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Comment by moxious | Hacker News Reader

I may be in the minority, but I still think these companies are being cowardly.

They disclose as soon as they're permitted to, but the trouble with that is that the permission is coming from the people who are the problem in the first place.

An approach that would care about customers and show some more guts would be simple refusal. In essence, civil disobedience in the face of someone who is violating the law. Let the government take them to court, and let it be disclosed in that way.

Before we applaud them too much, keep in mind they're also telegraphing that this behavior is continuing. It doesn't take much skill to read between the lines and see that this is an ongoing problem for them, there's just a lot more of it that's happened that they're not allowed to disclose yet.

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The company officers or agents who were served with the letter could be held personally liable for failure to comply with the order. I think it's a little unfair to expect employees to go to prison for contempt of court in defiance of the order.

Howcome?

I think it's unfair to expect that.

Anyone who risks their own wellbeing for the greater good is usually applauded, for good reason: it is not expected.

Edit: if you'll pardon the expression, it takes serious balls to put your entire way of life on the line. Yes, history sometimes venerates the brave...sometimes posthumously....so it all might seem glamorous. But it's a lot harder than that in real time, when you don't know what will come of it.

That's why disclosure needs to start at the top and come from someone big enough to survive the fallout. If (for example) Zuckerberg genuinely wanted to do good and grew a pair, he'd do it. He's too busy exploiting your data to get rich and virtue signaling via acquisitions though.

Do you think the government wouldn't throw Zuckerberg in jail?

They might, but he'd have better odds than your average Joe (and certainly a better legal team).

"With great power comes great responsibility" isn't just a line from a movie. Of course we can choose not to hold our leaders to high expectations, but that leads to a markedly worse world for the rest of us.

> virtue signaling via acquisitions though.

This makes no sense.

> Anyone who risks their own wellbeing for the greater good is usually applauded, for good reason: it is not expected.

Except for Snowden. America gave him the middle finger.

He's applauded by many.

Just as many consider him a traitor.

Yes, that could happen. But there's the Spider-Man Rule: "with great power comes great responsibility".

They're running a major international media outlet over there, and they do have some pretty heavyweight responsibilities that come with that, even if it conflicts with their personal lives.

Its unreasonable to expect people to make life changing decisions based on nice sounding but ultimatley meaningless phrases.

... and from super-hero comic-books at that.

You're only observing how we're caught in this trap, you're not providing any constructive way out.

Sure, it's unreasonable to expect this of people. It's also unreasonable for the government to expect they'll help in spying on their customers. It's also unreasonable for the government to do this in the first place.

Everything's unreasonable. Someone has to step...the...fuck...up. And the government has demonstrated it won't be them.

Who does that leave? Would it be better to kick back, admire the problem, and simply let things continue as they are?

You aren't providing one [constructive way out] either. It's not Twitter's or any other company's fault, yet you want them to pay the price in form of risk. Why don't you pay it yourself?

No, they're providing the only ethical way out.

This is the responsibility that comes with the wealth and power acquired by using other people's personal information.

Particularly for citizens of a nation whose leadership is now treading a familiar historical path.

Well, no one can prove what they'd do if they were in this situation. But I can't pay this cost for twitter, because the government hasn't asked this of me.

I don't believe they'd go to jail though. I do believe they'd cause an utter shitstorm for themselves personally and professionally though, but that they'd get a lot of attention to the matter and come out the other side OK. I can think of at least 5 non-profits who would jump to pay their legal costs, just to be in the battle and stick it to the government if this sort of thing ever came up.

What do you think the real consequences of standing up to the government are? Publicity is mostly my bet. Note that if we're dealing with the CEO of twitter, hustling him off to a secret prison somewhere with no trial isn't an option, as that's the same as setting off a big media bomb.

But you know, nobody wants to be inconvenienced, and it is a risk, so I suppose many people feel that's adequate justification for twitter to do nothing and keep serving punch to the crowd.

Right. So I think you and I agree on some element of responsibility and that it feels too convenient for those companies to just say "sorry, there is nothing we can do". On the other hand, I think it's clear now how things generally play out behind the scenes, so at leats we as users of those services can either stop using them entirely, or seek alternatives that are hosted overseas (relative to US) and where US jurisdiction is weaker. That would secure us a bit as individuals, but it does nothing for the big picture. I don't see a clear way out.

They're being paid a great deal of money on the theory that their jobs have a lot of responsibility. If they choose to ignore whatever parts of that responsibility they can get away with, perhaps they don't actually deserve that compensation after all.

Life isn't fiction.

> I may be in the minority, but I still think these companies are being cowardly.

I don't know. Seems really easy to say when it's not you on the receiving end. But I mostly agree about your other points I just have a hard time judging them too harshly for not wanting to risk their business and / or personal freedoms.

What is "just harsh enough" for you?

It's good that they're disclosing this, but they are not doing anything particularly brave. While it's understandable that they would choose not to put their business at risk, a true act of bravery would be to refuse the requests in the first place.

^ that is a medium harshness level, I think.

> An approach that would care about customers and show some more guts would be simple refusal. In essence, civil disobedience in the face of someone who is violating the law. Let the government take them to court, and let it be disclosed in that way.

Is that how it works? You can refuse anything the government tells you to do until they take you to court and the court orders you?

Yes. That's what courts are for.

But are there no laws that require you to abide by these kinds of orders and challenge them differently? Couldn't you be later convicted of not abiding by those laws independently of whether the orders were themselves legal/constitutional?

An unconstitutional act is void.

If you're talking about NSLs, they've been found constitutional for almost a year now. Still time to buy that first birthday gift!

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/in-a-reversal-ju...

Sure, I'm just saying that there aren't legal repercussions from violating an unconditional act.

Illegal repercussions then?

Um, sure. If no one watches the watchers.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Either way, you make it messy for them and you do probably defeat their primary objective, which is secrecy.

How do you think they'd respond? With SEAL Team 6 while keeping everything quiet?

When the government shows up to force you to turn over the information, no violence is required, but you can make sure the newspapers are there when it happens, and that the knowledge of it happening is not restricted to a few execs, keeping key technical people in the dark (as happened at Yahoo)

> How do you think they'd respond? With SEAL Team 6 while keeping everything quiet?

Possibly by taking you to court and convicting you of breaking some law by refusing to provide the information the first time, perhaps even completely independently of whether or not the order was actually constitutional. I can imagine lots of bad outcomes that would land you in jail without giving you the chance to take the actual issue to court.

But when dealing with a corporate entity, who do you go after? Since this sort of coercion seems to only work on an individual level, going after the entire corporate entity won't invoke the same emotional response.

I don't know how the law works. But my completely-unfounded guess is that whoever is supposed to authorize this and who is refusing would be the one convicted.

So maybe they ought to be anonymous: http://www.cryptohippie.net/AnonAdmin.html

You're giving system administrator status to an anonymous person on the internet. What could possibly go wrong?

You give them limited access and rights, to do what you want them to do. Here, they would have access to communications with government agencies, ability to tweet users or groups thereof, and perhaps responsibility for canary management.

NSLs are addressed to, and claim to compel, an individual.

They have secret courts for that.

There may be additional penalities/costs for letting it get to the point where a court is involved, but yeah, seems like this falls under "due process of law."

Well that's what I mean, it's not like you can just wait for the court to serve you the order. If the additional penalty is that you'll end up in jail or something, then this isn't really realistic is it?

While I agree with the spirit or what you say, that could backfire very poorly. Suppose that the NSL were sent as part of an investigation on someone planning some sort of attack, such as a mass shooting, and disclosing the NSL ends up exposing that and causing it to fail. The blowback would end up providing stronger support for secrecy.

Unlikely, but possible - and when you're the one making the decision to disobey, you have to consider it. I don't know what I would do in that situation, honestly.

I think the correct approach is not a gag order that makes it illegal to disclose an NSL, but that an NSL should be accompanied with an explanation of what it is for and what the stakes are. A presumption of good faith in the organization to act in best interests, but leaving the ability to disclose to disclose to the public if it is felt that the NSL is in the wrong.

Twitter isn't outright defying the government, but they did spend millions on lawyers. Don't they deserve more freedom than implied by "cowardly"?

People who care deeply enough about civil liberties to go to jail for it are rarely the type to seek or acquire much power.

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