Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an extremely rose-tinted narrative.
Well, Stanislav Petrov won a Nobel Prize for refusing to follow orders ...
No he didn't. He won the Dresden prize, whatever that is.
Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
281–290 of 302 posts
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#282I think we need to find ways to hurt big companies in the pocket book who do this. Stage (IT) employee walkouts, boycot the products they sell, etc. Somehow, _we_ need to get the upper hand over the surveillance monster the US is becoming.
It's a nice notion but are we going to see an exodus from Google? Facebook? Apple?
I left Google and Facebook but me and the other 3000 people don't actually matter. You'll never get a non-negligible number of people to forsake their comfort zone for anything so trivial as rights, privacy, etc.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd suggest following up any conversation of substance with general counsel (or even the likes of HR for that matter) with an email detailing the conversation you just had. Don't do it in an obtuse manner; let them know in advance that you will be sending it following the meeting, maybe even get them to suggest the wording of it if you aren't convinced of the security of internal mail. It's easy for either side to fo…
You might as well just quit if you think HR is there to help you at all. HR is there to protect the company from you .
Corporate counsel != HR.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the case of NSLs, or UK orders from the security services, it may be illegal to tell anyone who isn't mentioned in the order. Including the company's general counsel. In the event that you are asked to do something illegal, it may be illegal or inadmissible to mention that you were ordered to do so by the government (Matrix-Churchill trial passim)
My understanding is that US requests explicitly include a clause that exempts your counsel from the NDA requirement, in that you're permitted to show it to and discuss it with them. (They, of course, are bound to not share it further.)
That almost has to be the case. Otherwise, I get this "legally binding" order that I don't understand but looks scary, but I can't discuss it with my counsel? How am I supposed to tell the difference between that and a con job?
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure the capital punishment part is a good comparison... It's because north american governments are squeamish about solutions that look brutal but efficient. I'm sure that if a state wanted to implement capital punishment via firing squad and advertised for death penalty proponent rifle marksmen they would have no lack of candidates.
Yes but how would that look? The death penalty relies on the "humane" veneer, or it would be abolished very quickly. If there were the slightest hint that the people killing other people in the name of the state are actually enjoying it, there would be a huge outcry. Similarly for surveillance, if you're only able to implement crude solutions people will be disgusted. "So you're saying Yahoo was compromised because n…
> The death penalty relies on the "humane" veneer, or it would be abolished very quickly. If there were the slightest hint that the people killing other people in the name of the state are actually enjoying it, there would be a huge outcry.
It seems unlikely you know anyone you know supports the death penalty. The death penalty has almost universally been abolished despite public support for it. I say almost only because I am too lazy to check whether or not it was in fact universal. Norway was among the first countries to abolish the death penalty and they brought it back especially for Vidkun Quisling.
I'm not going to go looking through the Pew World Survey for attitudes to the death penalty but at a guess Sweden probably has the highest proportion of the population opposed. If you got less than 1,000 people volunteering for the firing squad for the kinds of crimes that get the death penalty in the USA I'd be very surprised.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
People have the option to quit. The company is legally bound to obey, but individual employees can chose for themselves whether they want to be a party to it. Yahoo may still be court ordered to implement it, just hopefully not with their best and brightest developers. I also have a theory that a lot of the recent terrible news coming out of Yahoo is due to staff complying with the letter of the legal order but not t…
it only works if resignations are numerous enough to matter to the company.
It only "works" in the sense of preventing it if resignations are that numerous. It "works" in the sense of "I, the individual employee, can still live with myself", even if only one quits.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#287I seriously think that to get a CS or EE degree (or similar) B.Sci degree, you should be required to take at least one full term length ethics course. Same idea as the ethics courses taught to junior law students. The internet is already fucked up enough with governments and rogue corporations messing with its AS-adjacency topology in non-free ways at OSI layers 1-3 , before you even get into stuff like writing backd…
Given that actual professors of ethics, professional ethicists, are no more moral than other professors this would be nothing but a waste of time.
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/PowerReas...
The Moral Behavior of Ethicists and the Power of Reason, Joshua Rust, Eric Schwitzgebel
Professional ethicists behave no morally better, on average, than do other professors. At least that’s what we have found in a series of empirical studies that we will summarize below.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#288I seriously think that to get a CS or EE degree (or similar) B.Sci degree, you should be required to take at least one full term length ethics course. Same idea as the ethics courses taught to junior law students. The internet is already fucked up enough with governments and rogue corporations messing with its AS-adjacency topology in non-free ways at OSI layers 1-3 , before you even get into stuff like writing backd…
Given that actual professors of ethics, professional ethicists, are no more moral than other professors this would be nothing but a waste of time.
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/PowerReas...
The Moral Behavior of Ethicists and the Power of Reason, Joshua Rust, Eric Schwitzgebel
Professional ethicists behave no morally better, on average, than do other professors. At least that’s what we have found in a series of empirical studies that we will summarize below.
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#289I seriously think that to get a CS or EE degree (or similar) B.Sci degree, you should be required to take at least one full term length ethics course. Same idea as the ethics courses taught to junior law students. The internet is already fucked up enough with governments and rogue corporations messing with its AS-adjacency topology in non-free ways at OSI layers 1-3 , before you even get into stuff like writing backd…
When you get a legally-binding order from the government of the United States of America, and exhaust your legal appeals, you either comply or go to prison. An ethics course won't do you any good.
You can also "do it poorly", in such a mediocre way that what's going on leaks out. There's no way for them to prove that you did a bad job on purpose.
While on topic, if they threaten you with prison if you don't do their bidding (with no due process, etc), doesn't that make them the terrorists (eg: they're using terror/fear to get people to do what they want).
Re: Yahoo installed a backdoor for the NSA behind the back of the security team
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the case of NSLs, or UK orders from the security services, it may be illegal to tell anyone who isn't mentioned in the order. Including the company's general counsel. In the event that you are asked to do something illegal, it may be illegal or inadmissible to mention that you were ordered to do so by the government (Matrix-Churchill trial passim)
Would be interested to hear a legal opinion on this. In the US, you do have a constitutional right to counsel (Assistance of Counsel clause of the Sixth Amendment), generally of your choice. From my reading of the case law, the crux would be that right to counsel can only be invoked "at or after the time that judicial proceedings have been initiated against him, whether by formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictme…
IMHO you have a right to counsel because as a normal citizen, you can't be expected to actually understand if the letter is valid, legal, etc.
That's actually exactly why we have counsellors.