Greenwald Advises Market-Based Solution To Mass Surveillance

Nicola Hahn writes In his latest Intercept piece Glenn Greenwald considers the recent defeat of the Senate's USA Freedom Act. He remarks that governments "don't walk around trying to figure out how to limit their own power." Instead of appealing to an allegedly irrelevant Congress Greenwald advocates utilizing the power of consumer demand to address the failings of cyber security. Specifically he argues that companies care about their bottom line and that the trend of customers refusing to tolerate insecure products will force companies to protect user privacy, implement encryption, etc. All told Greenwald's argument is very telling: that society can rely on corporate interests for protection. Is it true that representative government is a lost cause and that lawmakers would never knowingly yield authority? There are people who think that advising citizens to devolve into consumers is a dubious proposition.

Comments

Re:"very telling" indeed

[camg188]

The gop ... reacted with a coordinated attempt to get the new, largely democratic, set of voters to become disillusioned and not vote.

Voters were disillusioned by promises of hope and change but delivery of more government as usual. promises of the most open administration but delivery of the opposite. A lot of people were hurting from 2008 and were not any better off in 2014.