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Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?

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Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?

#61

Post by flyinRyan »

zt wrote: post #34
magicalist wrote: post #13

Blow 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…

I'm just not sure there are easy answers in any direction here. Should they have the program at all? If they should, did they choose the right parameters? If the parameters are right, is the oversight adequate to both preventing misuse of these undeniably broad powers and making the rest of us feel like it is still, in the end, our government? Who should make each of those decisions? Given democratic uncertainty over…

There are easy answers here: there should be no program at all. Terrorism is no legitimate threat to the US and never has been. Any time you give the government the ability to override checks and balances, they are already abusing that ability (and usually want it applied to previous behavior so they can't be prosecuted for past infractions).

Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?

#62

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

betterunix wrote: post #2

In all likelihood, because they need the government to work with them. Google, Facebook, Microsoft -- all companies that must deal with regulations and shareholders who care more about profits than morals. The last thing any of them need is for the government to retaliate with stricter enforcement of those regulations, which might hurt their profits. The FBI's latest push for backdoors sends these companies a clear m…

"and shareholders who care more about profits than morals."

Well, I don't know what your prejudices about shareholders are, but I know a few of them and they really care about morals, probably much more than average Joe.

Anyway, making a super State that controls everything goes against shareholder's interest as history shows the first thing super states do is eliminate competitors altogether.

You know Mr Adolf Hitler asked again for more business contributions to his party. They were angry to be asked again so they put a condition in place: "Only if you don't ask again in a long time". Hitler smiled and say:" Don't worry, it is the last time I ask you for contributions."

It was.

Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?

#63

Post by mtgx »

LowKarmaAccount wrote: post #52
brown9-2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would appear that the FISA court agrees with that interpretation as well, correct?

The court's opinion is classified. The DOJ is trying to block a FOIA suit filed by the EFF to release the opinion. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret...

"In its response filed with the FISC today, the government offers a circular argument, asserting that only the Executive Branch can de-classify the opinion, but that it is somehow prohibited by the FISC rules from doing so."

It seems to me the FISA Court still has the power the make the ruling public, even if the government classified it. It wouldn't be the first time a judge overrules classified information, right?

It seems to me the judges are accomplices to the government (why would they still grant the warrants, if they already found it unconstitutional?), and even if there was some kind of conflict in the law, I assume they would know this could go to the Supreme Court and it would be solved there.

Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?

#64

Post by jesseendahl »

declan wrote: post #54
leoc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just it. This time last week it was public knowledge that (for example) Google complied with FISA 702 orders. Now it's public knowledge that Google complies with FISA 702 orders, using a workflow-automation system. There are hints of extra reasons to be more worried than before, but so far it seeems they're all either speculative or disputed: (I'll keep talking about Google specifically just to narrow things…

Not a bad summary. (I wrote one of the articles you cited.)

One more. The new slide released yesterday:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-prism-server...

Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?

#65

Post by gizzlon »

JanezStupar wrote: post #56
weland wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Court opinions can be classified? What in the actual fuck?

In ex Yugoslavia we had secret laws, published by secret official journal and enforced by secret courts. So you could easily get persecuted for breaking the law that you were prohibited to know it even existed. The same was going on in east Germany and other socialist countries. I warmly recommend watching The Lives of Others ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/ ) to those who haven't seen it yet.

This seriously sounds like Kafka's The trial :( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial)

Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?

#67

Post by PavlovsCat »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #62
betterunix wrote: post #2

In all likelihood, because they need the government to work with them. Google, Facebook, Microsoft -- all companies that must deal with regulations and shareholders who care more about profits than morals. The last thing any of them need is for the government to retaliate with stricter enforcement of those regulations, which might hurt their profits. The FBI's latest push for backdoors sends these companies a clear m…

"and shareholders who care more about profits than morals." Well, I don't know what your prejudices about shareholders are, but I know a few of them and they really care about morals, probably much more than average Joe. Anyway, making a super State that controls everything goes against shareholder's interest as history shows the first thing super states do is eliminate competitors altogether. You know Mr Adolf Hitle…

1.) "shareholders who care more about profits than morals" != "shareholders care more about profits than morals"

2.) Nazism != fascism. (And even Nazism "worked" for some Nazi industrials for a while, if you will).

Mussolini: "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."

Chomsky: "Governments have a defect, they're potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect, they're pure tyrannies."

So yeah, it's great that corporations don't want anyone who could possibly stop them in their undertakings. Actual people on the other hand would do well to restrict both government and corporations. That is, we should make them in our image, not the other way around.

Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?

#68

Post by darkarmani »

zzbzq wrote: post #19

For the post linked in the headline, those seem like shocking accusations, but the kind I'm now accustomed to taking with a grain of salt. It seems perfectly plausible that the guy legitimately deserves a 6 year sentence for reasons unrelated to any of this. As for the subject/headline, which I'm not sure is related to the particular post linked, it seems pretty simple. Tech companies would probably see PRISM with mu…

> The media companies, particularly Google, are companies that regularly collect and profile that information anyway for the expressed purpose of profiling people in order to maximize their ability to manipulate the public. As far as tech leaders are concerned, the NSA is the first party to suggest doing something non-evil or selfish with all that data.

I think you have it reversed. The NSA is the only ones doing evil at this point. The private sector isn't in a position to use force in combination with the data.

> an ideologue who has a fetish-ized view of the public sector as something evil and invasive

You mean a public sector that would be deliberately violating the Constitution they swore to uphold? That would really be a fetish -- holding the public sector to the Constitution.

Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?

#69

Post by shawn-butler »

LowKarmaAccount wrote: post #52
brown9-2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would appear that the FISA court agrees with that interpretation as well, correct?

The court's opinion is classified. The DOJ is trying to block a FOIA suit filed by the EFF to release the opinion. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret...

To be honest I don't really understand the EFF's position. The FOIA explicitly applies only to executive branch government agencies. The FISA court is fully under the control of the SCOTUS.

"...agency" as defined in section 551(1) of this title includes any executive department, military department, Government corporation, Government controlled corporation, or other establishment in the executive branch of the Government (including the Executive Office of the President), or any independent regulatory agency..."[0].

I suppose it might be possible to go after the briefs and evidence presented by the DoJ to the FISA court with FOIA requests but anything you would get would be redacted to nothing.

[0] [pdf]: http://www.justice.gov/oip/amended-foia-redlined-2010.pdf

Re: Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle?

#70

Post by ecdavis »

scythe wrote: post #42

It 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 think the timing is a coincidence.

The most surveillance-relevant services Apple provides are probably iMessage, iCloud and FaceTime. All were announced in 2011 and saw widespread adoption in 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PRISM_Collection_Details.j...

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