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Senators Demand Google Hand Over Internal Memo Urging Google+ Cover-up (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Three Republican senators have sent a letter to Google demanding the company hand over an internal memo based on which Google decided to cover up a Google+ data leak instead of going public as most companies do. The existence of this internal memo came to light on Monday in a Wall Street Journal article that forced Google to go public with details about a Google+ API bug that could have been used to harvest data on Google users.

According to the report, the internal memo, signed by Google's legal and policy staff, advised Google top execs not to disclose the existence of the API bug fearing "immediate regulatory interest." Google's legal staff also feared that the bug would bring Google "into the spotlight alongside or even instead of Facebook despite having stayed under the radar throughout the Cambridge Analytica scandal," and would "almost [guarantee] Sundar will testify before Congress," akin to Facebook's CEO. In a letter sent today to Google, three GOP senators want to see this internal memo for themselves by October 30, and also with on-the-record answers to seven questions in regards to what, why, and how Google handled the Google+ API data leak.

53 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Using your logic, the 97 senators (47 Democrats and 48 Republicans) who didn't send this letter to Google are okay with Google fucking everyone. That means the Republicans are ever so slightly more guilty than the Democrats.

  2. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google's on their team, so who cares if they fuck everyone?

    As a centrist can some someone please explain something to me? Not intending this as a wind-up- just something that amuses me and I'm curious to know the answer.

    If IT is biased against republicans,
    and news media is biased against republicans,
    and Hollywood is biased against republicans,
    and women are all biased against republicans,
    if sports is biased against republicans,
    if social media is biased against republicans,
    immigrants are biased against republicans,
    and recently I'm told industry is biased against republicans...

    If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses? How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  3. There was no leak by JarekC · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The tricky part is there was no leak. The data was available, but there is no evidence of any unauthorized access. So technically they were not required to report the leak, because there was no leak.

    Let's say they promised to keep your cash safe, then kept the safe unlocked for a couple of months, then realized what's up and locked it before anyone noticed. Are they legally obliged to tell you about it?

    So even if they are assholes from moral point of view, legally they may be clean.

    1. Re:There was no leak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Did they really have enough logs to confirm there wasn't a leak?

      Or are they saying that based on what logs they had available they could see no leak?

    2. Re:There was no leak by Diakoneo · · Score: 2

      Much like Watergate, it wasn't the crime that caused the fallout. It was the cover up.

      --
      "Just as there is nothing so unreal as reality TV, there is nothing as unsocial as social media." - Alistair Dabbs
    3. Re:There was no leak by fph+il+quozientatore · · Score: 1

      How can you ever have enough logs to be 100% sure there wasn't a leak? Maybe they had enough root accesses to delete everything, no matter how many remote backup copies and how much un-tamperable line printer output you have.

      --
      My first program:

      Hell Segmentation fault

    4. Re:There was no leak by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except in this case, the cover up isn't illegal, either, and hiding embarrassing things from the government is a rational strategy, what with its itchy regulatory trigger finger pushed by transient outrage fanned by politicians themselves.

      --
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    5. Re:There was no leak by swillden · · Score: 2

      Did they really have enough logs to confirm there wasn't a leak?

      Or are they saying that based on what logs they had available they could see no leak?

      The second one. The first is not possible in practice: How can you know your logging code is bug free? It is in a system with a security hole, so claiming it is flawless is hubris.

      It was not a "system with a security hole" in the normal sense of the phrase. It was a system with an API that provided access to too much user data.

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    6. Re:There was no leak by Ogive17 · · Score: 1

      Covering up what? That there was a vulnerability but no evidence anyone exploited it?

      Do you go to the police station and report every time you drove faster than the speed limit or didn't come to a complete stop at a stop sign?

      I think Congress has more important things to worry about IF there are no victims.

      --
      "Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
    7. Re:There was no leak by terjeber · · Score: 4, Funny

      Did they really have enough logs to confirm there wasn't a leak?

      They did a quick questionnaire in the hacking community. They asked plainly asked, "Have you hacked Google+", all the answers came "Google what?" So then they knew.

    8. Re:There was no leak by ljw1004 · · Score: 1

      The tricky part is there was no leak. The data was available, but there is no evidence of any unauthorized access. So technically they were not required to report the leak, because there was no leak.

      I agree that there is no evidence of any unauthorized access. But your conclusion "there was no leak" doesn't follow.

      If there had been a leak, would there have been evidence of a leak? -- no, because they're not gathering the data that would provide evidence. Therefore, the observation "no evidence of a leak" has no ability to justify the statement "there was no leak".

      I guess it depends on what the legislation is, what it defines as a leak, and where it puts the burden of knowledge. I haven't read it to find out.

  4. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses?

    In spite of it?

    It shows how weak the "Racist, Sexist, Bigot, Homophobic ..." chanting actually is.

    It shows how lame the Democrats are. Pelosi is their leader? REALLY?

    It shows enough people don't believe the crap they are all are spewing.

    Could you imagine what the democrat party would be like without their mouthpieces, stand ins, surrogates and lap dogs spewing daily propaganda?

    --
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  5. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by pgmrdlm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    f IT is biased against republicans,
    I think the bias you are talking about occurs in coastal states, which are predominantly liberal.

    and news media is biased against republicans,
    Not all media is biased, there are some main media that offer both sides. Maybe not always, but the effort is there. Also, if a person is smart. They reference multiple sites when getting their information. Both opposed and for any given subject.

    and Hollywood is biased against republicans,Again, not all Hollywood. Look up republican actors/actress's.

    and women are all biased against republicans
    There are women republican senators, governors, congresswomen, business leaders, and just every day American citizens.

    if sports is biased against republicans,
    Easier just to link on this one: https://www.ranker.com/list/sp...

    if social media is biased against republicans,
    This one, I actually think is true when it comes to our main stream social media.

    immigrants are biased against republicans,
    Immigrants, or minorities? Or Naturalized citizen? I don't think all are against republicans.

    --
    Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
  6. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Google's on their team, so who cares if they fuck everyone?

    As a centrist can some someone please explain something to me? Not intending this as a wind-up- just something that amuses me and I'm curious to know the answer.

    If IT is biased against republicans,
    and news media is biased against republicans,
    and Hollywood is biased against republicans,
    and women are all biased against republicans,
    if sports is biased against republicans,
    if social media is biased against republicans,
    immigrants are biased against republicans,
    and recently I'm told industry is biased against republicans...

    If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses? How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?

    Well, Democrats do stupid shit like running a corrupt, unlikable harpy wife of an ex-President for President simply because "it's her turn".

  7. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by alvinrod · · Score: 1

    Not all media is biased, there are some main media that offer both sides.

    No, all media is biased. It's just that not all media is biased in the same way. Some media may be less biased than others, but none are perfectly objective. If you think that as long as "both sides" of the issue are presented it must mean the media is unbiased, you've fallen into one hell of a trap. There's an entire world of possibility outside of "both sides" of issue. You can sample "both sides" of the same turd, but you're eating shit either way.

  8. Memos? by dfn5 · · Score: 1

    People still send memos? I don't think I've sent a memo since 1995.

    --
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    1. Re:Memos? by bugs2squash · · Score: 1

      And did the google legal team really put their name to something discoverable ? I thought they hated to leave traces like this...

      --
      Nullius in verba
  9. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by stinerman · · Score: 1

    LOL

  10. lol by Hugh+Jorgen · · Score: 1

    Did they stomp their foot and stick out their bottom lip while making this "demand?" Google has gotten away with shit for years, any posturing by the government is just that, posturing.

  11. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by David_Hart · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not all media is biased, there are some main media that offer both sides.

    No, all media is biased. It's just that not all media is biased in the same way. Some media may be less biased than others, but none are perfectly objective. If you think that as long as "both sides" of the issue are presented it must mean the media is unbiased, you've fallen into one hell of a trap. There's an entire world of possibility outside of "both sides" of issue. You can sample "both sides" of the same turd, but you're eating shit either way.

    The biggest problem with attempting to be even-handed is that you full into the trap of lending credence to arguments that are not worth listening to simply because they are built on a house of falsehoods. And yet ignoring falsehoods creates a trap where one side believes that the only reason why those arguments aren't being aired is due to biased media.

  12. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

    On the one hand, whoever is in power is automatically hated by whoever is not in power.

    On the other hand, there are just as many people biased against democrats as there are people biased against republicans.

    On the third hand, people who identify with a group will naturally exaggerate the level of bias that is present against that group.

    I do think those are all 3 very accurate points. It's easier to make fun of and dislike the guy in power. You can't blame your problems on someone who isn't in power.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  13. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Because they're full of shite, that's how.
    Honestly, as (what I consider to be) a moderate/centrist who has left leanings socially and slightly right leanings fiscally, I think Google needs to tell them to go get bent. I think FB should have too.
    Don't get me wrong, I don't think these companies should have lax security, and I certainly don't think that they should play cavalier with people's data.
    That being said, they aren't regulated. There's no law saying a social media company has to protect your data like there is for Banks or health care providers.

    Out of all the things Republicans like to spout off that should be 'handled by the free market' and 'government shouldn't be involved in', this is a much better example. FB doesn't protect your data, that you are not forced to provide or post (as you're not required to use FB at all) and you do so willingly, and lets it leak? Simple solution: stop using FB. Find other methods of connecting with friends and family. Call. Text. Email. Write. Go see them. Same thing for Twitter. Same thing for Google+. Same thing for any other social media platform. It's not like the world is lacking in ways to connect with others.
    This is the very definition of a free market problem.

    Given all this, my response to these senators would be that I have broken no laws or regulations, and unless they are going to allege that I have, they have no legal grounds to demand anything of me. My business is private enterprise, my internal communications are privileged and private until court ordered otherwise, and I have no intention of responding to their questions.

    My personal opinion is that people need to recognize that not all technological advances are a good thing, and realize that these social media platforms do not exist to make our lives better, they exist only to enrich someone else by data mining our lives, and to stop using them.
    I don't use FB, or twitter, or Google+. Never had a myspace account either. I'm doing just fine connecting with my family and friends outside these platforms. I'm not going to fall prey to this new fad of narcissism where people start feeling like every mundane thing in their lives and thought in their head is important enough to blast out to the world online.

  14. Support the Narrative by Puls4r · · Score: 2

    This is all optics in the government's current pursuit of the pockets of the big IT corporations.

    Approximately 430 people had access to the API. Google knows who those people are.

    This API was for Google+. Despite reporting that glosses over the fact. Google+ is an unused wasteland where social media accounts go to die.

    There is no proof, in fact not even a suggestion, that this bug was known in the wild. They've not found it on the usual suspect web pages where information like this is sold.

    There is no log or data (according to Google) that it was ever exploited.

    This news-event is entirely artificial and is being used to build a case. The motivation here is not to fix a problem, it's to create a bigger problem/outcry/outrage so that something else happens. It's unfortunate that the Slashdot contributors can't recognize a tempest in a teapot.

  15. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by edi_guy · · Score: 4, Interesting
    You can likely extend this as a trait for American's in general. As a nation we have far and away the most economic power, most military power, massive and varied natural resources, and a forgiving climate. Our immediate border neighbors are small, friendly, non-threatening, and there's only two of them. Our enemies are all geographically very, very far away, across huge oceans. And yet, as a society we feel like the rest of the world is out to get us. Or is cheating us our of our fair share in some way, even though demonstrably we have way more than our 'fair share'.

    Not even a Democrat/Republican thing as I see this behavior in myself as well, and it'd be interesting to know what the underlying cause is.

  16. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

    You hear it again and again, so you integrate with it. It's fear, uncertainty, insecurity.

    You have to figure out what you believe the world should be, not what in the world is scary and wrong. You can't be against things; you have to be for things.

    If you're against something, it's because it's threatening. If your only answer is that it should stop, or that you should fight it, then you're going to be running around frightened and angry all the time, seeing demons in the shadows.

  17. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    Not all media is biased, there are some main media that offer both sides.

    Whenever I hear this assertion, I always want to know, which do you believe are the unbiased media? Give us names, please. Tell us so we too can partake of the Solomonic wisdom of these unbaised sources.

    My guess is that your list of unbiased media would simply reflect your own bias.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  18. What could go wrong? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Funny

    I don't know about you guys, but I totally trust the Senate to investigate google in an ethical and unbiased way and not try to use this to gain political advantage or punish perceived enemies.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  19. innate biases of the wage-slave aristocray by epine · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The elite, wage-slave aristocracy everywhere leans Democrat. It's that simple.

    Spend $200,000 on your tuition at an elite university, you're pretty much guaranteed (trust us) a highly compensated job in a city with a very high cost of living (such as New York, where you make nowhere near enough to command a spacious appartment—one not situated at the distal terminus of the Origami subway line—but plenty enough to pay the hand-to-mouth legions of the service industry to cook your food for you; and even service your debt a tiny bit, too, at the end of the month).

    Where are these jobs? In the knowledge economy. Such as journalism. Or anywhere that knowledge and literacy are thick on the ground. The knowledge economy always concentrates in large cities, and generally coastal cities, because the billionaires of the knowledge economy do so love their secluded, clifftop beach homes (like hell your head office winds up in Cleveland, unless you sell some kind of weed killer).

    Often these jobs have a fair amount of clout, and with enough staying power, some percentage graduate from wage-slave circumstances. But not for a long time, and always in minority terms.

    The wage-slave aristocracy is a strange power base. For one thing, it's debt financed. Back when junk bonds were all the rage, debt-financed corporations were also a strange power base. Real corporations glanced at them sideways.

    One thing this group has in common is that they all been sufficiently trained not to automatically believe whatever they read (just because it's got an Apple Pie masthead). So this group is a constant sticking point in political discourse. And you can't simply ignore them, because they're so deeply embedded in the white-collar corporate machinery that makes the world go around on a daily basis.

    So if you can't bluster effectively with seven-word talking points, and you can't ignore an audience with enough aggregate power to tilt the landscape, you have to treat them like a cancer, with a daily chemotherapy regime of "fake news!"

    Journalists will always hate this shit, because any significant job in journalism (below the Murdoch C-suite) is typically held by a wage-slave aristocrat.

    Jon Stewart completely nailed the fifth estate in his altercation with Chris Wallace when he described the flaws of journalism as tilting toward the lazy and the sensational.

    I think their bias is towards sensationalism and laziness.

    We all pander to what pays the bills. Especially after forking $200,000 to your alma mater.

    Analyzing 100,000 documents to write a 14,000 word piece on how the Trump family evaded $400 million in taxes (by more separate ruses than you can count) was definitely not lazy. So maybe you have to lard up half the rest of the publication with celebrity click bait (People lite) in order to retain a viable readership. Humans are stupid, myopic animals most of the time. There's nothing here that "biased" against Republicans. It's a fundamental, predictable difference of opinion about how the world works.

    The Republicans believe you can fashion curt language which unifies their ridiculously broad tent: the plutocrats and the evangelicals. The wage-slave aristocracy doesn't think those two flavours go together like chocolate and peanut butter. (And they never will.) As soon as you write more than 300 words, any superficial, Frank Luntz alignment between the interests of the plutocrats and the evangelicals start to look parlous. The wage-slave aristocracy has a 300-word attention span (many of us have a 3000-word attention span, and some of us only drummed our fingers impatiently once or twice during that entire 14,000-word expose).

    Literacy: the ability to unpack hollow slogans.

    Most people settle for the owner's manual (Trump's twitter feed). But I've read the source code, in so far as the source code can be obtained. Probably on the order of five 2000-word articles per day for two ye

  20. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Pascoea · · Score: 1

    Weird how that works, right? That being said, I've personally found that while NPR (and my local, MPR) are generally left leaning, they aren't as "in your face" with their bias as the MSNBCs and Fox News of the world. But I tend to lean slightly left of center, so that's likely why that source appeals to me.

  21. The crime in Watergate was still pretty bad by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Informative

    Breaking and entering to get dirt on your political rival. And no, "everybody did it" is not an excuse. Nixon had a pretty crazy disregard for the rule of law, going so far as to kick off the Drug War in order to crack down on the left wing because he knew they smoked pot. That's not a conspiracy theory, his own people came out later, admitted it and apologized for it.

    I'd call this a hit piece except Google gets along just fine with the Republican majority. They supported the last few Supreme Court Nominees (albeit on the sly via various PACs) and were happy to take the tax cut.

    What this is really is enemy creation. Racism is winding down as an effective vehicle for making bogymen. But any good ruling class needs a way to divide the working class. Instead of Black/White they're working on Technocrat/Blue Collar as the next point of division.

    This is how the Japanese created their divides to keep the working class from organizing, BTW. They declared some professions as "bad" (unclean ones, like butcher and undertaker) and kept books of who was who based on family names. That's how you create classes without racial divides.

    What annoys me is we see this pattern over and over again. The Japanese, India Caste systems, American Racial Slavery, hell the Canadians have been caught doing it with Eskimos (South Park made fun of it). You'd think the working class would catch on to the trick and stop being fooled but so far, no dice...

    --
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  22. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Pascoea · · Score: 3, Insightful

    and it'd be interesting to know what the underlying cause is.

    I'm going to guess it has something to do with us being insulated from how truly shitty of a life some people in this world have. The threshold for having a "shitty day" for most people in the US is generally somewhere between "stuck in traffic" and "lost my job", not "I haven't eaten this week".

  23. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by SirAstral · · Score: 1

    "The biggest problem with attempting to be even-handed is that you full into the trap of lending credence to arguments that are not worth listening to simply because they are built on a house of falsehoods. And yet ignoring falsehoods creates a trap where one side believes that the only reason why those arguments aren't being aired is due to biased media."

    You got it pretty much wrong and here is why.

    It is a fallacy to assume that being even-handed is the same as "lending credence" or "falling into a trap" and pretty much colors you as an oppressive person unwilling to listen to others. Meeting with people you disagree with is not some ridiculous approval of who or what they are. I remember republicans pulling this baloney on foreign leaders and the democrats "correctly" calling the idea out. Now I see the roles reversing where democrats are now supporting the idea of doing the same in vain attempts to silence people they hate. Hint, it does not work, I didn't work and R's did it and it will work just as well for the D's as they start to do it.

    Ignoring falsehoods also does not specifically or necessarily create a trap to color anyone's bias either, it can do that, but it is hardly a majority reason for it either. You can air them all day long and people will still feel that bias because they are being distorted, which is common on both sides of the isle and to very hypocritical degrees.

    In short, there are multiple reasons for why people become biased and feel biased against. But there is always one universal truth that has stood the test of time. You either let people air their grievances in the warm open light of day, or they sharpen their axes in the cold closed in darkness until there are enough of them that you no long have the "luxury" of ignoring them. You will always alienate people by trying to shut down their voices until you have added enough enemies to your list you no longer have any friends and down you fall!

  24. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by alvinrod · · Score: 1

    I believe that a failure to point out falsehoods and show them for what they are lends far more credence to them than they might gain from the additional attention. If attempts to point out the folly in something are only helping it, that would seem to suggest the arguments aren't as good as the people making them would like to think they are, or that the people making those arguments are incapable of conveying their message effectively.

    If something rests on a whole mountain of falsehoods, it's even easier to topple because there's maybe only perhaps the smallest grain of truth remaining if there is any at all. If other people want to continue spouting those falsehoods after they've been pointed out as false, you've done your part. You might not convince everyone to shun those beliefs or the people to disseminate them, but even one person is better than none. Nothing false can benefit from prolonged exposure to the light of truth. To suggest otherwise would imply that you can somehow hoodwink reality to behave in accordance with the falsehood. It's far better to drag it out and hold it up to face reality instead of leaving it in the dark where misinformation seems to grow unbounded.

  25. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by SirAstral · · Score: 1

    Centrist here as well, though very slightly right and south of center.

    Just because bias is present and on open display does not mean it will be successful. Additionally since America is not a Democracy despite mass confusion is it impossible for the Majority to always get their candidates into power. Which is why Hillary lost and Trump won.

    And if you word it like "Victim Party" I would be tempted to call into question your actual "centrist" claims.

    The words "Victim Party" is a claim often lobed at Democrats not Republicans because they are accused of attracting votes by offering sympathy for people that feel like victims and propping up their victim hood.

  26. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Mashiki · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the republicans are perpetual victims of such bias from everyone- how do they have the current president and hold both houses?

    Republicans don't see themselves as perpetual victims, but they acknowledge that there are particular organizations that are biased against them and between the two? You bet. There's *a lot* of money at stake, and the democrats/progressives and in general most of the left are pro-globalization/demolishing western culture/etc and this directly aligns with progressive agenda 'we can change the world because reasons.' Note that here in the west the left have had a monopoly on media and education for the better part of 40 years. I use "the left" in a broad term in this case, but you can round it out from environmentalism shifting to hyper-environmentalism that humans need to die. To higher education moving from that into a diploma mill situation where the shittiest courses(gender studies and the ilk of shitty humanities courses), are mandatory or you can't graduate or even pass the first year and teaching that republicans/conservatives/libertarians are evil/wrong/degenerates or whatever else. Or that "speech is dangerous" or "speech is violence" that are commonly used by progressives and the left, you can round it out with the blanket uses of racist, sexist, misogynist, rapist, and nazi if you're feeling ambitious.

    Now you ask how can they hold both houses and the president. That one is far easier, because the rest of society has had enough of the politically correct, don't say mean words, if you say the wrong thing we'll ruin your life, we need to pander to special interests that amount to 0.02% of the population, we can find the money for illegals/foreign country/some special cause - but we can't find the $1.17/mo for people on social assistance, or disability, the person waiting 18 months for cataract surgery(to use an example from here in Ontario), fuck you and your "but I just want a nice blue collar job" you're gonna work 3 jobs in the service industry and like it pleb, "culture - lol? diversity is our strength, you don't have a culture" "we need to import more people from the 3rd world, oh and raise your taxes to do it" bullshit that's been building up over the last ~15-20ish years or so. This isn't unique to the US either, over the last couple of years here in Canada the same thing has happened.

    How can you be the "victim party" that faces everyone's bias and be the party in power?

    See this is the part where it diverges, this isn't a republican issue. It's a people who don't buy into the identity politics and who is or isn't pushing it, you've seen it already. ~30-40 years ago? You betcha that conservatives were doing the same. But now we've got the groups who blame men for whatever reasons, they're the fault of all of societies ills, push all men are rapists/abusers/etc. Tell whites or asians that they're privileged, so they don't deserve the spot in university/job openings for only particular groups of people. It has to go to the person who's 'getting their scores adjusted' because they couldn't cut it otherwise. That *insert minority/trendy sexual identity/etc* should have the job because *random diversity reason here* and not the best person for the job. A decade ago everyone had pretty much bought into it? Oh you bet their ass they did, it was trendy hot shit. Everyone bought into the "we need to help people" well helping is good and believed that it was a case of "this person didn't have the resources, so lets help them out." It turns out that people have problems when the unqualified or diversity pick gets pushed through a head of them though because it simply "looks good for social capital."

    But, now the interesting part. Look at the media, entertainment rags, and whatever else for the last couple of days over Kanye West. What do we have left-leaningm progressives, their pundits and democrats saying? He's a house negro, dumb, token, white supremacist, minstrel(aka puppet). That

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  27. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by SirAstral · · Score: 2

    You can't have unbiased media, the idea is a sign of ignorance. In fact the pursuit of it creates an even more false narrative.

    Let's analyze your bias. You think the media is right... this means you are likely "extreme left" because to a person at the fringe sees even light handed leftist as being right.

    I see see the media as majority Left for most of world TV, I view Fox and very few others as being Right, and most of Radio in the US seems Right to me as well. This means I am likely more right than left since I do see more left bias out there but since I see some balance between them I have a chance of being centrist also.

    Your claims about which side is lying more... well do you have the numbers? I have seen so many lies on both sides that the only thing I can tell you is this. Both lie so much that it is not even possible to call out which side lies more and any attempt to do so is tantamount to admitting ignorance and bias.

    The problem is so bad that in my opinion, trying to keep to either of these parties indicates that you mean to support the lies you like and only complain about the lies you hate. And if you are okay with your side lying because it advances the agenda then you lose any moral right to complain about the other side lying.

    And if you don't think that your side is lying to this degree, then you are indoctrinated to the point that you are not likely able to be reasoned with. The only chance of you seeing the lies of your party will only be when you "personally" face the fallout of such lies in your everyday life in a way that it forces you to face reality. And I say chance of that because there are lots of people suffering under the ideas of the people they elected into office but still support those that have harmed them as they say... maybe we will do better next time as they keep taking campaign donations from places you sometimes know and most times don't.

  28. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by dgatwood · · Score: 1

    Let's analyze your bias. You think the media is right... this means you are likely "extreme left" because to a person at the fringe sees even light handed leftist as being right.

    You're off by a mile. I'm socially liberal, fiscally conservative. But by conservative, I mean actual conservative, not the spend-lavishly-and-raise-the-deficit faux conservatism that most Republicans espouse these days.

    I see see the media as majority Left for most of world TV, I view Fox and very few others as being Right, and most of Radio in the US seems Right to me as well. This means I am likely more right than left since I do see more left bias out there but since I see some balance between them I have a chance of being centrist also.

    Fox and talk radio are not right-biased. They are Republican-biased. There's actually a big difference. Many positions held by much of the Republican party are arguably farther left than the Democrats. The so-called right-wing media doesn't seem to notice.

    Your claims about which side is lying more... well do you have the numbers? I have seen so many lies on both sides that the only thing I can tell you is this.

    There have been a number of folks who have done the analyses. A quick Google search will turn them up. And the degree to which the right wing's lies are flagrant is also much higher. The Democrats tend to make stupid, minor mistakes that don't really significantly change the validity their main point, while the Republicans tend to build their entire case for certain issues upon lies, to the point that if you could somehow manage to convince the public that the lies are, in fact lies, their entire position on those issues would completely fall apart. They quite literally depend upon their lies getting repeated over and over until people believe them. Without that, they would have to correct some of their more egregiously flawed positions just to get elected, and might even get back to being an actual conservative party.

    Don't get me wrong, the faux outrage that the Democrats trump up is approximately as annoying as the outright lies from the right. They're all a bunch of sociopathic crooks who would do anything to retain and increase their power, and I pretty much wouldn't hire anyone in Congress to mow my lawn. But that doesn't change my opinion of the flaccid news media, who wouldn't know how to properly report if Edward R. Murrow bit them in the a**.

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  29. Re:Now it will ... by cayenne8 · · Score: 1

    The existence of a memo suggesting you hide something to avoid regulatory oversight is a sure way to get some (deserved) regulatory oversight.

    This was self-serving, and I'm glad to see it's backfiring on them.

    While I agree with your sentiment....and I would like to see more privacy control of the information on US citizens, opt in, YOU own your own data and deserve to be able to say yes/no if it used, and can "be forgotten"....I do have to ask a question.

    Since there really is NO current regulation on this in the US, by what authority and power granted by the constitution give congress fuck-all ability to force a private company to turn over documentation on something like this?

    I mean, I'm just not sure where congress gets it power for asking private companies to come testify, etc...kinda the same feeling I got during the baseball steroid thing, I mean, really? What was congress doing with all that?

    And if I were a private company, I'll politely decline to show up, I mean, just like talking to the police, it just can NOT possibly do you any good.

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  30. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by pgmrdlm · · Score: 1

    Ap News, Reuters, Washington Post(they offer truth, but hate Trump), CNN, cbsnews, abcnews, usatoday, la times.

    I am conservative, and find I find something of reference in all those sites. I hate California, but I do respect LA Times. Even when I disagree with them. They were just purchased, and the California Liberals hate the.

    The only completly unbiased source I can think of is CSR reports prepared for congress. These can be found on FAS.org. No paywall.

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  31. Tell Vlad to give you a bonus by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    that was some grade A trolling there. If you could have resisted the temptation and skipped the insult at the end you mighta got modded up.

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  32. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by kenai_alpenglow · · Score: 1

    I believe you meant "the gripping hand"...

  33. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by mesterha · · Score: 1

    I use "the left" in a broad term in this case, but you can round it out from environmentalism shifting to hyper-environmentalism that humans need to die.

    While I think there is some truth to what you say, I do think the right often resorts to a false equivalence. It might be easy to find some hyper-environmentalists and trot them out, but it doesn't mean they own the mind share of the left. It's also easy to find a group of crazy teachers and students at various universities, but again, this is only a small fraction of the left. However, if you look at the surveys, large portions of the right wing believe crazy/bad/wrong things. For example, InfoWars gets lots of viewers and was even endorsed by Trump. I'm sure some people just watch for entertainment value, but they are very profitable selling their snake oil, so there are probably a lot of true believers.

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  34. Should have used external counsel by SmilingBoy · · Score: 1

    Had an external law firm written the memo, it would have been privileged and Google could not even have been obliged by a court to provide it.

    1. Re:Should have used external counsel by ItsJustAPseudonym · · Score: 1

      IANAL. That being said, I think internal lawyers would just have to have marked the memo as "Attorney-Client Privileged" to cause it to be so.

  35. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by iMadeGhostzilla · · Score: 1

    and women are all biased against republicans

    (emphasis mine)

    This tells me you're not a centrist, or if you were, it's irrelevant, you hate Trump. People either hate Trump or they don't, in which case they love him or are OK with him. That applies to everything associated with Trump: if you hate Trump you hate today's Republicans, you hate Fox, you hate Kavanaugh and so on.

    When people hate Trump their emotions interfere with their mental processes in a way that makes them unaware of it, like the stuff you wrote about "all" women (other things in there too, like sports, industry, but all women is most telling). These mental slips are a telling sign of hate in people who otherwise try to appear calm and reasoned, and in general people don't like hate, hence the current Republican majority.

    Those who love Trump may also be subject to mental distortions, but not too many people love Trump in the intensity that the large minority hates him. (And love trumps hate anyway.)

  36. Is this even legal? by MakerDusk · · Score: 1
    As a Canadian, I may be wrong, but since corporations are considered to be people under the law and Americans have the right to refrain from providing self incriminating evidence (5th amendment).... Isn't a group of senators signing a letter demanding that Google provide a self-incriminating memo (which may or may not exist) against the law?

    Wouldn't that be akin to demanding that someone hand over a signed confession or face the consequences? Since it was specified what the memo should contain and who should have signed the document. An investigation is fine, but this strikes me as an illegal demand to manipulate the optics of the situation if and when Google refuses such a demand.

    Are there any /. lawyers left who can clarify this?

  37. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    Ap News, Reuters, Washington Post(they offer truth, but hate Trump), CNN, cbsnews, abcnews, usatoday, la times.

    I am conservative, and find I find something of reference in all those sites

    Would it surprise you to learn that all of the outlets you mention, including the WashPo and CNN, present mainly a center-right point of view? When there is a war to be had, they will all support the war, even if it's plainly foreign interventionism and "nation-building". They all support the surveillance state and will gladly post far-right claims without fact-checking. We had some rather amazing evidence of that just this week when USA Today posted an op-ed, without comment, by Donald Trump, that was so full of untruths and fantasy that they eventually had to be shamed into recognizing the lies. But by then, they had dutifully posted each false statement individually across social media (again, without any context or indication that the statements were total fabrications. When USA Today finally ran a fact-check on Trump's op-ed, it took over five times as many words as the op-ed just to unpack the lies and refute them. That's how densely-packed with horseshit his editorial was. The problem is not that the op-ed was published without comment and eventually debunked, but that it took a days-long outcry for USA Today to do what journalists are supposed to do in the first place. What you have are not unbiased media, but media that are biased toward power. And that's the most dangerous bias of all.

    https://www.commondreams.org/n...

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  38. It was a thing right up until the 90s by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    see here. And I doubt it went away in the 90s, but like how the US passed laws to stop racial profiling in loan applications the Japanese gov't appears to have cracked down on this particular form of discrimination.

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  39. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    It might be easy to find some hyper-environmentalists and trot them out, but it doesn't mean they own the mind share of the left.

    Well that's the thing, if I walk through downtown Toronto or San Fran. And pump out "gmo's are poison" or "we need to eliminate half the population to stop climate change" you'll see far more people on the left nodding their head, agreeing or other crap. You've got plenty of people even here on /. that believe that censorship is a good thing, though that's heavily changed over the last 4 years or so. Now it's only the most die hard individuals who support censorship being promoted by the left.

    Yeah and the right doesn't have a monopoly on "crazy/bad/wrong" things either, thing is if you've done a political switch like I did oh 20 years ago. You see just how far the left are willing to go to cover up those crazy/bad/wrong things no matter the circumstances. The funny thing with infowars is it's been wrong as much as it's been right, and they have covered things that the mainstream doesn't touch that turn out to be true - and the opposite of course.

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  40. Re: So Dems don't care I guess by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    You repubtards are so deep in denial it isn't even funny anymore.

    All you do is point fingers and blame people for your own fucking mistakes. I hope the repubtard party dies soon. You guys aren't even remotely able to work with others. You are all selfish pricks who put R before anything else.

    So fuck all of the die hard repubtards who out R before anything else. You guys are idiots.

    Yes, sure thing. The political capital of the democrats is going so well these days. So very well, wonder how unhinged you'll become if they continue to lose in the house and senate in a few weeks. Though the irony of using repubtards...the party of tolerance and caring on display.

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  41. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    Because the 'best person' for the job is the person Exactly like me. That mindset leaves discrimination and elitism in place. Yes, forcing people to choose the disadvantaged was a problem, but a small one because no business depends on employees having a WASP-lifestyle.

    Really? So why was it that so many tech oriented startups that believed in meritocracy no longer exist. But instead of hiring the best person, they're hiring the 300 lbs, blue haired, snowflake that screeches about microagressions and has never coded a day in their life.

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    Om, nomnomnom...
  42. Re:chank hypocrite by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    You're a jap chank in a land of Whites who hates diversity and to top it off, you're a goddamned Canuk. Your opinions for America don't matter. Does the nagger get a say at the klan meetings now?

    Get THE FUCK outta here.

    Either shitty troll, or typical progressive. Not sure which since the messaging is the same.

    p.s. any reasonable person dislikes diversity, it's only the people who have self-guilt or self-loathing that openly support it.

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    Om, nomnomnom...
  43. Re:So Dems don't care I guess by strikethree · · Score: 1

    The threshold for having a "shitty day" for most people in the US is generally somewhere between "stuck in traffic" and "lost my job", not "I haven't eaten this week".

    Your argument was almost valid, and then you said "lost my job" vs "I haven't eaten this week".

    Yeah, for some people "lost my job" means "end of my life". Can't feed the kids, can't keep a roof over the head, wife leaves you (welfare is FAR more useful if there is no male around).

    Your point would have been completely valid had you not used "lost my job" as an example of merely a shitty day in the US. There is a reason why middle aged males have the highest successful suicide rate.

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    "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen