There are cowards and then there are people who willfully exaggerate. A backdoor implies unfettered access to data for batch collection and processing. That's what this story was about at the beginning - the government was indiscriminately collecting and possibly analyzing your private data using some sort of massive, sinister Big Data operation, the scale of which we can not even conceive, and these big web companies were essentially handing them the keys to their telecommunications networks and telling them to go wild. This has been downgraded again and again, now to a few websites constructing a "secure mailbox." Most of us, including Arrington, know exactly what that means. A secure portal/mailbox is exactly what it sounds like: it is the equivalent of sending someone e-mail with a curated collection of data, except for instead of sending an e-mail you are posting it to a private web page accessible through some sort of authenticated login page. And if this data is only in response to a FISA warrant or subpoena and only regarding data posted by non-citizens, suddenly your outrage begins to look a little melodramatic, and what's happening begins to look a lot like what we already knew was happening for years. Just because we've known about it for years doesn't make it right, but can we at least admit that the novelty of the original story is long gone?
Cowards
81–90 of 240 posts
Re: Cowards
#82If a company is brave enough to close its business in China, what prevents it from doing the same in US?
The fact that Google had very little market share in China, and made almost no money. Versus 3/4 of its $50 billion in sales coming from the US ad market.
Re: Cowards
#83There's a meme on Reddit that revolves around 'so brave': basically calling people/posts/comments out for obvious pandering. This reads like a pastiche of Keith Olbermann, all bravado and empty gusto. Arrington writes: What has these people, among the wealthiest on the planet, so scared that they find themselves engaging in these verbal gymnastics to avoid telling a simple truth? and then acknowledges that doing so,…
> 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.
> It means that if telling the truth is illegal, they should have the courage to break the law.
Personally, I think they found a way to tell the truth without breaking the law.
They apparently said what they were required to say, to the letter. People found it transparently suspicious. Now the secret appears to be out.
Could be an accident, I suppose.
Re: Cowards
#84Earlier 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…
Or they simply know more than we do. Maybe they've gotten the answers to "Why?" that we want and that convinced them? That's the "conspiracy" that almost worries me more. Not that I hold any real faith in such a thought.
Re: Cowards
#85What if companies that do not wish to do evil adopted unspoken signaling mechanism for silent protests? What if every time n NSLs were fulfilled since start of year, they donated to EFF? What if $1 was donated to EFF for every 1 GB of data they shared? Would that be illegal?
I'm sure an Adwords campaign offering information on FISA would net you some data on who and where requests are being made. It wouldn't be explicit and the people wouldn't have to tell you WHY they are looking for information on FISA.
However, when you saw blips from people paying $99 for your packet of case law on 4th amendment protections with respect to stewardship of online data, you'd have the start of a signal. That is, for all of about ten minutes until you couldn't find a hosting provider or payment processor on Earth who would return your phone calls.
Not that it would matter because a "Chinese PLA hacker nuked your box, your bank account, and your house from orbit."
[Insert relevant quotes regarding government requests on named individuals from Eric Schmidt here.]
Re: Cowards
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point of my post is that these people are surrounded by other people to whom they have obligations. You can't respond to two words without considering the context of the paragraph! It should be obvious that even a so-called "successful" action comes with extreme stress on one's associates. It means subjecting other people to risk. This cannot be considered lightly.
I don't get your point on obligations. He has a family ok, but nothing would prevent him from resigning from Facebook and writing a post explaining his reasons for doing so(unwillingness to spy on its users). He would still be a rich man able to provide for his family and there are tons of others who could step into his place. I'm not saying he should do that but with the amount of money he has he can afford to lose…
The government would go after Facebook as an entity when Zukerberg speaks out. This means other FB directors could be held liable, shareholders could sue him for breaching his fiduciary duty, his life could be made hell even if PR wise it's impossible to arrest him, etc. We are talking about the most powerful monopoly on force humanity has even seen here, a group of people who consider it their right to kill people or detain them indefinitely without a trial.
I support what you say in theory, but a sign of intelligence is to take longer term approaches to solving the issue. (I would hope they are furious at the government for doing this or at least for hurting their business, I know I would be.)
Re: Cowards
#87Earlier 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…
The whole reason we even know about all this is because someone did have that courage.
Yes, but do we really think that person will lead a long and untroubled life now?
Re: Cowards
#88An article that waxes poetic, yet is so very hollow and devoid of realism. What would you have these companies do? Band together in a mighty ring of technological resources and begin a Privacy Revolution? This is unrealistic. As an American, I am saddened and angered by the recent news of the past two days. I am disgusted with what our government has done - what it has hidden from us, to take advantage of us unawares…
[deleted]
Re: Cowards
#89There's a meme on Reddit that revolves around 'so brave': basically calling people/posts/comments out for obvious pandering. This reads like a pastiche of Keith Olbermann, all bravado and empty gusto. Arrington writes: What has these people, among the wealthiest on the planet, so scared that they find themselves engaging in these verbal gymnastics to avoid telling a simple truth? and then acknowledges that doing so,…
>to have an actual conversation both about privacy
Let us have a conversation about that:
Why should Mark Zuckerberg, et al., know things about you that the government shouldn't?
Or, to put it another way, shouldn't the very thing which represents You, the People, have as much information about you as, "They", the Corporations, do?
After all, Mr. Z, et al., can quite easily tell you things about yourself which, 3 words into the sentence, would give the government a lot of information it needs to optimize itself. To Serve You.
Whereas, the corporate stance is "we will own the consumers, all the consumers, and we will encourage them to endless consume our product", the government stance is: "how do we keep 240million people from cannibalizing themselves".
Mr Z., et al., are being mighty disingenous with this position, because the fact of the whole matter is, the Government would be the absolute BEST customer for him/them/et al., there is no better way to feed a consumer than to get the Government on your side, as we see with Pharmaceuticals, Farming, Oil, etc.
There are multiple points of view in this argument, is all I am trying to say, and by setting the above in word I hope to have at least set the scene for my real, tl;dr, which is this:
Privacy is a trap. Those who are fully exploiting the nature of the system, simply keep no secrets .. and trade never willingly with those who do.
Re: Cowards
#90There's a meme on Reddit that revolves around 'so brave': basically calling people/posts/comments out for obvious pandering. This reads like a pastiche of Keith Olbermann, all bravado and empty gusto. Arrington writes: What has these people, among the wealthiest on the planet, so scared that they find themselves engaging in these verbal gymnastics to avoid telling a simple truth? and then acknowledges that doing so,…
> 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.
As Bob Dylan put it "to live outside the law you must be honest".