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Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

I've been saying the same thing for a while. Many companies need to form some sort of alliance against government censorship and surveillance, not just in US, but globally. One company alone, even one as big as Google, can't stand up to a government like the Chinese one. 100 big American companies that are vital for their economy, might be able to do it.

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Ditto. I'm of the notion that the government can't put the entire company in jail. Could you imagine if Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo were effectively put out of business for these decisions? The repercussions would be devastating. Even placing a lot of key officials from these companies in jail would have lasting effects.

To me this is the prime definition of "too big to fail". It would only require a small percentage of these companies uniting "for the greater good" to produce meaningful results. Not cowing to the NSA is not treason in this instance so I can't even possibly understand why complying with "laws that aren't on any books so are they really laws?" has any positive merit.

Yes, but they won't do it until it hurts their bottom line. If I owned a European cloud business of any kind I would be heavily advertising to the US market right now. When customers start leaving major US internet companies because they no longer feel that they adequately protect their data and privacy, things will change.

IMO the very nature of the centralization of power works against individual rights, one of which is (arguably) privacy. As corporations grow they tend to lose a sense of the customer as a means, and instead choose which type of customer they need in order to maximize profits (or other goals).

Corporations (or any large centralized power base) will optimize for the most exploitable customer or user base, culturing this base if possible. To help broaden a target user base corporations need strong centralized governments more than they need even sizable (but less "culturable") segments of their market base.

Upshot: mature corporations (political parties / religions / etc) will not typically stand up to a centralized government on behalf of a rights-demanding fraction of their market... indeed, typically, they will do the opposite.

And let's face it, it's not like corporate America needs the government's help to abuse you based on your private information. Not in a day and age where you can be denied a job because of your credit history or kicked off your insurance because of your health records. People throw off tons of data, and companies have been working for decades to figure out how to use it to screw you.

Well that sounds great if the large companies fight the good fight. If they don't, you have a very large, unaccountable companies, able to fight the governments to get [lower taxes/lower wages/monopolies]

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