111–120 of 240 posts
> Meanwhile, the BBC has learned that Twitter was invited to join the Prism programme last year but rejected the approach from US authorities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why should Mark Zuckerberg, et al., know things about you that the government shouldn't? 1. Because the user decided to give their own info to FB, but not to the gov. 2. The gov has many more powers than FB. If FB knows something about you that "may be suspicious" they can't put you in jail for it, maybe even without a trial. 3. If some FB employee is able to steal data, it would have bad consecuences for the FB st…
1. You also chooose your participation in government. 2. Right, so because Mr. Z. et al., don't have a 'license to kill', there is a difference. This is the only difference. 3. Which do you trust more, McDonalds or Congress?
If I don't want to be subjected to any country's taxes or laws, let me know how I can opt-out of this. You can relocate to a different country, but it is up to them to allow you to enter and/or settle, so the problem hasn't been circumvented.
On the other hand, I can choose to not have a Facebook account, and can use various browser plugins to stonewall their efforts to track me on the web.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What the hell does this even mean? It means that if telling the truth is illegal, they should have the courage to break the law.
Y'know, I'd like to believe I'd do that in this situation, too. But people are more generous in theory than in practice. You have to realize: Mark Zuckerberg isn't just looking out for Mark Zuckerberg by posting what he did. He has a family, a social life, and a whole lot of people at Facebook who depend on him. To whom, perhaps, it would not be fair for Zuck to martyr himself on the great gallows of the United State…
I'd think most programmers can understand their reasoning behind creating "secure portals". If you're being forced to hand data over to the government you may as well do it securely and consistently. Rather than some ad hoc process of burned CDs or USB drives, just create some simple software that makes the process secure, reliable, and traceable. The alternative is USB drives and Fedex envelopes, which is harder to…
Don't try to play us
I can't believe that people are getting mad these private enterprises. If you want your government not to spy on you, tell THEM. The governments was made to serve the people. The companies are going to do what they think is their best fiduciary responsibility. Get mad at your representatives in congress, not your email providers.
So why complain about the companies? There is a much greater possibility of change in private enterprise, but they often can't escape the mandates that government imposes, either. Some would like to think that the Googles and Facebooks can be heroes, and resist whatever nasty thing the government is doing today. It isn't that easy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What the hell does this even mean? It means that if telling the truth is illegal, they should have the courage to break the law.
Y'know, I'd like to believe I'd do that in this situation, too. But people are more generous in theory than in practice. You have to realize: Mark Zuckerberg isn't just looking out for Mark Zuckerberg by posting what he did. He has a family, a social life, and a whole lot of people at Facebook who depend on him. To whom, perhaps, it would not be fair for Zuck to martyr himself on the great gallows of the United State…
Beyond that, in terms of public surveillance, Zuckerberg has real power in this sphere. You could even argue that he has more power than any individual has ever had. Certainly there is no bigger global database of personal information than Facebook.
It doesn't matter if Arrington is being a hypocrite. It doesn't matter if I'm being a hypocrite. Zuckerberg, and indeed all technologists should stand up on this issue. If we love what computers can do, we owe it to the world to fight so that they don't become the Orwellian tool of control that totalitarian regimes have always dreamed of. We can't put the genie back in the bottle—data is going to be out there—but we can force the government to be more transparent. We can stand up and say that a handful of isolated terrorist attacks is not justification to ratchet up governmental power to something a thousand times more terrifying than any homicidal extremist ever could be. This is fundamentally one of the most important issues of our time, certainly far more important than the fate of any one company.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Y'know, I'd like to believe I'd do that in this situation, too. But people are more generous in theory than in practice. You have to realize: Mark Zuckerberg isn't just looking out for Mark Zuckerberg by posting what he did. He has a family, a social life, and a whole lot of people at Facebook who depend on him. To whom, perhaps, it would not be fair for Zuck to martyr himself on the great gallows of the United State…
Whoah, hold on, I don't think anyone is saying this is easy or there aren't risks for Zuckerberg. However to say he shouldn't stand up against tyranny and abuse of government power because he has responsibility to parties x, y and z is exactly the line of thinking that allows totalitarian governments to thrive. Government power is not absolute, that power is derived from the people. No one person can stand up to the…
I can't believe that people are getting mad these private enterprises. If you want your government not to spy on you, tell THEM. The governments was made to serve the people. The companies are going to do what they think is their best fiduciary responsibility. Get mad at your representatives in congress, not your email providers.
Pressure the people paying donations. Its the best chance you have.
The system the NYTimes article outlines is still quite different from what the original leak suggested. According to the Times article, the requested data isn't placed into the locked mailbox until the FISA request is reviewed by somebody at the company. This is nowhere near the same level of access as what the PRISM leak suggested. So if what the Times article says is true, Zuckerberg and Page's statements weren't m…
Did you even read the NYT article? They said requests can be very broad, like logs for certain search terms and people staying in the company building for weeks with all the data being gathered in government laptops. That is pretty much realtime and "direct access".
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-...
> In one recent instance, the National Security Agency sent an agent to a tech company’s headquarters to monitor a suspect in a cyberattack, a lawyer representing the company said. The agent installed government-developed software on the company’s server and remained at the site for several weeks to download data to an agency laptop.
Where in that paragraph or the ones surrounding it does it say that Google or Facebook was the company involved? Don't you think that if these incidents involved either company, that they would be named here?