free.
Are you one of the people who felt the woman was justified who sued McDonalds for serving her hot coffee because there were not significant warnings that it was hot? Where does personal responsibility end?
It doesn't matter if google will give their all. All that matters is that they are going to do more than the next guy. If people's stuff is going to end up on servers anyway we want to pick the company who will do the most *even if it isn't that much* to go first.
The idea that you can defend your privacy on your own just doesn't work. If everyone you correspond with puts stuff on servers you lose privacy anyway. Even if my suggestion is a slim chance it is the only chance we have.
Also hiring a lobbyist, no matter what position they support isn't the sort of thing that gets you made into road kill. You might not ultimately win but congressmen aren't going to get vindictive because you took them out to dinner. I think the best hope in this area is lobbying lawmakers not the courts (though we should pursue both avenues).
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too: