The post sought to position Microsoft and Google on the moral high ground, linking them to the values of the founding fathers.
If they wanted the moral high ground, they should have sued years ago. They've lost my trust, and no PR exercise is going to win it back.
Google has received high marks from the EFF for fighting for users' privacy rights in the courts and in congress for three years:
https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013
https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2012
https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2011
This lawsuit is just a continuation of what they have already been doing for years.
They lied straight to our faces and thought we would just accept that and continue to buy and/or use their stuff.
Microsoft reiterated their position, explained that yes, they review every order, they do not just dump data on all customers over some private link, the encryption is sound, but of course they need to hand over data they do have.
If I'm wrong on this, I'd certainly appreciate a correction.
Its one thing to be forced to deliver some kind of information against your will. It something else if you do it like a shop, providing goods in return for revenue.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-c...
And, in the face of not knowing, why default to an explanation other than what has been given to us?
There is a difference between extreme skepticism in the face of one story, and postulating hypothetical scenarios that have equal or higher burdens or proof, and are less likely or more difficult to demonstrate.
In fact, in terms of logic, the two are diametrically opposed.
I'm sure they want to win these cases, but they wouldn't do this in complete secret, would they? They want the public to know about it, hoping this way it gets them to gain a tiny bit of trust back.
This goes beyond simple diffusion of responsibility, leaders at Google and Microsoft were complicit in the crimes the NSA committed and did nothing to stop them.
IBM was able to eventually live down its involvement in the holocaust. In today's world there is no excuse for a modern tech company led by wealthy, enlightened people to commit these kinds of wrongs. Ironically, it's as if Google's mantra became "Be Evil".
Such doings (empowering the NSA, IRS, etc. to snoop on innocent people for the express purpose of entrapping them or contriving other evidence) are pretty much the definition of exactly the kind of insidious evil that one would hope to be able to trust its service providers not to engage in.
My prediction is that within a few months as viable open source alternatives for Google and Microsoft services become available, we'll see lots of people leaving their cloud platforms/services.
Then there's the news report that corroborates this, implying not even the leaders of the companies had any idea.
I mean, again, they could all be lying...but Occam's Razor and all that.
gut feeling based on existing evidence and experience.
As time goes on the less and less reliable I find the media to be when gauging public sentiment. 90% of the people I've talked to about the NSA scandal, all across the political spectrum, have been horrified by the government's behavior. As depressed as I get watching the poor news coverage of the scandal, and the implication that people don't care about it, or are more concerned with "getting Snowden" than what he revealed, just simply talking to people makes me feel a lot better.
Yes, it is "public debate" in the sense that it is a debate that is taking place on a public forum. That wasn't my point.
Just last night, I was asked about the leaks by a 50/60ish bus driver after mentioning I worked in tech - who as far as I could tell, had no particular previous inclination towards privacy activism or technology.
We should expect a very limited amount of carefully parsed information to be revealed as a result of this suit. Nothing more, nothing less.
Totally irrelevant, because:
We know for a fact that the NSA has installed hardware at all these companies (Microsoft/Skype, Google, Apple, Facebook, AOL, Paltalk, etc.). They don't need to put in any official requests for user data to get the data.
Furthermore, we also know that 75% of all communication data is being intercepted/covered by the NSA (today! Work in progress...). Why would any official requests for user data be relevant, given these circumstances?
The NSA has installed hardware on cables, but that's been known for nearly a decade. Intercepting unencrypted communications isn't much of a feat. It just takes some time and money.
> Another newsletter entry stated that NSA already had pre-encryption access to Outlook email. "For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption."
> Microsoft's co-operation was not limited to Outlook.com. An entry dated 8 April 2013 describes how the company worked "for many months" with the FBI – which acts as the liaison between the intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley on Prism – to allow Prism access without separate authorization to its cloud storage service SkyDrive.
Would you honestly believe the NSA would want that from a company like Microsoft but not from a company like Google (whose main activity consists of the collection of data in order to build the most precise user profiles to advance the targeting of their ads = ROI)?
The installations were also mentioned in the slides published by the Guardian, you should read all of them.
This also in no way indicates any sort of hardware. Microsoft replied and made it clear they review each order, then comply as required. Perhaps they have a fast review and quick compliance system (if you got as many requests as they do, you'd do the same or close shop).
None of the documents released indicate any sort of hardware installation. Provide specific cites. As-is, you and other folks saying these things are muddying the waters. When the dust settles, it'll be clear there wasn't super-duper decrypto hardware secretly placed all over Microsoft's internal software. Then people will say "oh, they were just lying" and ignore the real issues of oversight, legality, and so on.
> Totally irrelevant ...
Irrelevant only to people who don't understand politics. The NSA isn't asking for cooperation from these companies because they actually need it, but because it provides political cover. In the * * itstorm that will surely result from future revelations of spying on U.S. citizens, the NSA can honestly say, "These companies cooperated in data collection."
> Why would any official requests for user data be relevant, given these circumstances?
As is often said, you may not care about politics, but politics cares about you.