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Tech Firms Planning Highly Irate Letter To Government Requesting Transparency
Nerval's Lobster writes "a 'broad alliance' of 63 technology companies and civil liberties organizations plan on demanding more transparency about U.S. government surveillance programs, according to a new report in AllThingsD. Those companies and organizations will reportedly ask the government to allow them to report more accurate information about user-data requests. At the moment, federal agencies forbid Google, Microsoft, and other tech vendors from reporting more than a broad numerical range; for example, Google might announce as part of its Transparency Report that it received between 0-999 National Security Letters (issued by agencies as part of national security investigations) in 2009. 'We seek permission for the same information to be made available regarding the government's national security–related authorities," reads a portion of a letter that will be reportedly published July 19 and signed by all those tech companies. "This information about how and how often the government is using these legal authorities is important to the American people, who are entitled to have an informed public debate about the appropriateness of those authorities and their use.' This is all continuing fallout from Edward Snowden's leaks of top-secret documents alleging that the NSA maintains a program called PRISM that allegedly siphons personal information from the databases of the world's largest tech companies. Ever since, those companies (which have all denied participation in PRISM) have been anxious to show the world that they only give the government as little user data as possible. This new push for more 'transparency' plays to that strategy, and the stakes couldn't be higher—if consumers and businesses lose faith in their IT providers' ability to preserve privacy, the latter's very existence could be at risk."
...color me skeptical, but that looks more like PR damage-control tactics since they very well played lapdog. I maybe would have bought it if their reaction was immediate.
... could we trust them?
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Did samzenpus just get a dictionary somehow?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Next they'll haul out the cushy chair.
A highly irate letter only after they were publicly embarrassed. How self-serving. Fuck these companies.
A balanced consideration is in order: Should we warmly regard these oh. so. heroic. companies for their bold stance? Hardly, this is snivelling PR drivel of the highest order.
However, considering the relative number of important friends possessed by "The Constitution" and "Shareholder Value" respectively, is it not a convenient thing that NSA activity be perceived(and ideally actually be) bad for influential American corporations?
Isn't it extremely useful that all American 'cloud' and telecommunications companies now have a PR problem on their hands(and quite possibly a sales problem, EU privacy mandates aren't going to make moving EU customer data onto American servers any more legal if you do business on that side of the pond, and do enjoy selling foreign governments your products on a "Don't worry, it'll be just between you, us, and the American Clandestine Services..." basis)?
Outfits like the EFF and ACLU, not to mention people like Snowden and Manning who take great personal risk, have the moral high ground; but perhaps less so with the 'army of effective lobbyists and vast financial resources'. These companies, by contrast, are mere mercenaries; but may prove useful for so long as NSA spying harms their interests, rather than serves as a revenue stream(looking at you, telco wiretapping fees).
Never wait for the government to do something. Just release the data and see if anyone has the balls to convict them of something. I bet not.
So just how many tech companies will end up mired in this BS? A bunch of startups pop into business with security products that the NSA want's backdoors into. So they are contacted and inside info is exchanged, or perhaps even access info of some kind. Before long there are hundreds of developers from these startups all knowledgeable about what the NSA is doing regarding data collection. And we have thousands of NSA employees and contractors in on it too. So just who are all these guys keeping their secrets from if half the world knows about them?
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
....if all 63 published the info anyway? Safety in numbers, yes....
The only time they'd need to make a request is when:
a) The data is from before they've been collecting
b) The data in their database is not yet nicely formatted for easy access
c) They are missing the encryption keys, for some reason
Isn't the splitter the big worry? And that these requests are just a small part? Combined with the fact that I'm not an American, this means they can collect a huge database of my personal data, and look at it any time, without asking anyone for permission. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what's going on?
You assume too much. This "irate letter" seems a lot more like a negotiating tactic than anything else. Remember, these corporations signing the letter are among the most privileged of all corporations, in terms of how the government treats them. They have their own personal tax laws, that allow them to claim that their profits are all earned in Luxemburg, and they have private countries where they keep their intellectual property so they don't have to pay taxes here. They are given special treatment from the local level right on up to the federal government. They have enjoyed decades of protection from anti-trust legislation (and yes, that includes Microsoft, even with their successful prosecution). These companies are a part of the government as are the biggest banks and the biggest energy companies.
I believe that behind closed doors, Google, Microsoft, et al, are just fine with the surveillance state, because it plays to their strengths and they're already on the inside. I'm not sure NSA spying harms their interests in any way.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Outfits like the EFF and ACLU, not to mention people like Snowden and Manning who take great personal risk, have the moral high ground; but perhaps less so with the 'army of effective lobbyists and vast financial resources'.
You lost me. But these companies do deserve to be punished for their simple network/security mistakes (that had grand consequence). They simply built the wrong software. In my opinion home serving software that keeps people in control and possession of their "papers", combined with open source pervasive encryption, was and remains the obvious right answer. These companies should be firing the inneffective employees that didn't see this coming long ago, and choose a better strategy than "wait for the day it all blows up in our faces".
Right To Serve. Period. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3929983&cid=44170993
When the shit hits the fan you distance yourself from the scapegoat anyway you can. Temporarily side with those organizations who have a good name. I don't think these companies really cared until it became a PR issue for them. They'll all point fingers at the bad guy (feds) until such a time when it has all blown over. Then, back to business. (still looking at you, same as parent, telcos).
One of many societal problems we face is the short attention span we have for this kind of stuff (and not just government, corporations are often on the shit list.) How many of our younger members know of Bhopal, for example. How many who do know just had their memory jogged? We will rail at the injustice, for a bit. After that, we will lose more and more until the next big leak outrages us again, until the next shiny thing comes along. And so it goes......
These large corporations are claiming to have the people's interests in mind, yet they are only asking for a very narrow change that really doesn't affect the status quo. If they really are concerned with the extent of the surveillance, why don't they use their extensive lobbying clout to propose actual changes to the laws that would require transparency to the entire process starting with requiring judicial approval for any monitoring.
Maybe if they put some weight behind real change it would be worth it. I think they can see that most of their future revenue is going to come from services where they host user data. But if people understand that the Third Party Doctrine, or Business Records Exemption mean that that "their" data is totally and utterly insecure, then the market for those services will be severely damaged. America doesn't have much going for it businesswise any more -- we have a weapons industry and flush government contractors -- but if the government is broke because nobody has anything but a Walmart job, those industries are dead. Technology is the government's biggest potential cash cow -- it should probably NOT shoot it in the head.
I think the tech companies might actually have "good luck with that" perspective. But they have to be willing to make the point. And then support at minimum, legislative limitations on the both Third Party Doctrine and Business Records Exception. Even more preferable, would be a Constitutional amendment defining digital content (including metadata) whereever stored (drives, wire, airwaves) as "papers" and that government access to such data is not affected by where it is stored, i.e., it remains a person's private stuff and unreachable without a warrant supported by probable cause, even if stored offsite so to speak.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
For a moment there when I read the headline I thought the 63 companies were irate because the government wanted transparency on H1-B Visa requests...
Given how good they are at avoiding US taxes and US regulations by having branches and shell companies off shore, I imagine if they really wanted to break the orders they could find a way to do it and legally be outside US jurisdiction.
Those corps harmed and killed average people. If you so much as sneeze in the direction of DC though, they'll fuck you every which they can because our Federal politians and appointed officials are far more valuable than anyone else on the planet. If you got a problem with that presumption, they'll find a way to stick you in PMITA Federal prison, Gitmo, or just kill you.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
"They are violating our rights, spying on everyone and forcing us to cooperate in all of that." - "I got it! Let's send them a really stern letter!"
This is PR damage-control, nothing else. They're trying to create the impression they were unwilling accomplices.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
WTF editors? Edit!
Putting weight behind a letter seems a bit fanciful.
On the other hand, they can simply present it as a demand, and state that the alternative is each of them will publish ALL the letters delivered to ANY of them and refuse to comply.
Let the DOJ or the DOD put ALL 69 Companies in jail or shut them down. Especially when the government is dependent on most of them and the citizens are customers of all of them.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
So far Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have all missed their earnings estimates for the quater. Since the quatr ended only about three weeks into the Snowden thing, this looks like a bunch of tech companies pleading with the government to let them respond to a PR disaster that is hurting sales.
I believe that behind closed doors, Google, Microsoft, et al, are just fine with the surveillance state, because it plays to their strengths and they're already on the inside.
I don't think you have any evidentiary basis on which to base that judgment.
It wouldn't surprise me if Google and Microsoft have convinced themselves that whatever they did was right. Moreover, I find it easy to believe that the exact extent of their complicity (unlike, say, the extent of the complicity of telcos) was exaggerated in the leaked documents themselves, and they are genuinely pissed off that they can't set the record straight (as they see it).
Did they go further than you or I or any other civil liberties-minded person would? Almost certainly. But how far did they actually go? We don't know, and they're not allowed to say.
It's rich that the NSA gets to spin this as "people are talking crap about stuff they don't know anything about" (e.g. "the PRISM isn't a programme, just the name of a specific database" line) . What the hell did they expect? No, we don't have complete information first-hand from the people who truly understand it. That's exactly the problem.
So I applaud the tech companies for actually trying to disclose more. More information means we have a better basis on which to judge them, and judge them we shall.
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FTFY
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
You want some transparency? So do we. Dump it all. Dump fucking everything. Expose this piece of shit government utterly and completely for every last request, letter and shady program.
You spineless twits, you have utterly and completely shattered the trust you had. Fuck you and fuck your cloud; I hope this exposure of your complicity with the criminal organizations in D.C. costs you billions in lost business. I don't care how you do it; leak information, "oops we were hacked", whatever. Dump it all.
The fact that there is 1 person, 1 guy out of >300 million in this country who has the balls to stand up speaks volumes to who the true enemy and threat to the American people, hell the people of Earth FFS, are: the U.S. Federal government.
So either these spineless companies are trying to save face, or Snowden has still got some really juicy dirt left up his sleeve.
I really, really hope it's the latter.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It might not be real. I can see the reason companies want to clarify the process is because they feel it has been misconstrued. The public opinion seems to be the "splitter" thing, like the NSA can just get any and all information at the companies on a whim, without telling anyone. So people are mad, no surprise. However what if that's not the case, if the companies are telling the truth? Maybe it is something more like the NSA has a line to these companies, and can make requests and the companies, upon deciding it is a valid request, can send them the data directly down that line? That's rather different.
So perhaps that's more what is going on. The program isn't quite as scary as people believe it is, and companies want to tell people how it really works, but can't without breaking the law.
Who knows at this point.
I won't host any of my data, or the data of the companies and individuals I consult and work for, with any company in the United States, and it will take much more than an "irate letter" to gain my trust back.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Go ahead & disclose it, you're corporations, you're above the law. The govt can't tell you what to do.
Nothing will happen, I promise you. Union carbide killed 8000 people and.... nothing. nada. zip. Same goes for the Exxon Valdez & BP.
Isn't this very timidity firm evidence that Google and company aren't as powerful as you claim? Here we have a government agency costing US businesses a lot of money and what do they do? Write letters. It doesn't get any clearer than that who's in charge. It's not Google.
These big corporations have been fine with their dark, secret, unholy alliance with the government until Mr. Snowden came along shining a bright light on their dark deeds in cahoots with the government. Now they fear and rightly so, that the public and many businesses will not entrust them with data services, because these tech companies have been and probably still are unwilling to sever their comfortable relationship with our out-of-control government. Now that their bottom line is affected, they are starting to squawk, but now that may be too late for them and their profit driven business models, disregarding any ethics or legalities. Even before the government's unconstitutional misdeeds were brought to light I have never entrusted my nonpublic data to any of these companies' cloud services. I sincerely hope that most people will not put their data in the cloud and that these companies will have many idle data centers as punishment for their disregard for their customers privacy.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Those apparently would be criminal acts. Jail time is also on the menu.
“This is the most transparent administration in history,” Obama said during a Google Plus “Fireside” Hangout.
"Too Big to Fail" could be a good thing. If they all stonewalled, they couldn't all be punished without major harm to the economy.
"Objection."
"Overruled."
"Oh, no, no, no. No, I STRENUOUSLY object."
"Oh. Well, if you strenuously object then I should take some time to reconsider."
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"They could always break those court orders en masse. See if the government has cojones to sue each of them after those particular revelations have become public."
This is exactly what they should do. The people who make these decisions are doubtless receiving emails right now detailing every piece of dirty laundry the national insecurity state has on them, along with frightening predictions of the consequences for them if they do more than write letters.
If they actually managed to get together and make that move in a coordinated fashion anyway, I expect they would win. The orders preventing them from doing what they claim they want to do are unconstitutional on their face and would be laughed out of any fair court. Fair courts are hard to find at the moment, I know, but the country seems about ready for a paradigm shift, and a lot of courts could easily rediscover the law in a hurry if it looked like it stood a chance in hell of being honored.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
There is no infrastructure currently to support what you are talking about much less ten years ago. Most businesses don't have servers and switching and storage. They use ISPs and data centers. Most individuals certainly don't have this stuff. Economies of scale are what makes it all affordable. This means you have to store data offsite and run your apps offsite. If it isn't Google it's Rackspace or Amazon web services or your local collocation hub sitting near a T3 backbone.
You are deluded to think that it can be different even in a future where servers are cheap and bandwidth is fast. Centrally managed by dedicated support staff will always win out over anything else in 80% of the use cases.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
That falls in line with my own thoughts. It's time that the people showed government that government works FOR THE PEOPLE, not the other way around.
Just publish all the details. Publish everything. Tell the government to go screw itself - they can't enforce unjust laws. Government can scream "CONSPIRACY" all they want, but if 60, 75, even 90% of people and corporations are in on it, what can government do?
A number of articles over the past weeks have shown that congress really doesn't have a clue what NSA is up to. Congress critters lack the technical understanding to figure this stuff out. But, worse, the NSA only "answers to" a small committee, and that committee isn't sharing jack-shit with the rest of congress.
Each year, congress authorizes money for NSA and the rest of government, without any accounting for that money. I think that congress should just cut that money by about 75% and tell NSA to make do. At the same time, demand a full accounting for HOW that money is spent. If NSA doesn't have a billion dollars with which to snoop on citizens, and another billion with which to pay "analysts", then they won't be snooping and analyzing citizens. The money that they have left will be targeted specifically toward terrorism and national security.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I like that this is happening, but I can't see it making any difference in itself. Yahoo fought in secret courts to protect user data, and lost. Even if US companies are trying to do the right thing, we can't trust them because we can't trust the US government.
If companies had the right to come out and say "we only gave the US data this information because we had no choice", would you still want to deal with them? The company might win sympathy points, but that clearly doesn't mean we can trust it. This is particularly true for end users outside of the US.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
"In this situation, any vote is a vote for your masters' system."
I agree with a lot of what you say, but this is not just wrong, it's dangerously wrong.
If voting goes down they will not be forced to scrap it, they will rejoice as we make it easier for them to create electoral majorities.
Voting for third parties and sane candidates reduces, rather than increases, the claimable mandate for establishment candidates. Every. Single. Time.
This is why they make it so incredibly difficult for a third party candidate to get on the ballot. Now you may think that jumping through those hoops to get someone independent, whether a libertarian or a socialist, on the ballot is a waste of time. That's fine - if you feel that way dont go out of your way to help with that task, that's perfectly reasonable. But once other people have spent their own time and money to get someone that is not beholden to the one-party-posing-as-two system on the ballot, the least you could do, for yourself, for all of our children, is to show up and vote for them.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
I agree. If all those who have received National Security Letters had published them and sought legal counsel to respond, it's likely that those letters would have been ruled unconstitutional by now. And maybe that's just my wishful thinking, but it's certain that continued lack of disclosure about these lunatic procedures will foster their wider use.
I'm pretty sure they'll have to resort to the garden gnome.
The one thing is clear, its such a huge number that it needed automation, aka PRISM.
I guess there's about 40k analysts, 20 querys a day, 200 days a year, say 10 accounts per query are affected, that's 1.6 billion accounts a year. Not including data mining. So without the actual warrants, (even with redacted names) the numbers wouldn't add up.
Then there's the meta data.
NSA claim they don't need a warrant if an analyst thinks you are not a US citizen. (This includes UK, AUS, CAN etc. the leak show they don't filter out 5 eyes countries whatever they promised). So I doubt the count of warrants covers non-US people at all.
But also, NSA says meta data isn't specific to an account, so they are likely siphoning off all the meta data without listing it as a search of an account.
'Boundless Informant' listed 3 billion pieces of data per month. This is not some pissy little data grab, 3 billion is just the minor stuff, not including PRISM and metadata.
Let the DOJ or the DOD put ALL 69 Companies in jail or shut them down. Especially when the government is dependent on most of them and the citizens are customers of all of them.
And they will! Have you learned nothing?! Politics trumps logic. Always always ALWAYS!
Life is not for the lazy.
How do you think the government got these companies to sign these agreements in the first place?
They were given contracts or their existing contracts were threatened if they didn't sign.
Now that its out in the open their conventional customers are threatening to stop buying their products which would spell doom for most of those companies.
Its about money. And when push comes to shove, the government can't afford to replace the private sector customer's lost with government bids. And that the deal is likely going to undergo some strain as the tech companies make it painfully clear that they're not happy with the deal.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
There is no infrastructure currently to support what you are talking about much less ten years ago.
I call pure B.S. There are many ISPs that allow residential users to run servers. You're B.S. is so exceptionally transparent, I can quote an anonymous leak of Google's CEO and CFO that show precisely that there is no technical lack of supporting infrastructure-
(score 5 unrefuted Anonymous Coward leak post of Larry Page and Patrick Prichett (CEO and CFO of Google))
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357
Most businesses don't have servers and switching and storage. They use ISPs and data centers.
OK, so what, don't care. You are like one of those people for jailing flag burners who don't get that allowing people to burn flags without going to jail doesn't mean *you* will be forced to burn your flag. Businesses that want servers and switching and storage will buy them, businesses that want to outsource that infrastructure will still be more than free to do so. non-issue.
Most individuals certainly don't have this stuff.
That's not really true, but again, wouldn't matter much if it were. Most individuals probably do have a 10 year old PC they aren't using for anything else, and could easily run linux on it, *if they wanted to*. But nobody will be forcing them to. Just an option.
Economies of scale are what makes it all affordable. This means you have to store data offsite and run your apps offsite.
No, it really doesn't. What it means is that in *some* cases it makes business sense to store your data offsite and run your apps offisite. In other cases, the opposite.
If it isn't Google it's Rackspace or Amazon web services or your local collocation hub sitting near a T3 backbone.
Or your servers in your residence- *if you choose* (and if the terms of service or FCC interpretation of network neutrality allow it)
You are deluded to think that it can be different even in a future where servers are cheap and bandwidth is fast.
I hope you are just trolling and aren't so stupid as to actually believe that. A raspberri pi already can do many interesting things as a server (cheap already), and bandwidth is already fast, compared to 10 years ago (when slashdot.org and other websites were already doing very interesting things with many thousands of users, and a rather paltry amount of bandwidth used by today's standards. I just want to be able to do the same at home now that costs for servers and bandwidth have come down.
Centrally managed by dedicated support staff will always win out over anything else in 80% of the use cases.
And even if you are exactly right, you have still made my point. That 20% is where I want to be. I think Network Neutrality entitles me the opportunity to compete in that 20% of the market. Bruce Schneier seems to agree (Thanked me) with me and wishes me Good Luck with my complaint.
Right To Serve -- http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3929983&cid=44170993
0. Re watch All the President's Men (1976).
1. Reach out to your contacts, contacts from a few years ago, older journalists from a few years ago who had many journalists friends with quality tech contacts.
1.5 Offer to share the fame.
1.6 Read up on US secretly collecting two months of press telephone records.
2. 99.98% of calls might end with a click.
3. Wait for the few calls where people that just have to bully, argue, threaten for 5-100 mins.
4. Let ex staff vent with filled ample justification rants guide you.
5. Reality of press telephone records finds you.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I think you know what I meant.
Some department of or office in those companies is responsible for taking in requests from law enforcement or intelligence, analysing their legal status and whether or not they are obliged to comply, and then responding to those requests. At some point, that group of people, in consultation with lawyers, decided what was the proper response. It is that group of people to whom I am assigning a moral conscience.
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Nothing will happen, I promise you. Union carbide killed 8000 people and.... nothing. nada. zip. Same goes for the Exxon Valdez & BP.
The Exxon Valdez was a ship, not a company. The company was Exxon Shipping, a branch of Exxon (now ExxonMobil).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
trying to organize such a multi company movement would be treason.
--that's the real problem with secret government.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Disclose more or lie more?
As a foreigner I would never ever put my personal or my companys information in an American cloud as I am "too certain" or "too afraid" that the information is used for industrian espionage.
Civil Disobedience is not Treason.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Amen!
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
And Snowden is being called a Terrorist and Traitor for committing "Treason". Meanwhile, people protest about "NoJustice" for Trayvon. Wtf. If the media redirection campaign isn't painfully obvious from that, I don't know what is.
I would have applauded too, had they tried to disclose before their complicity had become public. Post facto, it reeks too strongly of public relations damage control.
I will never again trust another company.
Whenever I use a company's service, I will assume they (have):
1. Given the govt a backdoor
2. Sold all my private data to whoever will pay
3. Track me with cookies etc best they can.
4. Given the govt all my passwords (maybe even sold my passwords to customers)
, the least you could do, for yourself, for all of our children, is to show up and vote for them.
No.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igbBItLemsM
Depends on how good the lawyers are.
That falls in line with my own thoughts. It's time that the people showed government that government works FOR THE PEOPLE, not the other way around.
This is a nice idea, except that the organisations receiving these requests, and who are now apparently writing this "very strongly worded" letter, are corporations. Those corporations exist to make money, not to look after the interests of people. If the two coincide in any meaningful way, then you can expect that company to find any and every way to trumpet their willingness to look after the people, but it is a very rare company indeed that will attach enough intrinsic value to their ethical stance and the interests of their current and potential customers to be willing to sacrifice a chance at profit.
If this "letter" was being written and signed by a large minority (a majority is too much to hope for, probably) of the 220+ million Americans who are eligible to vote, then it would be an example of the people demonstrating their will on this matter.
In this case, I suspect that if Edward Snowden had not leaked the information about PRISM, none of the corporate types involved in the letter would have had even one thought between them of doing any such thing, and any who did think of it and then mention it to anyone would have been regarded as insane.
This letter is purely a PR stunt.
Until the entire process for surveillance and eavesdropping, data harvesting and interception is put on a transparent basis and is subject to an open and unbiased judicial review process to ensure it complies with the current interpretation of the letter of the law, the chances of people regaining trust in the government and the corporations is one hell of a lot slimmer than the average American supermodel.
I think an Amendment is the only real way to reign in this stuff. And I actually believe that such an effort could get some traction from the States.
BlameBillCosby.com
Surreptitiously shares user data for feds.
Only throws a fit about it after being caught.
As far as I'm concerned they are all in bed together and equally guilty of circumventing the law.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Nothing but astroturf PR. Cluck! Cluck! Caw! Caw! Squee! Squee! Whine and moan for show. They all know damn well nothing changes because we no longer have an informed public that cares one way or the other. That's the power of money, you buy things like revolving-door congressmen and congresswomen. Its the same reason we are wrecking the planet at record speeds.
Those corporations exist to make money, not to look after the interests of people.
Sure, but they make money from people, and for better or worse, voting with your wallet often proves to be more effective than voting for your representatives.
The thing I don't understand about all these controversial security measures, whether it's monitoring communications or intrusive airport security procedures or detention without trial or whatever else, is that governments and supportive media always seem quick to tell us that most people do want the claimed security benefits and are willing to accept the unpleasantness as a result even if a small minority of civil liberties campaigners object, yet apparently the people whose bottom line is riding on most of the population actually taking that sort of tolerant position don't seem very willing to bank on it.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"Please stop us doing what were told to do!" *
* and, occasionaly, making sick fucking bank on our bills for 'services rendered'.
...who has a flashback to Team America with that headline?
Tech Industry: I'm sorry, but we must be firm with you. Stop spying, or else...
NSA: Or else what?
Tech Industry: Or else we will be very very angry with you... and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are.
I was careful with my choice of weasel words such as "it wouldn't surprise me if".
That, and the threat of being dragged through the courts. Normally that wouldn't intimidate a big corporation, but experience with these national security cases is that they make it unnecessarily hard for your legal team to see any of the evidence against you.
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What makes you think they are disclosing the worst of what they're doing?
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't. But they're disclosing different stuff than the NSA will and different stuff than Snowden is still in the process of and different stuff than Congress is trying to get.
Between them, we'll get a pretty good picture.
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if they did that, they would be dooming themselves to sanctions