Hacker News Reader

Comment by melange | Hacker News Reader

Surely Google and Facebook do this too. Why are we surprised that the government does it?

Because it's not their information to play with. If I willingly give my information to Google or Facebook, I don't expect the government to get their hands on it immediately and begin interrogating me via proxy.

There have been what... 3, 4 deaths from terrorism this year in the USA? And 6,000+ deaths by way of guns/criminal activity? Doesn't really seem to be worth their trouble to be snooping through who I talk to and who I hang out with.

Most people don't willingly give the information to Google or Facebook. They give it unwittingly.

Also, by your logic, it's not your information anymore - you have given it to Google and Facebook, which makes it their information to give to the government.

Exactly. I understand that if I give away my social profile and/or pictures to a large corporation that they may be abused by said corporation. That's what corporations do.

I choose not to do so, I don't use facebook or gmail, but if I did I would only expect them to be using and abusing it, not some secret government program.

But why would such an expectation be reasonable? Surely once you have given the information away, it's their business what they do with it?

Precisely: many if not most websites have Google Analytics JS, so you're being tracked around the web (ghost profile) even without a google account.

Google and Facebook are in principle accountable to the government (the FTC, for example) for their safeguarding of users' privacy. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com