Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

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And that, folks, is why we as engineers and hackers have a moral duty to be very selective in the types of work we take on and for whom.

Thank you. I was going to make the same point, you've done it well.

Moreover: this is why the Snowden, PRISM, NSA/FBI, surveillance, privacy, and other stories matter on HN.

Many of those working for startups are contributing directly (and occasionally indirectly) to the datastreams which are being harvested. I've never felt comfortable with Facebook and the ethics of its leadership, and I've been increasingly concerned about Google (I consider it to have lost rather than sold its soul). Both are far too actively carrying the NSA's water (as I've pointedly told Google multiple times).

How to answer the challenge ... I really don't know, I'm at a loss here.

I'm not sure how much you can really blame Facebook or Google here. My understanding is that a corporation is legally compelled to comply with a National Security Letter if it receives one, which is far from voluntary collusion.

Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see where your dissatisfaction is coming from.

I'm not sure how much you can really blame Facebook or Google

By creating an infrastructure in which the data are collected, centralized, individually identified, unencrypted, and specifically associated with vast trails of other nominally unassociated online information (search history, logins to other sites, analytics on other sites, etc.).

This is in the sense of Lawrence Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. The architectures of Facebook, Google, and other social networks, advertising networks, mobile phone systems, phone apps, PC-based snooping (inclusive of Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, and other systems), etc., etc.

These systems are designed in ways which maximize their utility to a national surveillance network, despite alternative architectures being available. As an example of alternatives, Twitter and Reddit, at the very least, don't demand / promote "real names", or (mostly) track information across third-party sites, at least not to the extent Facebook and Google are doing.

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