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Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

news.trust.org

411–417 of 417 posts

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#411

I think the attitude here that most tech companies are rolling over and just complying without a single ethical consideration is misplaced. The government has been doing an excellent job of basically extorting these companies into compliance. They threaten the full weight of the US government's wraith and then tie every order up with classifications and gag orders. You aren't legally allowed to talk to other companie…

I know you are not supporting the companies here.

But let us just do a thought experiment. Suppose your bank suddenly locks up your money tomorrow, and when you ask for it back, they say: "Well, there was an unexpected event in some sector of the economy which happened behind the scenes which we cannot tell you about. However, what we can tell you is that we were sufficiently pressurized by the government that it was for the good of the entire economy to not give money back to the depositors. Also, you should know that we didn't take this decision lightly but spent many many hours agonizing over it. Please come back in a year. And you might have to take a little haircut on your money as well."

Would you say, "Oh, I didn't realize you gave it so much thought. Besides, its all for the good of the economy. Tell you what, why don't you just keep the money?"

Does the fact that the decision was actually genuinely hard, or even possibly justifiable in some sense, make you any less likely to get mad? Your justification of the hardness of the decision is a poor excuse, because many of these companies are trustees of a lot of money from the public who have some expectations about how their data should be managed and secured (not explicitly, sure. But they wouldn't agree to random strangers searching through their email if told beforehand, either). To borrow a cliche, great power comes with great responsibility. In the field of software unfortunately the only thing which comes with great power is a tendency to turn a blind eye and simply try and acquire even more power.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which isn't to say that government organizations only ask companies with unquestionably above board accounting to engage in legally dubious initiatives. Plainly, there's no reason to take a company's compliance as a sign that they 'have nothing to hide'. Likelier, it was in part because they did that they complied.

No, it just means, if you're going to dig in and take on the government make sure your house is clean. That's all it means. That applies to dealing with anyone with power, really, not just the government. I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted. They had a case, and while the conclusion I was responding to is extreme, Qwest's accounting fraud ran into the billions and they had a pretty strong case that Nacchio profited…

Being clean is not an adequate defense. First off, no one is perfectly clean. If you were by some freak of nature actually clean, they would just throw a bucket of mud in your face before accusing you of being dirty.

The way the experts play is by mutually assured destruction. You get enough blackmail material on someone to assure their cooperation, and you leak just enough to them for them to think they have some leverage over you.

That's why fraternity initiation rituals are usually at least embarrassing, sometimes humiliating, and maybe even illegal. Rather than ensuring cooperation using intimidation by strength and the constant threat of swift and certain retribution, as with organized crime's code of silence, that mutual blackmail ensures that whomever it is that acts against the group first loses most. The renegade can be dogpiled, discredited, and disavowed, and the damage to the group is minimized, because no one person can know all the dirty secrets.

If you want to take on the government, you have to be as clean as possible, while also knowing where a few of the bodies are buried. But in that case, it may be easier for the government to recruit you to switching to their side. So you also need the moral fortitude to put principles over huge, heaping piles of money. And in that case, how did you get to be CxO of a big company, again?

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#413

I think the attitude here that most tech companies are rolling over and just complying without a single ethical consideration is misplaced. The government has been doing an excellent job of basically extorting these companies into compliance. They threaten the full weight of the US government's wraith and then tie every order up with classifications and gag orders. You aren't legally allowed to talk to other companie…

I know you are not supporting the companies here. But let us just do a thought experiment. Suppose your bank suddenly locks up your money tomorrow, and when you ask for it back, they say: "Well, there was an unexpected event in some sector of the economy which happened behind the scenes which we cannot tell you about. However, what we can tell you is that we were sufficiently pressurized by the government that it was…

I have no objection to anger or even conclusions that the CEO made the wrong decision.

My objection was entirely to how the first commenters in this topic treated the situation as obvious and the CEO as the clear moral antagonist of this story.

One of my life mottos is seek first to understand. Another is that very few things in life are as simple as they appear.

I will forever object to vilification and simplification.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#415
post #79
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But as a user, I would never use a service run by Marissa Mayer again. She lost that trust for good. Realistically, this is every American company. Why trust anyone?

It is impossible to live functionally in society without trusting someone on some level.

You can trust Google/MS/Yahoo!/etc. with your pizza orders and mortgage payments, while switching to self-hosted, GPG email from a RYF-certified machine for organising your secret mattress-tag-removing guerrilla.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#416

I think the attitude here that most tech companies are rolling over and just complying without a single ethical consideration is misplaced. The government has been doing an excellent job of basically extorting these companies into compliance. They threaten the full weight of the US government's wraith and then tie every order up with classifications and gag orders. You aren't legally allowed to talk to other companie…

They're US corporations. They literally run the country.

They definitely have a lot more power than the little voter people.

Does anyone ever take responsibility for anything they do over there?

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not remotely rich, but I feel like after a certain amount of wealth, personal and professional reputation (and the success of things you control) matters much more to your overall happiness and well-being than your net worth. I suspect she's not had a good year, from her perspective and for the people around her.

She might make anywhere from $55M to $122M from the Verizon acquisition. Please, sign me up for such a bad year.

I'd personally much prefer being known as a good CEO with a net worth of $5M than a bad CEO with a net worth of $500M.
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