
Cowards - kevinwmerritt
http://uncrunched.com/2013/06/07/cowards/
======
jmduke
There's a meme on Reddit that revolves around 'so brave': basically calling
people/posts/comments out for obvious pandering.

This reads like a pastiche of Keith Olbermann, all bravado and empty gusto.
Arrington writes:

 _What has these people, among the wealthiest on the planet, so scared that
they find themselves engaging in these verbal gymnastics to avoid telling a
simple truth?_

and then acknowledges that doing so, if it meant breaking FISA, is illegal.

 _Because their lawyers might be telling them what they are required to do.
But their soul should be telling them what they must do._

What the hell does this even mean?

Listen, I completely agree with the central premise that we need to have an
actual conversation both about privacy in the age of Facebook and the Kafka-
esque way the U.S. government has engineered these catch-22 gag orders. But
given Arrington's experience both with AOL and with the overall notion of
privacy, I'd expect something with a little more substance and perspective.

~~~
sage_joch
> What the hell does this even mean?

It means that if telling the truth is illegal, they should have the courage to
break the law.

~~~
scythe
Y'know, I'd like to believe I'd do that in this situation, too. But people are
more generous in theory than in practice. You have to realize: Mark Zuckerberg
isn't just looking out for Mark Zuckerberg by posting what he did. He has a
family, a social life, and a whole lot of people at Facebook who depend on
him. To whom, perhaps, it would not be fair for Zuck to martyr himself on the
great gallows of the United States of Atrocity in futile protest of its
horrifying surveillance subterfuge.

It's very easy to ignore this sort of thing _when it 's not your ass on the
line_. Bradley Manning had a different kind of freedom, the kind that comes
with nobody around you who can get hurt. The feds turned Sabu, the infamous
LulzSec hacker, by _threatening his three-year-old daughter_. The United
States government is not above such tactics.

I don't, frankly, believe that Arrington himself would behave much differently
in the same situation. Life is not that easy.

Or, in the timeless words of Robert Oppenheimer:

 _" I am become Death, destroyer of worlds."_

~~~
dasil003
Whoah, hold on, I don't think anyone is saying this is easy or there aren't
risks for Zuckerberg. However to say he shouldn't stand up against tyranny and
abuse of government power because he has responsibility to parties x, y and z
is _exactly_ the line of thinking that allows totalitarian governments to
thrive. Government power is not absolute, that power is derived from the
people. No one person can stand up to the government, but the government can't
fight everyone, and if Google, Facebook, et al stood up to them and signed
some light on this issue it would not be so easily papered over by the spooks.

Beyond that, in terms of public surveillance, Zuckerberg has real power in
this sphere. You could even argue that he has more power than any individual
has ever had. Certainly there is no bigger global database of personal
information than Facebook.

It doesn't matter if Arrington is being a hypocrite. It doesn't matter if _I
'm_ being a hypocrite. Zuckerberg, and indeed all technologists _should_ stand
up on this issue. If we love what computers can do, we owe it to the world to
fight so that they don't become the Orwellian tool of control that
totalitarian regimes have always dreamed of. We can't put the genie back in
the bottle—data is going to be out there—but we _can_ force the government to
be more transparent. We can stand up and say that a handful of isolated
terrorist attacks is not justification to ratchet up governmental power to
something a thousand times more terrifying than any homicidal extremist ever
could be. This is fundamentally one of the most important issues of our time,
certainly far more important than the fate of any one company.

~~~
vadiml
Risking one’s own well being to help the community is basically a definition
of an altruistic behaviour. Nobody and i mean NOBODY can reach and keep the
position of CEO of big international corporation by exhibiting altruistic
tendencies. The environment is too competitive and it promotes egoism and
punishes altruism. (BTW, The same reasoning stand for political leadership
too). So, I don’t think we can really expect this call to be heard…

~~~
e_w
Sorry, but this is a textbook example of oversimplification.

~~~
vadiml
I'd say it is basic game theory and statistics. If we have population of
individuals who exhibit three types of behaviour: A - altruistic (1% of
population) E - egoistic (1% ...) N - Normal (randomly A or B 98% of
population) Let's them play a game where E - type has muuuuch better chances
to win.... It is obvious that the proportion of E - types in the winner
population will grow during the tournament. This explain the current state of
world affaires: Usually 'Supreme Leader' is the "biggest bastard of them
all"...

~~~
wiml
It's basic extrapolating-without-data is what it is. You have a theory, well,
let's call it a _hypothesis_ ("a person who reaches CEO level is someone who
will not behave altruistically"). You even have a simple model which mostly
agrees with the hypothesis (not completely, I'll note) and which relies on
several more untested hypotheses. Both the hypothesis and the model predict
certain things about the world. You can check! Are those predictions borne out
in reality? (˙˙˙ʎʃʃɐǝɹ ʇoᴎ :ɹǝʍsu∀)

------
tokenadult
Rather than calling anyone a coward, I will acknowledge that standing up for
freedom is never easy. I know through direct personal acquaintance people who
spent hard prison time during Taiwan's transition from dictatorship to
democracy, who were arrested after leading peaceful public protest
demonstrations of the kind that happen every day here in the United States. I
have seen what kind of sustained effort--and, yes, individual courage--it
takes to move a society from a default condition of tyranny to a default
condition of freedom and rule by the people.

Rather than name-calling, let's learn how to fight for freedom. I posted
yesterday, to NO upvotes,

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840000)

a link to the free online book From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual
Framework for Liberation by Gene Sharp,

[http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf](http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf)

an experienced activist and supporter of people power democratic movements
that originated under some of the world's toughest dictatorships. We can learn
a lot more from him and his writings and those of his collaborators

[http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html](http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html)

than we can learn from anyone on Uncrunched or TechCrunch or any high-tech
publication about how to win freedom even while under intense pressure from
dictators. Try it. Don't decry anyone else for lacking courage. Build up your
own courage. Build up your own effective communication with other freedom
fighters, so that the movement for freedom has solidarity, unity of purpose,
and resilience. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. (Anyone can participate:
as a foreign student in Taiwan in the early 1980s, I was able to turn Chinese-
language speech contests for foreign students into opportunities to express
dissent from the dictatorship in the hearing of government officials of the
dictatorship. This just takes courage and preparation.)

~~~
x0x0
It's a hell of a lot easier when you're rich beyond belief; have access to the
best legal counsel; have an enormous media platform; have access to lobbyists;
have cultivated personal connections to legislators; can pick a very public
fight which the NSA dreads getting dragged into; and can threaten obama / the
democrats' link to a rich, donor heavy constituency. What John Kiriakou did
took courage. What these ceos need is a hell of a lot less.

edit: We've seen how these ceos can react when they care, ie when something
threatens their income.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA)

edit2: punctuation

~~~
pekk
Strange that you think these problems will be resolved by attacking one party.

------
edw519
First they came for the terrorists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was
not a terrorist.

Then they came for the whistle blowers, and I did not speak out-- Because I
was not a whistle blower.

Then they came for the illegal aliens, and I did not speak out-- Because I was
not an illegal alien.

Then they came for the hackers--and there was no one left to speak for us.

~~~
tptacek
Whistleblowers and illegal aliens might be morally equivalent to trade
unionists and socialists, but terrorists are not equivalent to communists; I
said nothing when they came for the terrorists because the terrorists were
trying to murder my children.

~~~
iandanforth
Two points

1\. The US has killed many many more children in its retaliation for attacks
than any so called 'terror' organization has.
([http://www.policymic.com/articles/20884/is-america-like-
adam...](http://www.policymic.com/articles/20884/is-america-like-adam-lanza-u-
s-drone-strikes-have-killed-176-children-in-pakistan-alone))

2\. The fear of your children dying is the ultimate weapon for people to
control you.

There is a strange dichotomy between the pride parents of soldiers have in
their child's courage to defend liberty, and the 'do-anything-it-takes-to-
protect-my-babies' mindset that seems to pervade the civilian population. One
leads to people standing up, the other, cowering.

~~~
tptacek
I am not sure what your point is here, unless it is to argue that communists
_are_ morally equivalent to terrorists.

Also, a question: do you think there is anyone online reading HN that has not
already heard this line of argument, that both governments and terrorists kill
children?

Finally, not that I think it's necessary to rebut your post point by point,
but: I'm not ok with the USG doing _anything_ to protect my kids. But I am
just fine with them going after actual terrorists.

~~~
bambax
> _Also, a question: do you think there is anyone online reading HN that has
> not already heard this line of argument, that both governments and
> terrorists kill children?_

So? Does this make the argument wrong? Or does this mean that arguments that
have been used once, cannot be used again? Arguments as toilet paper, in some
way?

I'm French. France was occupied by Nazi Germany (as every American I ever
speak to likes to remind me).

 _Resistants_ were ordinary French people who blew up trains in order to make
the life of Germans in France as difficult as possible -- and of course German
propaganda called them terrorists. I'm not putting this word in quotes,
because of course that's what they were. They were trying to terrify the
occupiers. It was a good thing.

Terrorists try to murder your children because your compatriots murder theirs.

~~~
Dylan16807
It's not that simple. When 'terrorists' are in their home country fighting the
occupiers, it is sometimes justified. When they go into another country to
attack civilians any justification of fighting for freedom is lost. As a
category 'terrorist' is imprecise and problematic, and likely better off not
being used.

~~~
bambax
Agree totally. The word "terrorist" is useless. It's even less useful when
used against anyone who hasn't yet been convicted, in order to justify
bypassing normal judicial due process (as the parent was implying, and as many
countries have done, including the UK and, shamelessly, France).

The only way for the terrorists to win is to transform modern democracies into
paranoid, self-centered, hysteric societies.

Terrorists appear to be winning so far, but it's a long game. We should really
not play their game.

------
saalweachter
I love the guilty-until-proven-innocent angle of these personal attacks
against CEOs and companies.

There is literally no evidence anyone could produce which would prove to
anyone's satisfaction that (a) Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc don't hand over
every last shred of data they have to the NSA, the KGB, and whatever China's
equivalent is, or that (b) the CEOs of the respective companies didn't
personally sign off on every single violation of privacy while kicking
puppies. Corporations can't have alibis. Mark Zuckerberg can't say, "Oh, I was
in Cincinnati for the last 5 years, and I don't have cell coverage there, so I
can't possibly have been involved."

I usually avoid defending billionaires, because they can dry their tears on
their giant stacks of money, but so far this is just a he-said-she-said, and
if all of the tech companies are saying they're innocent, it's the
responsibility of the accusers to pony up some evidence they're guilty. Slide
shows are one thing, but if you want to prove to me that the system does what
you say it does, we need a document dump: millions of random emails, Facebook
messages, whatever that have been illegally accessed through this system,
which could plausibly not have been accessed without the kind of far reaching
access that the tech giants are being accused of having provided.

~~~
polarix
The best hope for evidence would be engineering and construction documentation
of the reporting mechanisms.

~~~
joesb
And, if given those document, why would you trust it? They could still be
lying. If you don't trust what they are saying now, why would you trust any
document created by them?

------
fauigerzigerk
_" Or to put it another way, who the hell needs “direct access” or “back
doors” when companies are building “secure portals” for them instead?"_

The extent of his confusion is breathtaking. Apparently very few people get
what this is all about. The real question is this:

Does the government (a) mine content and/or metadata in these service
providers' databases for suspect activity, or (b) can it only access specific
accounts after naming the account holder?

What happened at Verizon is (a). Page and Zuckerberg say it's not what happens
at Google and Facebook.

What Page and Zuckerberg meant when they were talking about "scale" is that
the government cannot mine their databases for suspects. Not directly, not
indirectly, not through a secure portal or in any other way.

The government can and does make requests (lots of them) to have specific
accounts opened, and what Google/Facebook apparently do is to make that
process technically more efficient via a secure portal.

~~~
mshron
I agree, this is the question. And the answer is "both". From the NY Times
article:

> FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep
> for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with
> the orders said. There were 1,856 such requests last year, an increase of 6
> percent from the year before.

Imagine a 2x2 matrix of intelligence requests, with one side being "narrow" vs
"broad" and the other being "short" vs "long" duration. Verizon was long and
broad, the worst kind.

The tech companies are trying to imply that they were short and narrow, at
least most of the time, and the journalists are trying to imply that they were
long and broad, but never come out and say it because they have no evidence.
If we had better transparency about FISA, we could answer this question
ourselves. Just knowing how many requests were for individual user's data
would be extremely helpful.

------
Aqueous
There are cowards and then there are people who willfully exaggerate. A
backdoor implies unfettered access to data for batch collection and
processing. That's what this story was about at the beginning - the government
was indiscriminately collecting and possibly analyzing your private data using
some sort of massive, sinister Big Data operation, the scale of which we can
not even conceive, and these big web companies were essentially handing them
the keys to their telecommunications networks and telling them to go wild.
This has been downgraded again and again, now to a few websites constructing a
"secure mailbox." Most of us, including Arrington, know exactly what that
means. A secure portal/mailbox is exactly what it sounds like: it is the
equivalent of sending someone e-mail with a curated collection of data, except
for instead of sending an e-mail you are posting it to a private web page
accessible through some sort of authenticated login page. And if this data is
only in response to a FISA warrant or subpoena and only regarding data posted
by non-citizens, suddenly your outrage begins to look a little melodramatic,
and what's happening begins to look a lot like what we already knew was
happening for years. Just because we've known about it for years doesn't make
it right, but can we at least admit that the novelty of the original story is
long gone?

~~~
wavefunction
It's more about seizing the moment of widespread outrage to effect change,
rather than ho-humming like a jaded hipster.

~~~
Aqueous
The line between 'seizing' widespread outrage and 'manufacturing' it is
perilously thin.

------
zhemao
The system the NYTimes article outlines is still quite different from what the
original leak suggested. According to the Times article, the requested data
isn't placed into the locked mailbox until the FISA request is reviewed by
somebody at the company. This is nowhere near the same level of access as what
the PRISM leak suggested. So if what the Times article says is true,
Zuckerberg and Page's statements weren't misleading at all. They really do
"review each and every request."

The fact that they've built special systems for giving the government the data
is not too surprising or scandalous. If I ran a site getting the same number
of FISA requests that Google and Facebook presumably get, I'd probably also
design a special system to make the process more convenient and secure. Short
of openly challenging the NSA in court, this is probably the best response we
could hope for. It gives the company control over what data is released and is
much more secure than a back door which could be compromised.

~~~
Achshar
Did you even read the NYT article? They said requests can be very broad, like
logs for certain search terms and people staying in the company building for
weeks with all the data being gathered in government laptops. That is pretty
much realtime and "direct access".

~~~
danso
Which NYT article are you referring to? Do you mean this?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-
companies-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-
bristling-concede-to-government-surveillance-efforts.html?pagewanted=2&hp)

> _In one recent instance, the National Security Agency sent an agent to a
> tech company’s headquarters to monitor a suspect in a cyberattack, a lawyer
> representing the company said. The agent installed government-developed
> software on the company’s server and remained at the site for several weeks
> to download data to an agency laptop._

Where in that paragraph or the ones surrounding it does it say that Google or
Facebook was the company involved? Don't you think that if these incidents
involved either company, that they would be named here?

------
btilly
Nice. Quote the NY Times article describing how things work, and fail to quote
the bit where the employees tasked with responding to FISA orders, and who
were possibly involved in the program, were legally not allowed to inform the
CEO of what they were doing.

CEOs who are not informed can release statements indicating the depth of their
ignorance without being deliberately dishonest.

That said, the alleged situation frankly astounds me. The government SHOULD
NOT have employees at companies devoting company resources to projects that
the people running those companies are not allowed to know about. But that is
exactly what the NY Times claimed.

~~~
reeses
First, since we do not know the information obtained, we can't say if the CEO
or CFO should be informed.

If the scope of what they were required to deliver included information that
could have an impact on the financial disclosures of the company[1] then,
under Sarbanes-Oxley, they are at least required to put controls in place to
communicate or prevent inaccurate financial reporting. This could also be why
the CFO was not involved in the denials, because they've at least separated
NTK.

As for the portal, the lowest common denominator would be an ftp server. Maybe
they put it on fbiguy3@gmail.com's Google Drive so he had to log in. I'd like
to think I'd encrypt it with a huge whopping GPG key, email it from a gmail to
a yahoo address under my control, and ask,"Did you get that?" but I know I'd
just piss down my leg and give them what they wanted.

Finally, Google is rather proud of the predictions or observations it can make
based on (they say) trends in search queries. For example, it is now taken as
fact that "Google can predict the flu better than the CDC/WHO/etc." I would
not be surprised if Google and other companies could tell at least how many
FISA requests have probably been generated by segmenting requests for related
searches. (Of course, LexisNexis, FindLaw, and the like would have even better
information when paying customers do their due diligence on compliance with
unreasonable requests.)

[1] E.g., Send us all credit card information for customers from outside the
USA.

------
dylangs1030
An article that waxes poetic, yet is so very hollow and devoid of realism.

What would you have these companies do? Band together in a mighty ring of
technological resources and begin a Privacy Revolution?

This is unrealistic. As an American, I am saddened and angered by the recent
news of the past two days. I am disgusted with what our government has done -
what it has hidden from us, to take advantage of us unawares.

But we need to consolidate our anger. We have to aim it precisely, and arm
ourselves against the proper enemy. It will not help the tech community to
bicker amongst ourselves and be disappointed with CEOs for what the NSA has
done. This community has great resources. Let those resources stand. Experts
from every tech center in the country, across industries spanning finance,
security, engineering, and many more - we are all pooled here. We can make an
impact.

But not if we are busy attacking those whose positions we cannot possibly
corroborate. Their hands were tied. In an ideal world, every man and woman
would be consumed with a righteous fury and ignore whips, imprisonment and
even death for the greater glory of what is right.

This is not that world. This is not idealism. The government wronged us. The
government made the first move. The government forced their hands, made them
cooperate by ratifying unethical conduct and making it illegal (and
treasonous, as a violation of national security) to resist. Who would have
acted differently in their position? And what would it have achieved?

I recognize that it is discomforting that we cannot simply believe tech
leaders after what today's events have shown us. I get that. But they are not
the ones who violated our privacy. They were the medium. That is not fair to
them. If they made a mistake, it was only in trying to navigate perilous
waters somewhere between honor and law. Unfortunately, the law is not on their
side.

With Mark Zuckerberg jailed or Facebook sued by an insurmountable public
agency, or Google's assets seized and its constituent leaders punished, who
would be benefitted? Should we ask them to suffer and violate laws just for a
truth that has come out only hours later?

If you want a takeaway from this, it's simple. It's unfair to hold people to
expectations of high moral standing when they have unknown pressures put upon
them. And in light of that, we need to remember who the true wrongdoers here
are. If Larry and Zuckerberg have made mistakes, so be it. But know that they
paled in comparison to the NSA, and that is our prime prerogative.

~~~
scythe
If there's anyone to go after, it's the ranking members of the Special
Committee on Intelligence, who wrote FISA and greenlighted this policy. Sadly,
the ranking members are the near-80 Dianne Feinstein and lame-duck Saxby
Chambliss; their successors are probably Jay Rockefeller and Susan Collins.

While I don't think single-issue voting is a good political strategy, in this
particular case it seems prudent to consider that the reprehensibility of the
whole affair and the complicity of those few most able to stop it calls into
question their moral fiber. We can't -- and shouldn't -- hope to kick every
pro-surveillance Congressman out of office, but when someone in a position of
influence helps betray the country to this degree we should take notice.

~~~
kabdib
Dear Outraged California: Please stop re-electing Feinstein, for starters.
She's bad for you.

------
jmillikin

      > Or to put it another way, who the hell needs “direct
      > access” or “back doors” when companies are building
      > “secure portals” for them instead?
    

The primary argument against government agencies having direct access to
private data is that it removes the data's caretaker from the decision-making
process.

That is different from having an access portal for agencies to submit warrants
or other legal requests. There is no obvious reason why a company should have
an ethical obligation to resist lawfully issued warrants.

This article would have been much better if it had focused on the ethically
dubious nature of FISA, and how problematic it is to interpret the fourth
amendment as applying only to American citizens.

But that wouldn't have driven as many clicks.

~~~
sillysaurus
_There is no obvious reason why a company should have an ethical obligation to
resist lawfully issued warrants._

Then who will? Think about it: companies are the only entity who can challenge
this kind of behavior in courts.

 _But that wouldn 't have driven as many clicks._

Nice ad hom, but it's mistaken. Arrington is many things, but he actually
feels the way he writes.

~~~
jmillikin

      >> There is no obvious reason why a company should have
      >> an ethical obligation to resist lawfully issued warrants.
      >
      > Then who will? Think about it: companies are the only
      > entity who can challenge this kind of behavior in courts.
    

The concept of search warrants is built into the constitution, and is
supported by countless judicial decisions. Challenging the ability for the
government to demand customer data would take much more than a few tech
companies.

------
mayanksinghal
Yup, because instead of expecting politicians who made the laws and judges who
approved the FISA orders, let's call out the CEOs.

I don't even understand the outrage that most US citizens are showing at the
moment for the said firms even after realizing that any access that may have
been provided was through the channels that the governments had 'legally' set
up. And that at least some of the companies had resisted. It seems very unfair
to me, largely as an outsider and yet a stakeholder, that the only people who
are being held accountable in the piece are the CEOs who had little to do with
the fiasco.

~~~
rdtsc
Just because the laws, judges and politicians are not behaving well, doesn't
make CEOs' behavior admirable.

The allegation is that they are deliberately misleading. I don't know if it is
true but that is what they are attacked for.

Heck maybe people perceive that a single CEO like Page or Zuckerberg do have
more power to change things than those in Congress or Obama. That says
something as well.

It is also a battle of expectations. Maybe many expect NSA, Obama and other
secret government agencies to fuck everything, but they thought, heck at least
the "Do No Evil" Google will stand on our side, or my buddy Zuck will.

------
modeless
"While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal
requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is
not."

This is the crux of the matter, but this statement is not strictly true. If a
company only sent information on 1.44MB floppy disks, or started requiring NSA
agents to run an obstacle course or something, they would be held in contempt
of court. These requests have an implicit requirement of ease of access, and
what that means is ultimately up to a judge's discretion.

------
staunch
I'd think most programmers can understand their reasoning behind creating
"secure portals". If you're being forced to hand data over to the government
you may as well do it securely and consistently.

Rather than some ad hoc process of burned CDs or USB drives, just create some
simple software that makes the process secure, reliable, and traceable.

The alternative is USB drives and Fedex envelopes, which is harder to track
and probably less secure.

~~~
md224
I don't know if Arrington is saying they shouldn't have built the portals... I
think he just wants them to openly admit it and be transparent about the work
they're doing with the government.

~~~
kllrnohj
Kind of like this?
[http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests)

------
cromwellian
Arrington is a drama queen IMHO, there are more important voices like the EFF,
ACLU, et al to listen to on this issue. It's hard to trust where this
indignation is clickbait fake, or real.

------
prayag
I can't believe that people are getting mad these private enterprises. If you
want your government not to spy on you, tell THEM. The governments was made to
serve the people. The companies are going to do what they think is their best
fiduciary responsibility. Get mad at your representatives in congress, not
your email providers.

~~~
lesedilino
Asking your government to change the laws when your government has shown you
have no power over it is a waste of time.

There's a growing intellectual understanding that corporations control the
governmental processes from start to finish. Therefore, asking the government
to change is stupid.

If the King rules your country, petition the King for mercy.

If an oligarch rules your country, petition the oligarch for mercy.

If a corporate elite rules your country, petition the corporate elite.

Democracy is, quite simply, completely dead. Gone. Done. The government does
not institute change based on democratic opinion. You have no control over
your government. They aren't the real seat of power in this society.

Having said that, most of the power resides on Wall Street and in the
Military-Industrial-Security complex rather than Silicon Valley corporations.
But these Silicon Valley corporations are now rich enough to change the laws.
They can crown themselves King with the right kind of manoeuvring, and
Arrington here is trying to get them to do so.

Petitioning Larry Page or Paul Graham to have a conscience is far more
fruitful than voting for the government you want.

~~~
argumentum
The _corporate elite_ does not _rule_ the US. We are governed by a hodgepodge
of competing interests, including at least corporations, bureaucracies,
states, politicians, special interests and yes _the people_ through democratic
instruments.

I'm fairly sure lp and pg have strong consciences, at least much stronger
consciences that _arrington_ , of all people.

------
chime
What if companies that do not wish to do evil adopted unspoken signaling
mechanism for silent protests? What if every time n NSLs were fulfilled since
start of year, they donated to EFF? What if $1 was donated to EFF for every 1
GB of data they shared? Would that be illegal?

~~~
eightyone
What you're talking about is referred to as a warrant canary. There's a nice
Wikipedia entry on the subject, if you're interested. [1]

Check out [2] for an example of one.

Perhaps we should be pressuring companies like Dropbox (whom was implicated as
"coming soon" in the documents leaked) to implement such a system.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary)

[2]
[http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt](http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt)

Edit: Now thinking about it, Dropbox was probably already hit with a request.
Maybe we should focus on other services that may be of future interest to the
government?

------
fredBuddemeyer
arrington needs friends in silicon valley a lot more than he needs your
clicks. whatever you think of the man this is an honest and indignant post and
it's an example of the courage he speaks of.

it is fascinating that this concept is so difficult for an otherwise
intelligent community to grasp and a reminder of why we still need
journalists.

------
arthulia
If they are indeed aware of PRISM, I have a feeling that both Mark and Larry
are avoiding legal action (or threats of legal action) made by the NSA. To me,
that is the most likely reason for not "standing up" and coming out about the
truth. To the best of my knowledge, they _do_ fight heavily to keep their data
out of government hands because these exact kind of situations are horrible
for their companies' reputations.

~~~
Glyptodon
I think the diatribe is sort of right, though - if they really wanted to end
these kind of problems for good all they've got to do is come clean and go
public. The second they get 'disappeared' the outcry will force something to
actually be done. Likewise, if they really cared about their companies, they'd
realize the huge PR advantage to not telling half-truths and going along with
whoever's compelling them to cooperate like sheep.

~~~
jboggan
Want to be the company that people flock to for storing their information?
Want to gain the trust to win the coming market conflict over digital wallets
and online payments? Defect, call the government's bluff. You will be aided
and rewarded.

------
mintplant
Wait. That's _it_? That's _all_ PRISM is--a special method of handing over
information that is requested via court order?

Is this correct?

~~~
anigbrowl
But it's the _principle_ of the thing, even though we evaluate the risk of
terrorism in terms of incidental probabilities, rather than the principle that
you should be able to go about your life without being randomly killed. This
is different because it's destructive of liberty, unlike corporations doing
the exact same thing for profit.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Look this article is ridiculous. I'm embarrassed with everyone that thinks
this is some sort of conspiracy to hand over information to the government
without process.

Both Google and Facebook hand over data for INDIVIDUALS when the government
issues a lawful request (such as by subpoena or warrant). Subpoena's do not
have judicial review the way warrants do, but they are not OPTIONAL. A company
MUST comply under US laws if the government issues a lawful request.

Both Facebook and Google have lawyers on staff that carefully vet requests.

If you have an issue with how our F'in government asks for too much
information, then take issue with our laws. You cannot fault Google or
Facebook for obeying laws that you, through your representatives, put in
place.

I am fully in support with restricting the power of the state to compel
private information from corporations, but I certainly won't blame a
corporation for obeying the law.

Now, let us tackle the issue of the so called "red carpet" rolled out for the
government. When the government requests information Google and Facebook can
send them the information on disk, on paper, on anything for that matter. The
issue is that they want to keep YOUR information as secure as possible while
handing it to the state. They want the state to have access to it, but NOT any
third party.

How secure will your information be if they don't set up a secure drop for the
government? Do you want them to set up one-off FTP sites? Do you want them to
put the information on disk for hand over? We've already discussed that direct
access to the source servers is a bad idea.

Do you see what I'm saying? This fucking author doesn't use his brain for two
seconds. What options do Google and Facebook have to obey the law, and to keep
your data as secure as possible from third parties.

Some people just want to cry wolf at every turn. And then when we really need
to raise a fuss (like when Google removes XMPP support from messaging) we get
no traction with the public, because the community just looks like a bunch of
whiners.

------
mtgx
_" What we have in our hands now is the first concrete proof of U.S.-based
high-tech companies participating with the NSA in wholesale surveillance on
us, the rest of the world, the non-American, you and me," he said._

\- Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Finnish software security firm
F-Secure.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/europe-
surveillanc...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/europe-surveillance-
prism-idUSL5N0EJ3G520130607)

~~~
Achshar
That is the most terrifying thing to me. The US government can do anything
with their people. It's their government after all and they are responsible
for running it. But US government doing wholesale surveillance on everyone
else? Fuck them if thats what is happening.

------
trustfundbaby
> Will you do it, Marissa? Or you, Ballmer? Or you, Armstrong? Will anyone
> stand up and say the truth? Will anyone stand up to the secret organization
> with the secret courts and, simply, do what’s right? Despite the
> consequences? Despite what your lawyers tell you?

Silly man. Exactly how hard is it to ask someone else, with way more to lose
than you, to be a martyr for a cause _you_ feel strongly about?

~~~
polarix
Moreover, these people cannot speak the truth since they do not know it. The
surgeries were done far away from the C-suite.

------
monkmartinez
All it takes is one. One person with strong sense of the natural order of life
and the courage to stand up. It may be scary as hell... I can appreciate that.
However, everyone is born with the ability to reason. From reason we can
innately sense what is right and wrong (not based on emotions). Do what is
right, after all... if doing the right thing was easy, EVERYONE would do it.

------
trekky1700
You can't really use the way someone frames a sentence as evidence for guilt.
The terminology they used, like back door, was simply what they were accused
of having. And the nitpickiness of pointing out that they said direct access
rather than access is, in my opinion, crossing the boundaries of reason. We
know, and have known for years that these sites provide data to the US when
required by law. That would be considered access, which could easily explain
the terminology.

Just because it's not the most sensational story doesn't mean it's not the
true one. If we're going the conspiracy theory route: what if the documents
are phony? What if the leak was made up?

Basically, rather than wildly speculating based on he said she said and the
framing of a sentence, why don't we try to be intelligent and wait for some
real information. None of this speculation does any good.

------
lnanek2
I'm all for people getting their privacy, rah, rah. However, these leaders of
companies are not free of obligations. What if you had your entire life
savings in Google, Google broke the law by talking about what it is legally
not allowed to do, and the stock plummeted due to the CEO being arrested? Or
if the government just put a lot of oversight on them in the future and lost
them a lot of business and cost them a lot of money verifying everything
through lawyers (happens often after privacy violations, amusingly). Even if
the leader of a company spoke with a good heart, if he broke the law and got
the company in trouble, he is abandoning his duty to the company. I'd hope the
board would remove him in this case, but even then there's still be a lot of
damage.

------
tripzilch
Cute speech, but if you need to rely on the honesty or courage of CEOs of huge
corporations (that are in the business of trading private info, no less) to
step up and protect you from your government, then I wouldn't keep too much
hope.

Imagine someone urging CEOs of Big Oil / Pharma / [0] corps to do the same?
Would you take it seriously? "Someone in the Oil Industry should stand up
because what the US is doing in the Middle East is wrong!"

To be clear, my point is not that it's wrong to demand this, or even that it's
stupid (it is naive, but understandable).

The point is that this is something that an actual democracy should be able to
solve because its _people_ demand it. Not by relying on CEOs of powerful
corporations to do the right thing.

[0] or farming, weapons/steel, the US prison industry ...

------
grappler
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, in the WaPo story:
“information collected under this program is among the most important and
valuable foreign intelligence information we collect.

In the intelligence world, this is an important program. It is “among the most
important and valuable” programs. That makes it a desirable project to work
on. If you're in this industry, you want your name attached to this project.
To get that kind of assignment, in addition to being smart and capable, you
need to be seen as dedicated and loyal.

It's not impossible that a leaker will end up on such a project (indeed it
seems to have just leaked). But the culture will select against anyone seen as
a potential risk, in a variety of ways.

------
grandalf
One thing to keep in mind about both Facebook and Google is that both were
late arrivals to their respective markets... created by founders from elite
schools who were able to get funded to build a "Cadillac" version of something
that already existed.

This kind of entrepreneurial success is closer akin to being successful in
finance and less about innovation than about mapping a set of ideas to a set
of value props that appeal to holders of risk capital.

This is a highly "establishment" mindset... but since that doesn't make a
compelling creation story, emphasis is placed on the riskiest and most
personality-driven elements.

So it's perfectly expected that both firms act cautious and conservative in a
situation like this.

------
moultano
According to Cnet, they are telling the truth, and not in some weasel word
sense of it. [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/no-evidence-
of...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/no-evidence-of-nsas-
direct-access-to-tech-companies&#x2F);

They are already standing up for freedom in the way that we would want them
to. [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57587005-38/justice-
depart...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57587005-38/justice-department-
tries-to-force-google-to-hand-over-user-data&#x2F);

------
TheCondor
There are some fundamental issues here that are upsetting, to say the least.
It's a dark day when telling the truths illegal and I'm pretty sure that's not
what was intended by the forefathers...

Re: cowards, It's easy to say that when you don't have skin in the game. These
guys do and I too expect more of them but I can't fault them, nobody wants to
go to prison. Something completely legal, completely within their rights and
abilities that they can do is lobby and spend and campaign to end the patriot
act and they are billionaires...

------
humbleopinion
there is the fear of prosecution of course, but i think that plays less a part
than the threat of how the market will react to a full confession that we're
giving your data away (even if it's under the pretense of "safety" or whether
you trust the data given is whole or in part).

so lets say Google admits, ok we give access to the gov to sift through your
contacts...the vast amount of the population will say, that's messed up but
will continue to use their services...who I do see leaving are the small
segment of people who value their privacy and the technically savvy
individuals who can roll their own services...those people could be the taste-
makers of society and depending on whether you believe their influence, could
pivot the market to a competitor.

of probably greater importance are the government and corporate entity of the
world who now will be concerned with whether they should use Google for their
own sensitive data knowing that a third-party (and in the case of nation
states, an overly meddlesome competitor) can access it, who historically are
also known to have difficulty holding onto data (ie, leaks). So there would be
definite loss of trust there.

from my view, those are the greater risks for those particular CEOs...it could
result in killing your own baby, as they are also the founders.

------
hkmurakami
*"It is further ordered that no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order."

But why is that stopping them? Do they really see themselves being dragged
away, Bradley Manning style – to sit for years in a prison before even being
given the dignity of a trial?

Because that’s not going to happen.

Please Google, hire Mike Arrington and task him to spill all your beans so he
can put his butt behind his words instead of raindancing on the sidelines.

------
marcamillion
This is classic Prisoner's Dilemma.

If all of them come out at the same time - everybody benefits.

But if 1 of them screws everybody over, the screwed will be royally screwed.

------
dnautics
Purely hypothetical: what if the government is doing this, the CEOs are aware
the government is doing this, it's only happened, say three times, and they
were given the personal opportunity to review the information requests, and
they felt it was justified. Then what? Would they still be cowardly?

------
whyme
Well Page and Zuck may not be able to tell the truth about the action, but
they have enough clout to fight the Gag law itself. i.e. They could lead
publicly rally's/protest against the gag laws and they could be really
effective in this without breaking the law.... And yet still, they do not.

------
detcader
The CEO answers to shareholders, not users. A CEO of a company with
shareholders is not a living organism with the possibility of having a moral
compass but instead a (don't snicker) machine, one that makes deterministic
(ultimately predictable) decisions.

------
6d0debc071
What I find odd isn't that they don't tell the truth. I never expected them
to. That they didn't remain silent on the issue is odd though. What can
denying possibly gain them at this point other than tanking their credibility?

------
soofaloofa
It seems like I am in the minority here but I see nothing wrong with making a
required government process more efficient. The companies in question would
have to provide this information anyways and streamlining the process seems
logical.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
Americans don't usually take kindly to the government messing with due
process.

------
djhworld
I think the whole thing becomes even more of a farce when you read quotes like
this on the BBC news

> Meanwhile, the BBC has learned that Twitter was invited to join the Prism
> programme last year but rejected the approach from US authorities.

------
bernardlunn
Danny Sullivan, who is a good source on search issues, thinks it was a check
in check out system based on FISA requests. The point about not being able to
mention FISA requests is then a 1st Amendment issue not 4th.

------
brunopedroso
Stop complaining, start doing something!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5844582](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5844582)

------
Kiro
Sorry, I have not been following this thing at all but why do they think
Google is lying? The new "top headline story" doesn't link to anything for me.

------
FiloSottile
@Pinboard: "If any of these companies had spine, they would have sent the data
they were ordered to disclose on iomega zip drives. Click click click"

This.

------
avisk
All,

Can somebody compile Non-US alternatives for email, search,etc?

On top of my mind : Search : yandex.com Google Docs : zoho.com Email :
fastmail.fm (Paid)

------
wangweij
If a company is brave enough to close its business in China, what prevents it
from doing the same in US?

~~~
adventured
The fact that Google had very little market share in China, and made almost no
money. Versus 3/4 of its $50 billion in sales coming from the US ad market.

------
sneak
The lack of superhuman bravery is not cowardice.

------
rasterizer
Google CLO responding to the NYT et al:

 _We cannot say this more clearly—the government does not have access to
Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box. Nor
have we received blanket orders of the kind being discussed in the media. It
is quite wrong to insinuate otherwise. We provide user data to governments
only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every
request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t
follow the correct process. And we have taken the lead in being as transparent
as possible about government requests for user information._

[https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/TMh6gUVrwMq](https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/TMh6gUVrwMq)

------
prollyignored
At this point, we are just guessing.

* Backbone route

* SSL, MIM hack

* indirect access like real-time backups.

* sudo RO access via vpn

* Remote Access to BigTable queries

* Team inside the company

* What china does.

Gotto love lawyers. They harp on the most ambiguous term.

Cowardice is an accurate term to describe ferengi, not to mention unpatriotic.

Who wants to give up the Jacuzzi ?

