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Comment by yters | Hacker News Reader

A lot of complaints against three letter agencies, who have elected officials with oversight and only hire from American citizens. Few complaints against Microgoogfacebook to whom we give all our most private electronic correspondence, have no oversight, and hire many foreign nationals who have little stake in whether the companies abuse the info they've been given. This strikes me as a bit odd.

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Well this thread is about the NSA.

If you go to a thread about abuses by Microgoogfacebook I'm sure you'll find lots of complaints about them and relatively few about the NSA (other than the extent to which they are harming people by co-operating with the NSA).

More broadly I mostly see articles like this posted regarding NSA, not tech giants. The latter have a better PR machine.

You choose to give your data to Microsoft/Google/Facebook/whatever other private company you're complaining about. There is no agreement to give things to the NSA.

Not in the real sense of 'choose'.

I use a computer. I have to use Windows to access certain common or industry standard software packages.

I have friends. I have to use Facebook or miss out on events or similar. Alternatively, I have to put more effort into bridging the gap. Facebook also build a shadow profile on me whether I use their services or not.

I search the web with a non-google search engine, I have moved my email to a non-gmail service, my browser is not google, my phone is not Android. Yet Google will still collect data about me for advertising purposes.

The fact that they have no official oversight should be terrifying.

> You choose to give your data to Microsoft/Google/Facebook

If only that were so.

Facebook gathers data on you whether you give it to them or not. See https://www.dailydot.com/news/facebook-shadow-profiles-priva... for example, but this is generally well-known.

As far as I know Google likewise gathers all sorts of information without asking for it, just from their ads and analytics running on various websites.

Microsoft is a slightly different story.

Just because it is voluntary does not mean the possibility of abuse is lower. It is higher since people consider the implications less.

I'm not saying it's lower, but you know the risks when you use the software.

I'm sure most people give nary a thought to the risk of using Google.

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