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Comment by betterunix | Hacker News Reader

In all likelihood, because they need the government to work with them. Google, Facebook, Microsoft -- all companies that must deal with regulations and shareholders who care more about profits than morals. The last thing any of them need is for the government to retaliate with stricter enforcement of those regulations, which might hurt their profits. The FBI's latest push for backdoors sends these companies a clear message: standing up to the government is bad for business.

Or, if we want to be optimistic, maybe they had no idea what their companies were participating in. Maybe the NSA people they met with were lying about their plans or purposes. It is a classified system, so maybe they felt compelled to leave out details that would otherwise have had the CEOs fighting back.

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... and shareholders who care more about profits than morals

I think this issue goes against shareholders because they can lose real customers feeling defrauded.

It's realistic to expect legal actions against Google/Microsoft/etc operations outside US, mainly for Government accounts.

What makes you think these companies are going to lose any substantial number of customers? Most of the anger here is directed at the government, and it is only a small minority of people who even are angry about this. Only a very tiny minority of people will actually stop using Google or Facebook because of this incident.

This is the hear of it, isn't it? You have a whole bunch of people who don't care if Google uses automated scanning of their emails. You expect them to care if the NSA does it? Sure, there is some subset of people who will draw a distinction between the government and a private company, a distinction which isn't baseless, but most just don't care.

Also, look at it from the governments point of view. If you're NSA, do you really feel like you're violating intimate privacies to go through information people knowingly expose to one time acquantances on Facebook? The NSA is made of people, remember. How people view their own information enforces their understanding of where the line is.

Because, outside US, government agencies and companies that considers their communication security critical will choose another provider. They are paying Google Apps, Microsoft 365, etc.

Would anyone (especially from a foreign country) who considers their communication security critical really be using any of those services today?

Yes. Obviously not the most sensitive ones but there are a lot of government operations using their services.

In the short term nothing will change for Google, Facebook etc. But i think you are underestimating the longer term reaction from members of this community. The cloud in its current form is dead. Google's goal of collecting the world's information is a dead end if everything ends up in the hands of the NSA. New user data models with better privacy will eventually be introduced by one or more startups that could be a treat to Google and co.

>The cloud in its current form is dead.

I've heard several people say this... I find that... unlikely.

Do you really see the type of people who use facebook; the type of people who buy things that are advertised online, well, do you see them changing their behavior? I'm pretty sure most of them are okay with being watched; otherwise they wouldn't be on facebook to begin with.

And those are the users that matter.

"and shareholders who care more about profits than morals."

Well, I don't know what your prejudices about shareholders are, but I know a few of them and they really care about morals, probably much more than average Joe.

Anyway, making a super State that controls everything goes against shareholder's interest as history shows the first thing super states do is eliminate competitors altogether.

You know Mr Adolf Hitler asked again for more business contributions to his party. They were angry to be asked again so they put a condition in place: "Only if you don't ask again in a long time". Hitler smiled and say:" Don't worry, it is the last time I ask you for contributions."

It was.

1.) "shareholders who care more about profits than morals" != "shareholders care more about profits than morals"

2.) Nazism != fascism. (And even Nazism "worked" for some Nazi industrials for a while, if you will).

Mussolini: "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."

Chomsky: "Governments have a defect, they're potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect, they're pure tyrannies."

So yeah, it's great that corporations don't want anyone who could possibly stop them in their undertakings. Actual people on the other hand would do well to restrict both government and corporations. That is, we should make them in our image, not the other way around.

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