I used Google as an example but it could very well be any corporation - local or international - and unless you believe every company in the world is a part of PRISM or is handing data to the government, my example holds but without the specifics.
Thank you for bringing up this point though, I was hoping someone would (and you can choose to not believe me if you like). Making the connection of major companies to government surveillance outside of the security-minded (ie. people who keep up or are educated on the Snowden leaks) wouldn't make this connection. Which I treat as supporting evidence for my speculation on why the "common layman" doesn't care.
Those larger tech companies you mention are on the other side of the fence when it comes to surveillance and privacy.
And I'm not even talking about the accusations of complicity (or have we forgotten that was the opening salvo in the NSA revelations, followed by a boilerplate non-denial and an eery silence?), but the fact that these companies regularly violate privacy laws (at least outside the US) and lobby against privacy protection.
Especially for me as a non-American, the US government and US tech companies like Google and Facebook are two sides of the same coin.
Of course they (or their employees) don't get involved, and they shouldn't. That would be like Elsevier getting involved with supporting Open Access.
Big corporations don't generally share data with each other. It's more like the government, Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, and numerous black hat spyware vendors are all monitoring you, and none of them trust anybody else. People inside Google were fucking pissed when the NSA spying practices were revealed, people inside Apple regularly block Google's apps for privacy concerns, people inside Google are regularly battling against spyware, people inside Facebook try to get you to share everything about you and your friends voluntarily while Google tries to provide alternatives that don't involve giving Facebook the keys to your life (but do involve giving them to Google), people inside Microsoft copy & scrape Google to try and grab whatever data Google happens to have, people inside the government are spying on all of the above.
Believing that everybody is out to get you is a sign of paranoia. Believing that people and organization act in their own self-interest is generally a pretty accurate model.
Your first point is somewhat valid for a company (although national spying capabilities have been used to favor national industries) but as a citizen I'm more concerned about the blatant disrespect for people's privacy, especially if you're not American.
The second point is irrelevant if you're not American. Also, can you name a company that endured severe, tangible repercussions for their spying?
I didn't say anything of the sort - just that major tech companies don't seem to really care about their reputation in relation to the NSA snooping. I'm not saying they've built in backdoors or anything either way, I'm just saying if they have, I don't think the average consumer seems to really care about it. Heck, I'd bet most of Hacker News is still using Google, Facebook, Microsoft products etc. and their reputations have hardly been tarnished by the revelations.
Reading this, it's like the Snowden leaks never happened. Large companies should basically be regarded as appendages of the government because there's good money in acting as a government contractor and providing data on request. In this respect, privacy from companies ~= privacy from government.
Indeed. While we're at it, let's not forget the PRISM [1] program, or the fact that "privacy from advert companies" does not imply "privacy from all surveillance".
Wait... But... I mean... Of all the companies I can imagine having a legitimate interest in private information, the government seems to be at the top of that list. Please help me understand your perspective.
Exactly this. If the companies gets a court order to turn over data, they don't have much choice. And smaller companies probably have even less choice as they cannot afford expensive lawyers to appeal.
That said, the companies maybe doesn't do enough to resist but they surely do more than most smaller companies could. The laws needs to be changed to stop this. As a side note, I am not an American so I expect NSA to grab at my data, it is their job after all - to gather foreign intelligence.
I use several American services (Gmail, dropbox, facebook, etc.) but doing that is a calculated risk. Entrusting your data to a third party is always a calculated risk and I chose to take that risk. PRISM revelations has not especially surprised me as I already assumed that the US would/could spy on me since I am a foreigner.
Information and data is the modern day 'gold'. There's much more value to tying an account to something that with negligible doubt identifies them than just selling it to advertisers. It lets you create sophisticated models and track and model users' behavior across services, and even outside the digital domain.
There are also extrinsic benefits outside advertising. Apple, for instance, is also a member of PRISM and one can only imagine how many other surveillance programs across the world that remain classified. Companies are undoubtedly 'compensated' for their involvement in these programs, and the more information they have and can gain - the more valuable their participation would be seen as.
This conflict of interest is why I think we will never see any sort of significant guarantee of privacy at the federal level in the US. The more information companies obtain, the more information the government has access to.
I am a lot more bothered about private companies doing surveillance than I am about whatever NSA / GCHQ are doing.
For a long time my assumption has been that well funded government agencies can, and do, slurp everything I type. (Even though that breaks several laws.)
That has little to no effect on me. But private companies do - they lose the data; they're open to blackmail or corruption; they're insecure; they inaccurate; etc.
Many more people are caused harm by Equifax listing someone else's debt problems under their name than by the NSA doing whatever it is they do.
This post is not saying that government surveillance is acceptable, or that we shouldn't do stuff to stop it!
In what way are companies not trivially compared to states (governments) in this context (surveillance)? You're being intellectually disingenuous.
I mean, you completely (amusingly) misquoted that sentence. I said "it isn't hard to argue that [...]". I did not make an absolute statement that it is (a violation)... Come on now.
They all do, and in most of them there are obvious errors in processes or rights assignments. It is pretty rare to come across a company that takes the threat from within serious. That's the whole reason Snowden could do what he did and if the NSA gets it wrong then there is a fair chance that your average corporation has faults as well.
and these large "private sector" companies, are they actually private sector or are they really just a front to make them look like they're private sector companies, when in reality are owned wholly or in part by entities specifically for the purpose of dragnet surveillance by intelligence services whilst selling their services "as a convenience" to other companies?
Given how we've been sold devices for convenience that it turns out are being used against us for many years, I would say that it's just as likely that this is happening on all levels.
With what we're gradually finding out since the Snowden Revelations, one can naturally assume: Any mass market product which appears to make life easier for a large enough percentage of the market whilst potentially compromising privacy/security is almost certain to be used in such a manner - that goes for consumer products as well as commercial.
What I care about are companies that simply have no moral compass. If no one at Google or Facebook think that they're pushing a little too hard to get ever more data about their users, then something is terribly wrong at those companies.
Google is particularly fascinating, their employees protest when their parent company want to be a supplier to the US military, but apparently they have no moral objection to building detailed profiles on users (and non-users) in order to sell them more junk that they don't need and can't afford.
The whole data collection thing is so abstract that the same people who don't want their employer to kill people with drone can't see the immorality of invading people privacy. If that's the case, then how can we expect the layman to understand or care?
I agree with your point entirely but I wonder if more people outside of tech would care if only they understood what these companies were doing with their personal data.
The irony to me is that they have two of the worst offenders when it comes to mass surveillance advertised on the side of the page. Facebook and Google, despite their attempts to say they weren't aware of the NSA gaining access to their info, are probably just as much of a threat to privacy as the NSA total information awareness.
It goes like this: let the private companies run wild when it comes to privacy violations, and then gobble up all their data via national security letters, subpoenas, secret taps via NSA tech, and warrants for higher profile stuff and then only if desperate, and that is assuming an adversarial nature between the private sector and the government. In fact the C-levels are often directly approached and goaded into silently and secretly cooperating. (and if they refuse, ala Quest, they get targeted by the system)
Of course there is the matter that it is governments who will take the surveillance information and then act upon it, making them the slightly more evil evil in the room, but that does not negate the issue of private sector mass surveillance that is for sale to the highest bidder.
I've been one of those who has ranted about the dangers of the NSA since the late 90's, and now that it's a mainstream issue, it seems to have taken on a "oh yeah, the NSA is bad! stop that surveillance" kind of hipster social wave that lacks any kind of detailed nuance or explores the origins and destinations of this admittedly huge issue.
Yes, the surveillance is unconstitutional. So have been many of the other activities our American oligarchic powers have been engaged in over the past decade, including the assassination of American citizens without due process.
All of these things point to a much more deeply rooted issue than simply "surveillance", namely, that our fundamental governmental structure is in ruins as a result of a combination of corruption and apathy that has gutted the already precariously positioned checks and balances system.
Russ Tice has said he held in his hand the wiretap papers for a then hopeful senator from IL, who happens to now be in the Whitehouse. Are we really so naive as to think that Obama is clean coming from such a notoriously corrupt political arena? The intelligence agencies have been using the same techniques for ages, namely, bribery and threats. Russ Tice has also said he held in his hands the papers for judges who now sit on the SCOTUS, and FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has a source who was responsible for vetting potential judges (up to SCOTUS level), and according to her, he said that anytime a judge came up clean, he was immediately removed from the roster of potentials. The implication being that only controllable people are allowed.
The point is that all three branches of government are corrupt and no longer (if ever, don't mistake that phrase for golden day idealism) functioning as servants of the people and defenders of the constitution (I wonder what the legal importance of oaths really is these days, because I seem to be surrounded by oath-breakers(USMC combat vet)).
And of the three branches, it is the executive which lords it's power over the other two.
The really sad part is that it seems to be the private sector which lords power of the executive. This is the trail of breadcrumbs that truly concerned people need to start discussing, researching, and following. It's very difficult to do. It's hard to track down the global supranational corporate structure. I am still often referencing this paper: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf
Oh, and as far as technological surveillance goes, there are two main starting points. 1) open source EVERYTHING (especially our trackers ahem cellphones) 2) decentralize everything possible. That is how we gain control of our data back... but that's becoming more and more difficult.
Honestly, I think RMS was simply a man far ahead of his time, and the history books (if he isn't wiped from their pages) will refer to him as a visionary in a sea of overly pragmatic corporatists who failed to see the big picture.
I could go on quite a bit about this, but that's where I'll leave it for now.
Thank you for bringing up this point though, I was hoping someone would (and you can choose to not believe me if you like). Making the connection of major companies to government surveillance outside of the security-minded (ie. people who keep up or are educated on the Snowden leaks) wouldn't make this connection. Which I treat as supporting evidence for my speculation on why the "common layman" doesn't care.
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