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Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?
41–50 of 91 posts
Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?
#42It might be wishful thinking, but part of me wonders if Steve Jobs might have actually been able to push back a little and prevented Apple from joining the program at the same time as Microsoft/Google et al. Apple isn't known for being outspoken about privacy, but Jobs is a formidable character to deal with and, well, if anyone had the balls to say 'no', he did.
Apple wasn't added until after Jobs died, years after other major players:
Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?
#43Because treason and national security are taken very seriously.
It's well known that there is a "secret" interpretation of the PATRIOT Act and FISA revisions that basically allow unlimited loopholes for accessing any data. Going up against what is arguably the most powerful organization in the world and the most powerful government in the world, while you have a nice cushy tech job, would be dumb.
Besides that, not many engineers employees for private companies have a firm grasp on all of the details of the law. How many people can say for certainty that it is even illegal for the NSA to do broad data-mining of US citizens?
Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?
#44It might be wishful thinking, but part of me wonders if Steve Jobs might have actually been able to push back a little and prevented Apple from joining the program at the same time as Microsoft/Google et al. Apple isn't known for being outspoken about privacy, but Jobs is a formidable character to deal with and, well, if anyone had the balls to say 'no', he did. Apple wasn't added until after Jobs died, years after o…
To OP's point, if anybody at Apple at all were going to be asked by the government, I have to imagine Jobs would've been left out of the equation. That's one loudmouthed asshole you didn't want keeping secrets for you.
Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
What sort of consequences can they impose without revealing the existence of the secret court?
The existence of the court itself is not secret, the proceedings are. But they could issue a fine or jail sentence without leaking the rest of the proceedings themselves, if I understand the legal process right. Edit: Way to mind-meld on the comments, team. Holy crap.
Your edit just reminds me of all of the people screaming that all of the companies wrote their stories using a "template" because each press release they put out sounded similar and used similar words. Heh...
Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?
#46It might be wishful thinking, but part of me wonders if Steve Jobs might have actually been able to push back a little and prevented Apple from joining the program at the same time as Microsoft/Google et al. Apple isn't known for being outspoken about privacy, but Jobs is a formidable character to deal with and, well, if anyone had the balls to say 'no', he did. Apple wasn't added until after Jobs died, years after o…
I'd noticed that too. Given that Jobs seems to have had the juice to get away with signficant and brazen securities fraud, he may have been in a fairly secure position to say 'no' to PRISM. But for that matter Twitter's CEOs, much less mighty figures, also seem to have been able to say 'no' too. Or maybe the rickety state of Apple's Web services (MobileMe and all that) had something to do with it...
Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can they rule the justification as unconstitutiona when the judges were giving court orders under that justification? More broadly though, I don't understand how you can possibly have secret courts. Justice not only must be done but must be seen to be done, otherwise its not justice.
I'm not a lawyer, but I believe they declared only part of FISA unconstitutional. The part they declared unconstitutional happens to be the primary crux of the legal argument for PRISM. I don't understand how you can have secret courts either. It's a perversion of what this country was founded upon.
I'm personally most interested in ACLU's challenges about Tor/VPN providers and FAA.
Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?
#48Blow the whistle on what? The problem with the "conversation" going on in these threads is that no one is defining that first. If we're talking about the first leaked version of PRISM, we still don't even know if it exists or how it works. Subsequent revisions have made it seem that if the NSA doesn't have the immediate ability to query the companies' backends, then they have some kind of carte blanche ability to ask…
Section 215, known as the "business records" portion of The PATRIOT Act allows "FBI agents to obtain any "tangible thing," including "books, records, papers, documents, and other items," a broad term that includes dumps from private-sector computer databases, with limited judicial oversight."[1] That Section 215 exits is public record. However, the government has a "secret interpretation" of the law that allows itsel…
It would appear that the FISA court agrees with that interpretation as well, correct?
Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?
#49Blow the whistle on what? The problem with the "conversation" going on in these threads is that no one is defining that first. If we're talking about the first leaked version of PRISM, we still don't even know if it exists or how it works. Subsequent revisions have made it seem that if the NSA doesn't have the immediate ability to query the companies' backends, then they have some kind of carte blanche ability to ask…
> Or why has Congress been willing to approve this program on multiple occasions?
From what Obama said, "Congress was informed", it was not asked to approve anything. That's very different.
Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?
#50It might be wishful thinking, but part of me wonders if Steve Jobs might have actually been able to push back a little and prevented Apple from joining the program at the same time as Microsoft/Google et al. Apple isn't known for being outspoken about privacy, but Jobs is a formidable character to deal with and, well, if anyone had the balls to say 'no', he did. Apple wasn't added until after Jobs died, years after o…
It's because Apple isn't any good at services, and didn't have a cloud of note until extremely recently.