Reform corporate surveillance
fsf.org
fsf.org
What's missing from the statement is a plan. How can users get services equal to or better than those offered by Google/Facebook/Yahoo/... without centralized "cloud" computing? How are the developers going to support themselves financially?
I love and support the efforts of FSF. Almost all of my scientific work rests upon a GNU footing. But before distributed software can eat the centralized software world, it has to be equal or better. This is no different from global warming; if solar power were cheap and effective, nobody would be burning coal.
Even when code is open-sourced, and alternatives are available (gitlab, anyone?) users still flock to centralized services like github. I do, with repos at github. I served my own mail, read it with mutt, and filtered my own spam in the past on my own server. GMail is way better at all three of those things, and I don't have to burn a couple of man-days/year keeping configuration up to snuff.
The unstoppable advantage of free software is that it's a ratchet. Whenever something good emerges, it never goes away. If someone can duplicate GMail's functionality in free software, it will be with us until email goes the way of sanskrit.
That's one criterion. For many people, ease of use, spam filtering, and so on are others, that may be more important than absolute guarantees about NSA (or other governments') spying.
Hard to ignore the irony when Google, Facebook and even freakin' Linked In (ugh) are calling to increase protections for peoples' privacy. I don't know what the answer to all of this is - I like free products as much as the next guy - but it seems like a messed up situation. If the NSA were stopped from collecting our data, that would only prevent one party from doing so. Even if you don't use Facebook or gmail these companies still track you so it's pretty hard to actually keep your privacy unless you hardly use the internet (and from public computers) and don't have a cellphone. I don't think it should be that hard.
Google, Facebook, et al, collect data in exchange for a service. You can use incognito mode for Google, or just not use Facebook at all.
The NSA collects your data whether you want it to or not, and you have no say other than to just not create any data.
In the same way that Google has access to your data if it's in their datacenters and you use their services, the NSA assumes access to your data if it's within their abilities to get it, and they find you slightly suspicious.
It's really not the same thing and claiming it is the same thing is disingenuous.
>Google, Facebook, et al, collect data in exchange for a service. You can use incognito mode for Google, or just not use Facebook at all.
>The NSA collects your data whether you want it to or not, and you have no say other than to just not create any data.
The contrast between these two sentences is what makes your point weak.
There might be a difference between corporate and government surveillance, but you haven't approached it.
The difference is that Google, Facebook, et al are opt-in. The NSA offers you no such choice.
With the remarkable penetration of things like google analytics and the ilk, this may not be quite that simple.
Don't give us this crap that there is a difference between the two when your point is so self-defeating.
FSF FUD again. Can they substantiate their claims?
Maybe they refer to the fact that Microsoft indeed does share 0-days with NSA[1].
1: http://www.dailydot.com/news/bloomberg-microsoft-zero-day-ex...
Regardless: sharing zero-day exploits ahead of time is way different from actively inserting backdoor code into the OS.
It would be naive, if not outright dishonest to believe that exchanging 0days is not for offensive purposes, especially after knowing the extent NSA actions go, and of course remembering Stuxnet and Flame.