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Comment by jostmey | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry but different standards apply to government than to private industry. It is one thing for industry to monitor customers. It is a whole different ballgame when the government monitors its citizens.

Industry cannot legally arrest people. Government can. Industry cannot forcibly draft men over the age of 18. Government can. Industry cannot force you to pay income tax. Government can. A far tougher standard must be applied to government because only government is allowed to get away with certain things.

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Corporations are not as powerless as you suppose. A corporation can send armed agents into your business to get you to pay fines for bypassing their monopoly (USPS). Corporations can get local and foreign governments to raid citizens and seize their assets and businesses (MPAA Vs. Megaupload). Corporations can and regularly bankrupt ordinary citizens for spurious reasons.

Perhaps more importantly, corporations, thorough their lobbying, all but control the government as it stands today. Very little happens there that they do not direct. The only reason SOPA did not pass was due to corporations expressing their displeasure.

I don't think the article says a different set of standards should apply to one or the other. It does suggest that there might be some political will to enact regulations for stronger privacy protection. It might not be good for Silicon Valley and people working in Silicon Valley, but I personally don't care and I welcome any effort on that front.

How can you possibly believe that? The NSA will just go to the private company and subpeona all the data that it's illegal for them to collect. They can and have done this. Citizens need protection from private corporations just as much as they need protection from the government because there is no meaningful distinction anymore.

You need to read your industrial history of the USA companies have done far far worse things than the US government.

Are you saying that the government should have harsher controls than private industry, or are you saying that privacy intrusion is okay as long as it's not the government doing it?

I think he's pointing out that privacy violations by private industry carry far less risk compared to those by the government, because private industry cannot legally deprive me of life, liberty, or property.

Because the government has the right of violent force over you, it must be far more closely controlled to ensure that opportunity for abuse of that right is minimized.

To say that privacy violations by the government are bad is not to say that such violations by private entities are good, but they are certainly far less costly.

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