Yeah, it's crazy to think something is wrong with a criminal investigation against a controversial person being closed for lack of evidence, then suddenly reopened. Clearly, anyone who thinks that the secretive intelligence agency of the country whose secrets were published by Assange would have anything to do with this situation is a crazy conspiracy theorist...
Well, nevermind, apparently I missed part of the summary. Looks like he found a way into the Ecuadorian embassy, so I guess the question is, how will he find his way out of the UK from there?
I am pretty sure asylum protections are extended to embassies and diplomats' cars. Even if they knew Assange was in the car, the best they could (legally) do is follow the car and hope that he steps out to pee.
That is assuming that they would even give Ecuador a hard time about moving Assange out of their country, which I am not even sure they would do.
Is he really that afraid that he won't get a fair trial - in Sweden?!?
The charges were dropped, then mysteriously the investigation was reopened. If you had sent copies of the secrets of the world's most powerful government to everyone else, would you not be a little nervous about unusual criminal proceedings?
Would they even need to sneak him out? I am not really sure how asylum works; if Ecuador says, "Yes, Assange has asylum here," would the UK government have to allow them to move Assange to an airplane and fly him out of the country?
Bearing in mind that the UK is not China, and would hopefully behave in a more civilized manner.
I am not entirely sure what the UK government would do if Ecuador granted asylum in this case. It would certainly be harmful to diplomatic relations if the UK refused to honor the asylum i.e. refused to allow Assange to enter the Ecuadorian embassy or travel to Ecuador. Maybe the UK government is willing to pay that prive to send Assange to Sweden; I am not sure what is worth more, Assange being questioned by Swedish police or diplomatic relations with Ecuador. I suspect the latter; the UK has little to lose from sending Assange to Ecuador, and if the Swedes and Ecuadorians have a diplomatic fallout over it, the UK can at least stay in the clear.
If you make something, it's up to you to decide how you want to distribute it
That does not mean that you can decide how or whether others can re-distribute it.
Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.
"Protect" your work from what, exactly? People listening to your song? People using your song for their own purposes? What are you trying to "protect" your song from?
Now, of course the realities are that the internet makes it so that many people can get their fill of listening to my song once it's been recorded and distributed without paying compensation.
It is not a matter of paying, it is a matter of distribution. We do not need the recording industry to distribute music, because we have computer networks. The law should be re-worked to reflect that reality, not expanded to preserve the state of affairs of the 1950s.
This in turn diminishes the market value for my song
No, it diminishes the profitability of your distribution strategy. There are other things you could do, like use your song as a way to promote live performances (say, by using a video). New technologies necessitate new business strategies; if you do not want to adapt, why should we have any sympathy for you?
The market should adjust so that the cost to hear a song is more inline with the actual cost to produce and distribute it
Sorry, but this is sounding more like someone who has a sense of entitlement than a legitimate argument.
It still doesn't make it right for the people to pirate the song.
People are going to download music. Accept it, revise your approach to monetizing music, and get on with your life.
Whichever US law it is that's been used to detain people who have only been guilty of giving a negative opinion of the US in Guantanamo
There is no such law. The people held in Guantanamo bay are being held without trial, which has been harshly criticized even by the mainstream US media. There is no law in America that makes criticism of the government illegal, even if that criticism takes the form of describing or discussing a revolution. There are people in America who openly discuss splitting the union -- people who want states like Texas and Alaska to be independent nations -- and they are not thrown in prison, not even Guantanamo.
The very existence of Guantanamo bay has been openly criticized by journalists in the US and abroad, and those journalists are still free and still criticizing the US.
Nobody is defending Guantanamo bay. Yet that is nowhere near the sort of thing you see in China or Saudi Arabia. Inmates at Guantanamo bay are not having their organs harvested. The torture at Guantanamo (which has been criticized without anyone vanishing in the night) is not even comparable to the kind of abuses that have occurred in African and Middle Eastern countries. I want to see the Guantanamo bay prison decommissioned, and each inmate given a proper trial -- but that does not mean that I think Guantanamo bay comes close to the treatment of prisoners in Syria or Sudan, or any of the numerous other countries that engage in routine torture of political prisoners.
"American human rights violations are bad, sure. They are lightweight compared to the violations that we have seen out of other countries. "
So that makes it okay?
No, it does not -- but I am not going to call in China and Iran to set prison policies because the US happens to have prisons like Guantanamo bay. That is the point here -- much as I criticize the US, I would still rather see the US in charge of the Internet than have the UN come in and talk about the importance of national sovereignty and giving China a voice in Internet policies.
"In America, when you go to prison, your family knows where you are, the maximum length of your sentence, your physical condition, and so forth. In many countries, people simply disappear when they go to prison; their families have no idea how they are doing or even where they are."
A bit like Bradley Manning, or those in Guantanamo then really.
Really, Bradley Manning's family does know where he is or how he is doing? That's funny, because when last I checked, his condition had been published by major newspapers in America. He is awaiting trial, his location is known, his physical condition is known, and the extent of his torture is solitary confinement (which is not universally agreed to be torture, unlike waterboarding -- you see how I can say that without fear?). As I said above, Guantanamo bay has been harshly criticized. It is also worth mentioning that Guantanamo bay is not the norm in American prisons, and that Bradley Manning is being tried by the military, since he is accused of committing crimes while serving in the army; most US citizens are tried in a civilian court (yet another difference between the US and certain other countries -- we have courts where guilt is decided).
"That is because no other nation has the power to do so. Don't think for a moment that China would hesitate to stifle foreign websites about Tibet, if they had the power to do so."
I don't doubt they would either, but that's why I'd prefer it be handled by an international organisation,
An organization that is concerned about things like sovereignty and which gives countries like China a voice. Yes, let's hand control of the Internet over to that organization, so that the Chinese government can send someone to influence policy.
You know what is missing from this conversation? Letting th
No, the best plan is to regulate drugs, so that (a) people know what they are ingesting (b) people are warned about possible unwanted effects and (c) houses do not turn into superfund sites because of underground chemical labs. People are always going to use recreational drugs; the only societies in human history that were actually "drug free" were those that had no access to drugs, and those are a rarity. People are also going to use drugs in non-recreational manners, like drinking coffee to help focus.
There are plenty of bad things out there that you can fail to regulate. Methamphetamines come to mind
Methamphetamine is legal by prescription, it is prescribe to children, and the production of pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine is well regulated. The problem is that people who want to use it to get high cannot find a legal source, so they turn to illegal sources, which have extremely poor quality control. Much of the damage caused by methamphetamine abuse is caused by adulterants in the drug, leftovers from poorly controlled production.
The obvious answer is to create legal sources for recreational methamphetamine, which have well defined doses, quality, and big warning labels ("This product may cause psychosis. Recreational use of this product is known to cause brain damage. Call poison control immediately in the event of an overdose, or 911 in the event of an emergency.").
or... we could just make pot legal so people wouldn't be smoking these horrifically dangerous "Bath salts" as a replacement
Bath salts are not a replacement for pot, they are a stimulant that is designed to be a legal replacement for methamphetamine (i.e. no prescription required -- yes, methamphetamine is legal by prescription, and children are sometimes given prescriptions for it). Unfortunately, the common stimulant in bath salts, MDPV, can cause psychotic episodes.
Which is why we should require a prominent warning label. "This product may cause psychotic episodes. Do not use without the assistance of a sober babysitter. Call poison control in the event of an overdose, or 911 in the event of an emergency."
Except that keeping people safe is not our goal in the war on drugs.
That depends on your definition of "success." Since its inception, there have been the following goals in the war on drugs:
Harassing and arresting black people, especially black men. As far back as the debate on cocaine prohibition (yes, this was once debated), there were people, especially police officers, warning of the dangers of black men using drugs. Black men on cocaine were unstoppable monsters, and cops had no choice but to upgrade the caliber of their guns to fight them. Black men who smoked marijuana were incited to play jazz music, and white women who smoked marijuana would want to have sex with black men. Black men who use PCP will go crazy. Black people will go nuts over crack cocaine.
Increasing police power. Related to the above, since we obviously need more police officers in black neighborhoods to crack down on dangerous black drug users. We also need cops attacking hippies and anti-war protesters. We need cops who carry assault rifles and grenades to fight the drug dealers (did I mention that they are black too? That's the message that the mainstream media sends.). The cops also need the power to declare drugs to be illegal, without consulting congress. The cops also need to be allowed to recycle seized assets from drug raids into their budgets. They need expanded surveillance capabilities.
Corporate profits. Hemp fibers compete with synthetics. Alcohol, tobacco, and coffee companies have to compete with all those other recreational drugs, so let's make them illegal. Pharmaceutical companies get to inflate their profits by ensuring that only they legally are allowed to market entire classes of drugs (opiates, amphetamines, etc.). Firearms companies, law enforcement equipment makers, and so forth have seen big profits from the drug war. Let's not forget the private prison operators, a relatively new trend but an important one -- big profits come from big prison populations.
Notice something missing from that list? Public health and safety. That's at the bottom of the priorities list in the war on drugs, because the war on drugs never had anything to do with health or safety.
Yes I know, and Google Groups hardly counts as a useful or decent Usenet client. My point was just that Usenet is not "20 years ago," although perhaps the discussions and general atmosphere of Usenet has declined since the early 90s...
Aside from having a somewhat dated web interface, GNU mailman is pretty easy to use. If I remember correctly, you can have people send an email to subscribe, which might be easier for some of your subscribers (depending on how old their computers / software are, which may be an issue judging by your description of the subscribers). You could also just do what all the cool kids do and use Yahoo or Google.
I know this is probably news to you, but the American civil war ended in 1865, which was 147 years ago. There should not be any American citizens being targeted by the US army, since we stopped fighting a war against American citizens 147 years ago. Yet here we are, looking at a list of American citizens to be executed without trial.
Sure, but everything I said is equally true of the headers, which as I remember do not require a warrant or court order. The headers contain non-trivial information, and could potentially be presented to a judge in order to obtain a warrant (the "snowballing" effect). No matter how you slice it, the power of the police has been expanded here.
Judging by the fact I took about 20 downmods the second American primetime hit for daring to engage in sensible debate, I'd say that absolutely it sounds worse than the Chinese government.
Name the American law that makes criticism of the US government a crime. Americans, myself included, were outraged by the Obama administration going as far as suggesting that the government should have agents that look through blogs to "correct" statements that are not in the government's interest. There may be jingoist idiots in America, but that is a far cry from China, where the government actually employs people to decide which websites should be blocked.
Criticize America all you want; you are still free to do so. Be glad that the Chinese government does not have a say in global Internet policies, because as bad as the American approach is, the Chinese approach is far worse.
I'll admit I do struggle to see how Americans can even begin to criticse other countries for anything relating to human rights.
How about the fact that we do not arrest journalists for criticizing our government? How about the fact that it is considered outrageous for us to torture people who are not even US citizens? How about the fact that, even with the world's largest prison population, American prisons are a far cry from the sort of prisons in the middle east or Russia, or even several European nations?
American human rights violations are bad, sure. They are lightweight compared to the violations that we have seen out of other countries. In America, when you go to prison, your family knows where you are, the maximum length of your sentence, your physical condition, and so forth. In many countries, people simply disappear when they go to prison; their families have no idea how they are doing or even where they are.
I can criticize the government in America without disappearing in the middle of the night. There is no government agency for you to report my name to when I point out that America has more prisoners than any other country. In China, people who criticize the government can be reported, and face detention and "reeducation." That is the kind of difference that we are talking about.
Only one nation to date has actually forced it's internet censorship on other nations, and that's America
That is because no other nation has the power to do so. Don't think for a moment that China would hesitate to stifle foreign websites about Tibet, if they had the power to do so.
America has already created it's defacto international firewall equivalent - by outright removing DNS entries for sites it disagrees with
One single line in your system's hosts file would be enough to evade that. In China, when a website is blocked, the national firewall prevents any connection to that website from being made. The Chinese government hired tens of thousands of people to collect the IP addresses of Tor entry nodes and open proxies, and added those to the list of blocked addresses.
Let's not kid ourselves -- the US government's internet censorship is done to protect business interests. There can be no question about that. The Chinese government's censorship is to protect the power of the communist party, to prevent people from saying things that the party disapproves of (as opposed to copying media in ways that the government disapproves of), and to prevent people from finding out what the Chinese government does to its citizens. If you do not see a difference, you need your head checked.
You can't even argue the US as having the censorship moral high ground anymore, that argument has long walked.
As opposed to China? Iran? Russia? How many countries represented in the ITU are not guilty of censoring the Internet?
I do not disagree with the sentiment, but let's try to be clear here. Android is a very different OS from Fedora. "Linux" is just not a very descriptive name for an OS anymore.
The problem is that Google has access to a vast amount of information about US citizens. Let's put it this way: if you and I are communicating using gmail, and the police come to you and demand copies of the emails I sent you and you refused, they would just go to Google. They would not have to seek a court order of any sort to get the information they want. Suppose instead that you and I send paper mail to each other, and the police demand the letters I sent you. Short of a court order compelling you to produce that evidence, the police would have no recourse.
That is the point here. When people send postal mail, they know that once the message is received, nobody else can read it. People expect the same sort of privacy with their email, but the reality is that email is copied and potentially stored by all of the systems in the delivery chain. Either we need to better educate people, or we need to legally protect people from police abuses (an out of control police force could have unlimited access to email from a cooperative third party -- the Stored Communications Privacy Act provides some protection, but not nearly enough).
Slashdot Mirror
If the asylum request is granted, he can just stay at the embassy until they find some way to fly him to Ecuador.
Yeah, because people should be put in jail despite no criminal charges being filed against them.
Yeah, it's crazy to think something is wrong with a criminal investigation against a controversial person being closed for lack of evidence, then suddenly reopened. Clearly, anyone who thinks that the secretive intelligence agency of the country whose secrets were published by Assange would have anything to do with this situation is a crazy conspiracy theorist...
Well, nevermind, apparently I missed part of the summary. Looks like he found a way into the Ecuadorian embassy, so I guess the question is, how will he find his way out of the UK from there?
Which only adds to my confusion over this application. Why apply from the UK, if he would first have to escape the British police and get to Ecuador?
I am pretty sure asylum protections are extended to embassies and diplomats' cars. Even if they knew Assange was in the car, the best they could (legally) do is follow the car and hope that he steps out to pee.
That is assuming that they would even give Ecuador a hard time about moving Assange out of their country, which I am not even sure they would do.
Is he really that afraid that he won't get a fair trial - in Sweden?!?
The charges were dropped, then mysteriously the investigation was reopened. If you had sent copies of the secrets of the world's most powerful government to everyone else, would you not be a little nervous about unusual criminal proceedings?
Would they even need to sneak him out? I am not really sure how asylum works; if Ecuador says, "Yes, Assange has asylum here," would the UK government have to allow them to move Assange to an airplane and fly him out of the country?
Bearing in mind that the UK is not China, and would hopefully behave in a more civilized manner.
I am not entirely sure what the UK government would do if Ecuador granted asylum in this case. It would certainly be harmful to diplomatic relations if the UK refused to honor the asylum i.e. refused to allow Assange to enter the Ecuadorian embassy or travel to Ecuador. Maybe the UK government is willing to pay that prive to send Assange to Sweden; I am not sure what is worth more, Assange being questioned by Swedish police or diplomatic relations with Ecuador. I suspect the latter; the UK has little to lose from sending Assange to Ecuador, and if the Swedes and Ecuadorians have a diplomatic fallout over it, the UK can at least stay in the clear.
If you make something, it's up to you to decide how you want to distribute it
That does not mean that you can decide how or whether others can re-distribute it.
Your right to listen to my song ends where my right to protect my work begins.
"Protect" your work from what, exactly? People listening to your song? People using your song for their own purposes? What are you trying to "protect" your song from?
Now, of course the realities are that the internet makes it so that many people can get their fill of listening to my song once it's been recorded and distributed without paying compensation.
It is not a matter of paying, it is a matter of distribution. We do not need the recording industry to distribute music, because we have computer networks. The law should be re-worked to reflect that reality, not expanded to preserve the state of affairs of the 1950s.
This in turn diminishes the market value for my song
No, it diminishes the profitability of your distribution strategy. There are other things you could do, like use your song as a way to promote live performances (say, by using a video). New technologies necessitate new business strategies; if you do not want to adapt, why should we have any sympathy for you?
The market should adjust so that the cost to hear a song is more inline with the actual cost to produce and distribute it
Sorry, but this is sounding more like someone who has a sense of entitlement than a legitimate argument.
It still doesn't make it right for the people to pirate the song.
People are going to download music. Accept it, revise your approach to monetizing music, and get on with your life.
I don't know of any proposed cryptographic standard with 923 bit anything.
Suite B
Whichever US law it is that's been used to detain people who have only been guilty of giving a negative opinion of the US in Guantanamo
Nobody is defending Guantanamo bay. Yet that is nowhere near the sort of thing you see in China or Saudi Arabia. Inmates at Guantanamo bay are not having their organs harvested. The torture at Guantanamo (which has been criticized without anyone vanishing in the night) is not even comparable to the kind of abuses that have occurred in African and Middle Eastern countries. I want to see the Guantanamo bay prison decommissioned, and each inmate given a proper trial -- but that does not mean that I think Guantanamo bay comes close to the treatment of prisoners in Syria or Sudan, or any of the numerous other countries that engage in routine torture of political prisoners.
"American human rights violations are bad, sure. They are lightweight compared to the violations that we have seen out of other countries. "
So that makes it okay?
No, it does not -- but I am not going to call in China and Iran to set prison policies because the US happens to have prisons like Guantanamo bay. That is the point here -- much as I criticize the US, I would still rather see the US in charge of the Internet than have the UN come in and talk about the importance of national sovereignty and giving China a voice in Internet policies.
"In America, when you go to prison, your family knows where you are, the maximum length of your sentence, your physical condition, and so forth. In many countries, people simply disappear when they go to prison; their families have no idea how they are doing or even where they are."
A bit like Bradley Manning, or those in Guantanamo then really.
Really, Bradley Manning's family does know where he is or how he is doing? That's funny, because when last I checked, his condition had been published by major newspapers in America. He is awaiting trial, his location is known, his physical condition is known, and the extent of his torture is solitary confinement (which is not universally agreed to be torture, unlike waterboarding -- you see how I can say that without fear?). As I said above, Guantanamo bay has been harshly criticized. It is also worth mentioning that Guantanamo bay is not the norm in American prisons, and that Bradley Manning is being tried by the military, since he is accused of committing crimes while serving in the army; most US citizens are tried in a civilian court (yet another difference between the US and certain other countries -- we have courts where guilt is decided).
"That is because no other nation has the power to do so. Don't think for a moment that China would hesitate to stifle foreign websites about Tibet, if they had the power to do so."
I don't doubt they would either, but that's why I'd prefer it be handled by an international organisation,
An organization that is concerned about things like sovereignty and which gives countries like China a voice. Yes, let's hand control of the Internet over to that organization, so that the Chinese government can send someone to influence policy.
You know what is missing from this conversation? Letting th
The best path would seem to be to defuse the need
No, the best plan is to regulate drugs, so that (a) people know what they are ingesting (b) people are warned about possible unwanted effects and (c) houses do not turn into superfund sites because of underground chemical labs. People are always going to use recreational drugs; the only societies in human history that were actually "drug free" were those that had no access to drugs, and those are a rarity. People are also going to use drugs in non-recreational manners, like drinking coffee to help focus.
as an employer I would not differentiate between an employee who is addicted to cocaine or Mephedrone.
What business is that of yours? If your employees are doing their job, why should you be concerned with their choices of recreational drugs?
There are plenty of bad things out there that you can fail to regulate. Methamphetamines come to mind
Methamphetamine is legal by prescription, it is prescribe to children, and the production of pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine is well regulated. The problem is that people who want to use it to get high cannot find a legal source, so they turn to illegal sources, which have extremely poor quality control. Much of the damage caused by methamphetamine abuse is caused by adulterants in the drug, leftovers from poorly controlled production.
The obvious answer is to create legal sources for recreational methamphetamine, which have well defined doses, quality, and big warning labels ("This product may cause psychosis. Recreational use of this product is known to cause brain damage. Call poison control immediately in the event of an overdose, or 911 in the event of an emergency.").
or... we could just make pot legal so people wouldn't be smoking these horrifically dangerous "Bath salts" as a replacement
Bath salts are not a replacement for pot, they are a stimulant that is designed to be a legal replacement for methamphetamine (i.e. no prescription required -- yes, methamphetamine is legal by prescription, and children are sometimes given prescriptions for it). Unfortunately, the common stimulant in bath salts, MDPV, can cause psychotic episodes.
Which is why we should require a prominent warning label. "This product may cause psychotic episodes. Do not use without the assistance of a sober babysitter. Call poison control in the event of an overdose, or 911 in the event of an emergency."
Except that keeping people safe is not our goal in the war on drugs.
the 'war on drugs' is such an abject failure
That depends on your definition of "success." Since its inception, there have been the following goals in the war on drugs:
Notice something missing from that list? Public health and safety. That's at the bottom of the priorities list in the war on drugs, because the war on drugs never had anything to do with health or safety.
Yes I know, and Google Groups hardly counts as a useful or decent Usenet client. My point was just that Usenet is not "20 years ago," although perhaps the discussions and general atmosphere of Usenet has declined since the early 90s...
Usenet is still alive and still a popular place for technical and political discussions. There are several free Usenet servers out there.
One nice thing about Usenet is that there is no single point of failure.
Aside from having a somewhat dated web interface, GNU mailman is pretty easy to use. If I remember correctly, you can have people send an email to subscribe, which might be easier for some of your subscribers (depending on how old their computers / software are, which may be an issue judging by your description of the subscribers). You could also just do what all the cool kids do and use Yahoo or Google.
I know this is probably news to you, but the American civil war ended in 1865, which was 147 years ago. There should not be any American citizens being targeted by the US army, since we stopped fighting a war against American citizens 147 years ago. Yet here we are, looking at a list of American citizens to be executed without trial.
Sure, but everything I said is equally true of the headers, which as I remember do not require a warrant or court order. The headers contain non-trivial information, and could potentially be presented to a judge in order to obtain a warrant (the "snowballing" effect). No matter how you slice it, the power of the police has been expanded here.
Judging by the fact I took about 20 downmods the second American primetime hit for daring to engage in sensible debate, I'd say that absolutely it sounds worse than the Chinese government.
Name the American law that makes criticism of the US government a crime. Americans, myself included, were outraged by the Obama administration going as far as suggesting that the government should have agents that look through blogs to "correct" statements that are not in the government's interest. There may be jingoist idiots in America, but that is a far cry from China, where the government actually employs people to decide which websites should be blocked.
Criticize America all you want; you are still free to do so. Be glad that the Chinese government does not have a say in global Internet policies, because as bad as the American approach is, the Chinese approach is far worse.
I'll admit I do struggle to see how Americans can even begin to criticse other countries for anything relating to human rights.
How about the fact that we do not arrest journalists for criticizing our government? How about the fact that it is considered outrageous for us to torture people who are not even US citizens? How about the fact that, even with the world's largest prison population, American prisons are a far cry from the sort of prisons in the middle east or Russia, or even several European nations?
American human rights violations are bad, sure. They are lightweight compared to the violations that we have seen out of other countries. In America, when you go to prison, your family knows where you are, the maximum length of your sentence, your physical condition, and so forth. In many countries, people simply disappear when they go to prison; their families have no idea how they are doing or even where they are.
I can criticize the government in America without disappearing in the middle of the night. There is no government agency for you to report my name to when I point out that America has more prisoners than any other country. In China, people who criticize the government can be reported, and face detention and "reeducation." That is the kind of difference that we are talking about.
Only one nation to date has actually forced it's internet censorship on other nations, and that's America
That is because no other nation has the power to do so. Don't think for a moment that China would hesitate to stifle foreign websites about Tibet, if they had the power to do so.
America has already created it's defacto international firewall equivalent - by outright removing DNS entries for sites it disagrees with
One single line in your system's hosts file would be enough to evade that. In China, when a website is blocked, the national firewall prevents any connection to that website from being made. The Chinese government hired tens of thousands of people to collect the IP addresses of Tor entry nodes and open proxies, and added those to the list of blocked addresses.
Let's not kid ourselves -- the US government's internet censorship is done to protect business interests. There can be no question about that. The Chinese government's censorship is to protect the power of the communist party, to prevent people from saying things that the party disapproves of (as opposed to copying media in ways that the government disapproves of), and to prevent people from finding out what the Chinese government does to its citizens. If you do not see a difference, you need your head checked.
You can't even argue the US as having the censorship moral high ground anymore, that argument has long walked.
As opposed to China? Iran? Russia? How many countries represented in the ITU are not guilty of censoring the Internet?
I do not disagree with the sentiment, but let's try to be clear here. Android is a very different OS from Fedora. "Linux" is just not a very descriptive name for an OS anymore.
The problem is that Google has access to a vast amount of information about US citizens. Let's put it this way: if you and I are communicating using gmail, and the police come to you and demand copies of the emails I sent you and you refused, they would just go to Google. They would not have to seek a court order of any sort to get the information they want. Suppose instead that you and I send paper mail to each other, and the police demand the letters I sent you. Short of a court order compelling you to produce that evidence, the police would have no recourse.
That is the point here. When people send postal mail, they know that once the message is received, nobody else can read it. People expect the same sort of privacy with their email, but the reality is that email is copied and potentially stored by all of the systems in the delivery chain. Either we need to better educate people, or we need to legally protect people from police abuses (an out of control police force could have unlimited access to email from a cooperative third party -- the Stored Communications Privacy Act provides some protection, but not nearly enough).