Microsoft executive says U.S. overuses secret orders for Americans' data
reuters.com
reuters.com
Call me a cynic, but I just don’t see things changing. The US government didn’t see a big change after the Snowden leaks and those were dramatically more revealing than this statement is. Sadly, Congress has a really high incumbency/re-election rate and most Americans just can’t bring themselves to vote for the other party. Congress usually has a single digit to to teen approval rating yet they continue to act the same way.
They don't need to worry because they've successfully redirected citizen rage against each other instead of towards them. Classic divide and conquer.
Canada is about to pass draconian laws for the purpose of monitoring and restrict Canadian's online free speech rights and jail people for 2 years, and pay 70k fine for things like saying the N word online.
Also take into account that the common person who works on Windows at work might also work at windows at home.
And then there is gaming.
Microsoft is not going away anytime soon. Especially with Apple’s move towards dropping 32-bit and the general consumers not adopting Linux anytime soon.
But with WINE's rapid development, cloud gaming becoming more popular (just yesterday for instance Xbox Cloud Gaming became available for Linux browsers) and VFIO becoming easier I don't expect this to be an issue still in the next few years.
Not really. The contentious part in your claim is the "a LOT". You need to prove that it got worse under COVID in degree even remotely comparable to how it got worse after 9/11.
Also 9 churches have been burned in the last month alone. In the US riots something like 60 people died, and countless businesses and livelihoods were destroyed.
I would say its a LOT.
And I think I understand why, it's because we worry less about the stuff that we think few other people believe, and more about things that we think lots of other people will believe and act on. Flat-earthers were firmly in the "who cares" category for a long time (and probably still are but I'm less sure these days).
But it's unfortunate that the COVID-19 related content is now setting the precedent for what kind of speech should be scrubbed from all popular platforms and hosts, with what kind of government guidance and public pressure.
Also this Microsoft press release has a lot more information in it than the Rueters article https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2021/06/30/the-nee... "We have reviewed the number of secrecy orders that federal law enforcement agencies have presented to us from 2016 to the present, a period that spans the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. We found that while the number has increased some, federal law enforcement has consistently presented us with 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders each year, or 7-10 per day, representing one-quarter to one-third of all the legal demands we received. These are just the demands that Microsoft, just one cloud service provider, received. "
Canada does not have a concept of "free speech", the fuck are you talking about. Canada has a concept of freedom of expression, which has certain limits, such as Hate speech.
I'm so sorry you will no longer be able to call for a genocide against a group you hold prejudices against, boo fucking hoo.
If homosexuals have their rights ignored in some far off country you must just shrug your shoulders, they don't have rights in those countries.
Tilting at windmills under the delusion they are giants does not make you a fighter of giants.
If anything MS and Bill Gates have a vastly better public image than 20 years ago. Bill Gates has gone from the public image of a lucky fool with blue screening on national TV more than once to some kind of public intellectual that the public wants to follow.
I have read about what Canada is about to do and it does seem completely insane.
It’s amazing what a PR budget can do over twenty years.
That painstakingly constructed PR success has somewhat eroded recently.
But I'm not sure I really agree. At this point "bedfellows" seems like an apt description, given how feeble and ineffective their opposition (certainly publicly, anyway) to it seems to have been.
It's a metaphor, following the example of "bedfellows", which doesn't mean they are literally in bed together.
Inmates and busineses alike are required to obey the government under threat of force.
What would be better for them?
If the inmates built the prison and moonlit as prison guards, yes. The unfortunate truth is that Google has built the modern surveillance state’s technical apparatus.
Yes, they have at times pushed back. But many may not see that enough.
If you have problems with people naming Google together with the likes of Apple and Microsoft in terms of data sharing with the NSA, perhaps you should reconsider your choices regarding your employer.
To be clear, I’m quite neutral towards Google, but I don’t think you have any right to be offended by OP’s comment.
They designed all their systems for commercial surveillance (to sell ads), knowing full well they would hand the data over to surveillance agencies.