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Comment by res0nat0r | Hacker News Reader

>only to discover Google was facilitating snooping from a third party whistle blower.

This directly contradicts what he is mentioning above. When you are compelled to do something, it doesn't mean you are facilitating. It means you are being forced.

> Who at Google failed to tell the truth until it served their own interests?

Has anyone up until the last month when the press decided to take up the Snowden case 24x7 actually asked Google if this was going on? Books about this subject and the NSA goings on have been published for 5+ years now. Maybe no one cared enough to pay attention? Or it was known and ignored until now because no one thought it newsworthy? That doesn't mean Google was keeping it secret.

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The issue is that if your motto is "Don't be evil.", you can't later pretend it was "Don't be evil (unless you're forced to do so)."

Especially for a company that big, you'd expect some backbone.

Google has been fighting it.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/google-fights-nsl/ for example.

Just because not every fight is public doesn't mean they aren't happening.

Yahoo fought for 5 years before their fight became public.

> It means you are being forced.

Could you please elaborate what it means to be "forced" in a democratic, free, law-abiding country?

Do you mean CEO of Google had a gun at their face? Do you mean they were treated to get electricity cut off? Internet cut off? Engineers thrown in jail without fair trial? Please kindly tell me what it means where a free democratic government is "forcing" you to comply with a secret unethical, most likely unlawful and surely unconstitutional request?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compel

You can be compelled by the US government to do things you might not like to do. Google can either comply since they are a US based company, or not. The benefits of compliance outweigh the downsides of not complying.

>secret unethical, most likely unlawful and surely unconstitutional request?

There has been no evidence that what the NSA is doing is illegal. It has congressional oversight and approval.

What would be the likely result if Larry Page made a blog post detailing all the information they are petitioning the government to allow revealing, and then went directly to the media with the same information? It would be a bold act of civil disobedience, but obviously none of the CEOs of any of these companies have had the balls to do it.

I'm thinking that the US Government would have a much harder time prosecuting a high-profile, wealthy CEO over a systems administrator no one had heard of until a month ago. And the media attention would be harder to derail.

Exactly my point. If Google does work with NSA in secret, then shame on Page and Brin for "doing evil". I cannot imagine how strong and adverse message gov would send out into the world shall they choose to harshly prosecute someone of a Google or Microsoft's CEO caliber.

  I'm thinking that the US Government would have a much 
  harder time prosecuting a high-profile, wealthy CEO

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-joseph-nacchio-a...

  "Only One Big Telecom CEO Refused To Cave To The NSA ... 
   And He's Been In Jail For 4 Years

https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-J...

  We know what happened in the case of QWest before 9/11. 
  They contacted the CEO/Chairman asking to wiretap all the 
  customers.  After he consulted with Legal, he refused.  As 
  a result, NSA canceled a bunch of unrelated billion dollar 
  contracts that QWest was the top bidder for.  And then the 
  DoJ targeted him and prosecuted him and put him in prison 
  for insider trading -- on the theory that he knew of
  anticipated income from secret programs that QWest was 
  planning for the government, while the public didn't 
  because it was classified and he couldn't legally tell 
  them, and then he bought or sold QWest stock
  knowing those things.

  This CEO's name is Joseph P. Nacchio and TODAY he's still 
  serving a trumped-up 6-year federal prison sentence today 
  for quietly refusing an NSA demand to massively wiretap 
  his customers.

> What would be the likely result if Larry Page made a blog post detailing all the information they are petitioning the government to allow revealing, and then went directly to the media with the same information?

He would go to jail. And then, instead of being a powerful executive in a strong position to push the government to do the right thing, he would be powerless.

Do you have any evidence, other than this PR letter, that he's pushing the government to do the right thing? Was he doing this before Edward Snowden leaked?

My issue is that they continued to tell people that they could be trusted. If you are being forced to do something, fine, but don't keep on telling others that you can be trusted.

Microsoft is an even worse offender here, with their recent marketing campaigns slamming Google for privacy while they themselves were apparently being 'forced' to disrespect their users privacy.

Don't claim something that you know that you cannot provide, even if you want to provide it.

>My issue is that they continued to tell people that they could be trusted. If you are being forced to do something, fine, but don't keep on telling others that you can be trusted.

Trusted...how? I guess we need to define trusted.

Google isn't selling your email history to the highest 3rd party bidder for extra money. They are complying with the law, handing over specific info for specific legal requests from the US government.

If I was being compelled to violate the 4th Amendment rights of my customers, I'd massively and securely erase any data that isn't vital to my service, or if that conflicted with the rights of my customers given being compelled by a secret court, I'd simply shut down my business.

That's what I'd expect any company which espouses a "do no evil" policy to do. Literally, if you are doing evil, especially if you are being compelled to do so, take whatever action is necessary to prevent further evil from being done.

As for the letter in the article, I find it completely insufficient. Asking for the ability to disclose how many secret compulsions are made against these companies isn't useful information for us. Further, it doesn't actually fix the problem. There shouldn't be secret requests being made. It should all be done under normal warrants, with exceptional cases that actually require secrecy decided by a judge, not the NSA. In this way, when your information is collected but isn't pertinent to national security, Google can actually inform you.

Exactly. Mozilla can't give this kind of info because they don't collect it. They're responsible.

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