Probably naive, but what would happen if Google, Facebook, MS just started disclosing everything? What are they going to do shut them down? Seems silly to me that these huge companies can't just give them the middle finger and show them that they're not going to be bullied any longer.
U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
31–40 of 84 posts
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#32There 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.
What bad stuff has the government done with the current batch of domestic spying?
Secretly and unconstitutionally feeding evidence to local law enforcement for petty crimes. Blackmailing judges and politicians. Giving (selling?) information about US citizens to foreign countries. Spying on significant others. Industrial espionage.
That's just what we've heard about.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me make sure I understand. You'd disclose your views to a potential employer, thereby letting yourself off the hook for implementing them?
Hardly. I'd disclose that I will not carry out immoral or unethical behaviour on behalf of my employer, and will follow all protocol in pursuit of stamping it out, up to and including whistleblowing. That sort of attitude used to be a plus, dare I say something that was implicitly understood between the two parties. It's the sort of thing that you'd think people would want to ensure wound up in the contract all new h…
OK, to me this reads, "No, I'd not disclose anything that jeopardizes my chances to be that whistleblower. I'd just disclose the main thing that jeopardizes my chances to be that whistleblower." I'm not trying to be (overly) confrontational, but I can't spot the difference between what I asked and what you said you'd do. It just seems like you've constructed a scenario where you will never be called upon to do what you seem to think is such an obviously good choice, and therefore I have trouble seeing how you came to the conclusion that the choice is easy or obvious.
No comment re: anything after "It's the sort of thing . . ." I don't know the company's employment policies in this area and wouldn't talk about them even if I did.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Qwest simply refused NSA surveillance requests, and were rewarded with the cancellation of a government contract and having their CEO charged with securities fraud. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_of_NSA_surveillan...
Is there evidence that the securities fraud charges were actually caused by their refusal? Or were they caused by the fact that the guy said Qwest was doing well and sold ahead of a huge downturn in prices? As far as I can tell from Wikipedia, the charges would have stuck irrespective of the NSA stuff.
The downturn in the stock came after the government dismissed the contract. "Induced" insider trading by the government manipulating the stock to tank, then prosecuting in some people's opinions.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#35Sounds like a nice PR walk-in-the-park.
If these companies were serious about protecting their customers, they'd band together and block government mandated mass surveillance entirely, from A to Z. Given their size of the market, the government can't and wouldn't shut them down.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Everything on Youtube is publicly indexed. It's therefore accessible to copyright holders and authorities. Megaupload (and all file lockers) were set-up as if your uploads are personal and private, but to still allow files to be shared by passing around direct URLs. This is why Rapidshare (who were once one of the biggest of them all) ditched their sharing capability and are now left alone. It's the cliques that are…
I don't follow. In what way was megaupload inaccessible? Rapidshare have had to ditch their sharing capability - and yet youtube continues unimpeded. Can you explain what I am misunderstanding?
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#37I think by now the situation has come to a point where nobody believes a word of denials coming from any US company when it comes to surveillance and user data. Anybody would just assume they're denying it because NSA tells them to do so and they don't have a choice. Understandably, big companies don't like feeling like ventriloquist's puppets. Maybe they should spend some of those lobbying dollars on putting collar, leash and muzzle on NSA.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#38In the end the only thing that matter is what the Supreme Court says. The issue is getting this to them with standing.
SC has a lot of deference to the Congress, and will go out of the way to find some convoluted legal language to justify something if it can be justified. So if the Congress and US public will be OK with mass surveillance, SC would not ride in on the white horse and save them from themselves. It would say "it's constitutional because of the precedent in 1834 that says blah blah blah and decision in 1928 that says foo bar bar foo, and you can't really expect privacy when you sending data out anyway, if you want it private, don't send it to nobody".
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#39US tech companies have begun to lose oversea businesses, this will only get worse.
Re: U.S. Opposes Tech Companies’ Requests to Disclose Surveillance
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Everything on Youtube is publicly indexed. It's therefore accessible to copyright holders and authorities. Megaupload (and all file lockers) were set-up as if your uploads are personal and private, but to still allow files to be shared by passing around direct URLs. This is why Rapidshare (who were once one of the biggest of them all) ditched their sharing capability and are now left alone. It's the cliques that are…
> Everything on Youtube is publicly indexed.
That is not actually the case. Youtube has a concept of both private and unlisted videos. Unlisted videos work similarly to how you describe Megaupload:
"Unlisted videos
Making a video unlisted means that only people who have the link to the video can view it. To share an unlisted video, just share the link with the people who you’d like to have access to it, and they’ll then be able to see it. Unlike private videos, the people you share the video with do not need to have a Google account to see the video, and they can share with more people simply by forwarding the link to them.
Unlisted videos won’t appear in any of YouTube's public spaces, like your channel page or search results."