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Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

nytimes.com

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Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#281

Post by msie »

robotrout wrote: post #238
robotrout wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applaud France's action here. Should have done it earlier. These women are often forced to wear such garments or face severe retribution from their fundamentalist communities. Making it illegal allows them a similar loophole that a US law not permitting US companies to implement surveillance programs would allow US companies. It takes the option off the table without inciting retribution against the women or the co…

[flagged]

You got a point there, but then banning niqabs puts the women between a rock and a hard place too.

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#282

Post by Bartweiss »

hannasanarion wrote: post #249
Bartweiss wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can appreciate the sentiment here, but I'm reluctant to accept it on a purely practical basis. Which is to say: how do we make that happen? What does it look like? The idea of inalienable rights is theoretical at best, because a large fraction of the world is alienated from any right one cares to name. As an assertion that humans deserve these things, that they should be demanded without compromise or compensation?…

> As is, this is easy to sort out: the Bill of Rights restricts the actions of the US Government and no one else As a matter of law, this is correct. It's true that the Bill of Rights is only legally binding in America. But we are not here arguing that the Bill of Rights aught to be binding on the whole world. The argument is that Congress ought to treat the Bill of Rights as if it were binding on the whole world. Th…

I'm still confused about the connection back to Google in China, if that's implied here.

I absolutely agree that the US government's behavior regarding detention, torture, rendition, and so on was horrifying and immoral, and it betrays an utter lack of conscience in most everyone involved.

And, I agree that the acts remain dubiously legal at best. For American-administered treatment, the determination of combatant status was almost certainly done improperly to the Geneva standard. For foreign administration, the practice of extraordinary rendition itself was unambiguously illegal, and if "here, violate the Constitution for us" wasn't actually illegal, it was obviously counter to intent.

The thing I still can't reconcile is how Google's action undirected by the USG is comparable to torture/rendition/etc done directly under government instruction. The Bill of Rights doesn't even bind non-government actors domestically, so I'm struggling to understand the appeals in this thread to 'enforce' it regarding Google in China.

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#283

Post by icebraining »

lotu wrote: post #177
icebraining wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why the GDPR has a reduced level of obligations for companies under 250 employees (see article 30).

When Instagram was bought by Facebook I think it had 13 employees. Would they not of had to comply with GDPR then?

Everyone has to comply with the GDPR, it's just that bigger companies have extra requirements to fulfill.

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#284

Post by jaaron »

justinclift wrote: post #277
hueving wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yea, but I'm a big fan of regulated food, clean water and pollution standards. Completely irrelevant. There are no US laws against private companies building censorship tools in the US, let alone in China.

Not yet. Maybe there should be. ;) With Google, it seems pretty fair to consider them a Monopoly in several areas. They also appear to be well down the path to abusing their Monopoly(ies?). Isn't that generally where regulators should become involved?

The point I think a few are trying to make is that the censorship in China issue is completely unrelated and irrelevant with respect to the monopoly issue.

You want to break them up with anti-trust because they're a monopoly? Sure. Go ahead and investigate and figure that out.

You want to ... punish/regulate/? them because they do business in China? You may not like it, but I don't see under what regulation or law you can do that?

The best analogy is US companies that contract with sweatshops. There's actually not a lot I'm aware of that can be done in the US court system, outside of utilizing trade treaties that require adherence to certain labor regulations.

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#285

Post by matthewrobertso »

hueving wrote: post #272
chc wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's being suggested here isn't even kind of similar to a bill of attainder, not even if you really squint. This is like saying, "You can't prosecute me for theft before you prosecute this other thief, because that's a bill of attainder." No court would entertain that argument.

There is no law against what Google is doing. This is nothing like the theft argument.

Why would a law against what Google is doing be subject to bill of attainder? Wouldn't bill of attainder only apply if the law specifically mentioned Google?

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#286

Post by cryoshon »

billfruit wrote: post #154
cryoshon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

taking initiative to participate in maintaining a malicious status quo is being malicious. google isn't being coerced here, they're volunteering to help with oppression. put differently: what do you call an accountant who sings up to perpetuate the status quo of a criminal enterprise by updating their books? guilty. but they were "just extending the services of accounting to a new organization while maintaining the s…

US and Canada sell weapons and military equipment to Saudi Arabia. Sufficient moral outrage is hardly bandied about in the case of such deals.

actually there is an abundance of moral outrage with regard to these deals. it doesn't make the press. i'll give you one guess why.

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#287

Post by hazz99 »

gunnihinn wrote: post #28
bilbo0s wrote: post #7

I actually applaud Poulson for leaving Google in protest of Google's Chinese business practices. Having mentioned that, I think I have to part ways with him when he implies that the correct way to "fix" this is to have the government come in and make these sorts of business decisions for the company. I don't believe in the government obliging businesses to do things. Especially when it looks like this whole thing is…

> Once government gets involved and starts playing favorites, everything gets messed up. OK. Is it more or less messed up than that a private corporation can and is willing to perform surveillance on foreign citizens on behalf of those citizens' government that would be unacceptable anywhere else?

Does Google not perform surveillance on American citizens through the NSA Prism program? [0]

I'm against all forms of surveillance, but it seems hypocritical to criticize Google for complying with immoral foreign laws when they also comply with immoral domestic laws.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants...

Edit: Ah, apparently conforming with Chinese laws doesn't just extend to surveillance, but aiding in the genocide of the Uyghur people. That's a lot worse.

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#288

Post by hazz99 »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #185
Spooky23 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalism is messy. The west, particularly the US made a policy decision years ago that engaging with China commercially would yield benefits to China, the US, and the world. Arguably that was correct, although the predictions that making money would create a democratic society proved to be inaccurate. If you wear men's undershirts, you're objectively abetting an authoritarian regime that allows companies in Banglade…

" Why should Google suffer" 1. I reject any notion that Google is somehow "suffering" if they don't go into China. 2. You're making it seem like Google is entitled to all the business it wants. That's not true in the least.

    2. You're making it seem like Google is entitled to all the business it wants. That's not true in the least.
Why not?

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#289

Post by chc »

hueving wrote: post #272
chc wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's being suggested here isn't even kind of similar to a bill of attainder, not even if you really squint. This is like saying, "You can't prosecute me for theft before you prosecute this other thief, because that's a bill of attainder." No court would entertain that argument.

There is no law against what Google is doing. This is nothing like the theft argument.

But the comment I responded to didn't say that, so I don't know why you'd expect the comparison to address that. The comment said that failing to go after everyone at the same time as Google violates the prohibition on bills of attainder.

"It's a bill of attainder if you go after Google for violating people's privacy unless you simultaneously — not later, but simultaneously — go after everyone for violating people's privacy" is exactly the same as "It's a bill of attainder if you go after me for X unless you simultaneously — not later, but simultaneously — go after everyone for X."

Whether or not you think they should be able to go after anyone for what Google is doing is a different question, but it's definitely not a bill of attainder to go after one party before others, which was the thing that was called a bill of attainder here ("We'll get to them eventually.. but why shouldn't we go after the biggest business first?").

Re: Ex-Google Employee Urges Lawmakers to Take on Company

#290

Post by oconnor663 »

oska wrote: post #256
oconnor663 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, my biases are much more in favor of the US govt than of China's, for all the obvious reasons. But we have to be able to see that this is opening a huge can of worms. For example, I think it's pretty troubling that the French government banned a bunch of Muslim religious garments. Does that mean I should advocate that various US companies need to stop doing business with France? Clearly there's _some_ level of a…

> For example, I think it's pretty troubling that the French government banned a bunch of Muslim religious garments. You're either misinformed on the French legislation or, less charitably, willfully misrepresenting it. The legislation [1] passed by the French government was a ban on face coverings in public spaces. It included covering the face with balaclavas, full face helmets, masks and yes, full face veils such…

I promise you that I reread that article before I commented about it, and we can all plainly see that 1% of the discussion is about balaclavas and 99% of it is about the effect of the law on Muslims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_law_on_secularity_and_c... is also relevant.

To be fair, maybe the article is that way because it was written by non-Frenchmen with non-French sensibilities. I understand that French attitudes about religion and assimilation are different from American ones, and that I'm missing all sorts of other context besides. My "oh deary me how troubling" reaction probably isn't worth very much, and in any case my broader point is that I'm not advocating jumping to conclusions or boycotting France or whatever else.

But at the same time, if you want to call it "misinformed" to worry about the law's effect on religious minorities, that comes across as pretty one-sided in its own right.

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