U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
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Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#2It would be nice to see a proper corporate backed "tech lobby" with some teeth emerge from this, but I'm probably hoping for too much.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#3And now the tech companies can give up their vaunted crusade for user's rights. "Oops! We tried!"
Plausible deniability and so forth.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#4Nothing surprising here. They're fighting tooth and nail to keep their activities under a veil not of secrecy (that's impossible at this point) but of vagueness, which in the end achieves the same purpose: preventing people from caring.
The worst part is that the argument brought against transparency actually makes sense on the surface level, but as usual completely ignores the factor of bad actors within the system, which need to be kept in check as much as any hypothetical group of terrorists.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#5It would be nice to see a proper corporate backed "tech lobby" with some teeth emerge from this, but I'm probably hoping for too much.
Be careful what you wish for. A big slice of the tech industry builds surveillance technology and sells it to anyone globally. Would you trust such a lobby not to lobby for protectionism if US companies were losing business to overseas providers of verifiable secure services?
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#6So this week I've been reading Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II by Stephen Budiansky.
The US intelligence community has a long history of going right to the communication source and obtaining raw data from public companies. In the 1920's Herbert Yardley's "American Black Chamber" worked with Western Union and other cable companies who turned over interesting cablegrams and radiograms.
In 1940 [before the US entered the second world war], the military assigned Lt Earl F. Cook to read and copy cable messages that passed through RCA's office with the consent of RCA's president, David Sarnoff.
After the war, there was of course project Shamrock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_O._Yardley#The_American...
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#7There was a time when the trade-off was:
1. The government lied and pretends not to engage in domestic espionage.
2. To support that lie, the government didn't do much bad stuff with the results of its domestic spying.
3. Thus, the domestic spying wasn't a big deal.
I think we're past that point now.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#8It would be nice to see a proper corporate backed "tech lobby" with some teeth emerge from this, but I'm probably hoping for too much.
Be careful what you wish for. A big slice of the tech industry builds surveillance technology and sells it to anyone globally. Would you trust such a lobby not to lobby for protectionism if US companies were losing business to overseas providers of verifiable secure services?
There are already people lobbying heavily for all the shitty things I could see a tech lobby lobbying for. MPAA/RIAA, protectionist labor unions, 'military-industrial complex', etc.
Tech lacks representation though, particularly compared with how much lobbying much less affluent industries manage to do.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Be careful what you wish for. A big slice of the tech industry builds surveillance technology and sells it to anyone globally. Would you trust such a lobby not to lobby for protectionism if US companies were losing business to overseas providers of verifiable secure services?
There are already people lobbying heavily for all the shitty things I could see a tech lobby lobbying for. MPAA/RIAA, protectionist labor unions, 'military-industrial complex', etc. Tech lacks representation though, particularly compared with how much lobbying much less affluent industries manage to do.
I think specific parts of tech, lobby specifically, for their specific interests - and those specifics aren't aligned with other players.
Far be it from me to understand the finer points - but to my mind, youtube isn't a whole lot different from megaupload - but you can bet Google has top class lobbyists and lawyers, whereas megaupload did not.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#10I honestly didn't expect much from this. The part that scares me about all of this is this: if the government can't read our emails, listen to our phone calls, or see our web traffic but they have the ability to... what stops them from outsourcing the work to another country, where there is no constitutional restraint. we outsource everything else, why not our domestic spying?