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Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

Maybe I just don't pay enough attention to this, but this is the first place where I've read that Google and other large companies are being paid for monitoring their customers. This is making my sleaze-o-meter spike. What are the rates like? Is it per user? Per message? Per kilobyte? It certainly couldn't be per arrest...

Sometimes it seems like the rabbit hole just keeps going deeper, but then you realize it's a damned sewer!

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It makes sense to ask the government to cover your costs when you're doing something on a court order, and by god you aren't going to lowball it. On the other hand, it should hurt to participate in something like this, and a corporation of any significant size doesn't have a conscience to pain it (no matter what the feelings of the people animating it.) If the government reimburses companies for a generous estimate of the costs, they won't have to worry about the industry lobbying against this kind of coerced cooperation in domestic surveillance.

When you receive paper from the government under FOIA, you are required to pay for the photocopies. Responding to your FOIA request isn't a mission directive, so it doesn't deserve budget money. It's just something the government has to do. You are requiring the government to use resources (toner, paper, time) so you have to pay for them.

Surveillance by government is the same way. Police and three-letter agencies are using engineer time, bandwidth, and potentially rack space of service providers complying with warrants. They compensate providers for those resources.

Similarly, if the police kick down an apartment door, they're supposed to compensate the landlord for the cost of a new door. If your municipal police department wanted to wiretap your cell phone, they would have to pay Verizon/AT&T/whatever a monthly fee just like you do.

Your statements are all valid, but it still doesn't detract from the parent's statement that [sic] something about companies being paid to spy on users is just plain wrong.

your statement is illogical.

Parent broke down why the companies ask for compensation, and it's reasonable. Why should the government get to take up resources for free?

The problem I see is, all this are asked to be kept secret. How much money the Government gives the Telcos, ISPs and websites like Google, Facebook etc. for monitoring people and how much these people charge etc. are being kept secret.

You create a ghost. Create fear of the ghost. Tell people that only you can protect them from the ghost. But you don't tell them how they plan to protect them from the ghost, nor are you willing to disclose how much you spend to protect people from this ghost.

Don't forget - when the ghost doesn't attack you claim credit for stopping the ghost.

Yes. I think, the whole dialogue on terrorism should move away from the abstract concept called 'terrorism'. Any disgruntled group which sees itself as the underdog against a very powerful entity will resort to terrorism. You cannot wipe out terrorism from the face of the earth, like you cannot wipe out car accidents. The governments the world over are asking for enormous powers, selling us the dream that there will not be one innocent life lost because of another terrorist attack. They are dumbing down the actual issues behind these problems.

People should realize that only bringing focus to the real issues and not blanket regulations and restrictions on freedom is going to have some real effect.

Why don't governments create the new laws or policies time bound and specific to particular issues. If they see Al Queda activity in US, make it public. Release information on the organizations. People behind these organizations, the people helping to fund these organizations. Create embargoes on countries and organizations funding these organizations. And do them more effective and open manner than how it is done now.

Fill the media with real issues and educate people who sympathize with terrorist organizations. Give a platform for these people to redress their grievances. Create more opportunities for leaders of supposedly 'terrorist' organizations and to have more debate and dialogue with others.

The data is handed over because a sovereign nation issued a legally binding court order. Google hands over data when required to do so by court order, otherwise it doesn't.

You can't pay Google for private information unless you have a court order, and Google is compelled to hand over data whether or not the feds can pay. The data is not being sold. Google is only being paid for resources it is already legally obligated to spend.

Indeed. I think it is somewhat analogous to the US Army blocking access to the Guardian's website because of the classification of the Snowden leaked documents hosted there.

Everything follows in a logical order when viewed from one perspective, but seen from the perspective of a normal person who cares less about internal procedures and more about general governance it is obvious the emperor has no clothes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/28/us-army-blocks-g...

Why is it wrong?

If the government wanted to have a room in an office building for a long period of time to spy on a company in the sam building it is reasonable to charge rent & for utilities. I don't see how this is different?

(I agree in principle that warrantless spying is wrong. But if a warrant is issued I certainly don't see why a company shouldn't charge for their resource use)

On the other hand, no-one gets compensated for doing their taxes.

In Australia at least the cost of preparing your tax return is tax deductible. For that matter the cost of visiting your accountant in order to do your taxes is tax deductible.

In the US you can deduct the cost of a tax preparer or the cost of DIY tax preparation software if you itemize deductions.

Nope, but everyone has to do them. But not everyone get their door kicked in. Or you could just tax people for the money the state will be paying for people to fill in there taxes ...

Most people take the standard deduction. Would you feel better if they said that was for filling out the paperwork?

Cox Communications charges $2,500 to fulfill a pen register/trap-and-trace order for 60 days, and $2,000 for each additional 60-day-interval. It charges $3,500 for the first 30 days of a wiretap, and $2,500 for each additional 30 days. Thirty days worth of a customer’s call detail records costs $40.

Comcast’s pricing list, which was already leaked to the internet in 2007, indicated that it charges at least $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap, and $750 per month thereafter.

[ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/wiretap-prices/ ]

It would be really interesting if this revenue was Google's 2nd best performing business after Ads.

This is a really common arrangement when the costs involved are non-trivial. Even in civil litigation, complex e-discovery often involves cost recovery for searching through and locating records.

I had a similar experience related to a more typical criminal investigation and an individual computer. There was a warrant signed by a federal magistrate, our counsel reviewed it, and they were professional and respectful of our operational concerns.

The problem here is the secret court, secret warrant, etc. the rest is fine with me, the police should be able to investigate crime with appropriate oversight.

They don't offer anything up with that last point ("bigco's selling data"). As far as I can tell it was pulled from thin air. They're understandably upset -- a lot of us are -- but I don't think that quite justifies making unbased accusations like that (and if it has basis I'd love to hear more).

No, this is not new information. Companies do get paid, a lot, to facilitate this. This was known before the leaks, but leaks confirmed it. Now there are articles all over if you search. Example:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57593273/verizon-at-t-ge...

"In its letter to Markey, AT&T estimated that it collected $24 million in government reimbursements between 2007 and 2011. Verizon, which had the highest fees but says it doesn't charge in every case, reported a similar amount, collecting between $3 million and $5 million a year during the same period."

I'm not sure how I feel about that (making the companies pay for it doesn't seem fair either), but it certainly doesn't leave us with incentives in the right places.

$24 million over a year period paid to AT&T doesn't fit my definition of 'get paid a lot.'

AT&T had profits of (approximately) $7 billion on revenue of $31 B in 2012. So these reimbursements amount to something like 0.015% of revenue, or 0.1% of profits. For a firm that size, there are much greater incentives to lobby for favorable rules on employee health benefits, spectrum allocation, or consumer relations. I mean, over that time period the CEO of AT&T earned about $100 m, so in theory he could afford to take the hit for all that fee revenue personally and still make more money in a year than most people see in a lifetime.

I'm not expressing support for the NSA's activity here, I think this sort of data vacuuming is quite dangerous. But viewed in the context of actual corporate revenues, I don't think it's realistic to say the government is bribing big business here, because the amount they're paying is trivial, and thus largely reflective of the change in the actual operating cost of the corporate data centers.

First line should say 'over a 5 year period.' oops.

I recall cricket was the cheapest. Can I just get a line item on my phone bill for NSA surveillance instead of paying it through my taxes? :)

What is the alternative. Charge zero dollars irrespective of the amount of data requested?

http://gizmodo.com/5898964/this-is-how-much-carriers-charge-...

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