

Obama to urge tech firms to share data with government - fidotron
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31440978

======
tptacek
What an egregiously terrible HN title.

The article's real title is _Obama to urge tech firms to share data with
government_.

The word "order" occurs once in the story, referring to an EO the President is
signing that (wait for it) _urges_ firms to share threat info with the
government.

The US President has no authority to order firms to share data with the
government. And so he hasn't.

~~~
sctb
We changed the title from "Obama 'to order' firms to share data" to the
article title.

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us0r
"Mark Zuckerberg and Marissa Mayer - chief executives of Facebook and Yahoo,
respectively - and Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt all declined
invitations."

Awesome. I wish the others would have done the same.

~~~
sarciszewski
I hope the ones who are attending are there to tell Obama "No".

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hackbinary
Is this not the modern version of a government monitoring library records, and
people's reading history?

[http://www.globalissues.org/article/409/us-librarians-see-
bi...](http://www.globalissues.org/article/409/us-librarians-see-big-brother-
monitoring)

[http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/ifissues/fbiyourlibrary](http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/ifissues/fbiyourlibrary)

~~~
Shivetya
Well there are many who thought V for Vendetta was a bit over the top when it
comes to a government wanting to monitor its citizens.

As for his speech he plans to give, I still see more face time to present a
message he wants us to believer versus the actions they are doing behind the
scenes and will continue to do forward. Its the typical "fake plausible
dependability". The head of the organization says one thing while they know
full well zealous members will do something else

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logn
We've expanded the wording of such threats from _terrorism_ and _cyber
warfare_ to now _cyber crime_. While I'm glad we're not weakening terminology
for more serious threats, it's concerning that we're now asking for broad
partnerships to go after (petty?) crime.

Just like how legislators should be wary of what constitutes a criminal
offense, in light of Eric Garner's death and similar tragedies, we should be
careful about what we're having the federal government monitor.

And in some respects, I think news of things like PRISM was hard for people to
fathom, whereas this will be pretty clear to anyone: the government is
watching. And people are already acclimated to this. Eventually the government
will be able to argue in court that nothing on the Internet has a reasonable
expectation of privacy and that all surveillance is constitutional.

------
justcommenting
It's worth mentioning the history of 'coordination' or 'bringing into line'
between the public sector and the private sector here, especially
gleischaltung[0].

I'm not trying to make a direct comparison, but the executive branch's "calls
for them to hand over more data" are fundamentally about totalitarian
surveillance and control. That may not be the goal, stated or otherwise, but
make no mistake: the effect is the same.

It's worth considering how we might feel if Russia or China were calling for
something like this.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung)

------
transfire
If the government wants access to all our private information, and it would
seem this is now becoming an inevitable outcome, perhaps the government should
be required to make all the records they view public with references to the
officials accessing them. After all, our government is "We The People", and to
ensure it remains so, we the people need some safe guards against abuse of
this power. If the government has to weigh the public availability of records
and who's using them against the utility of records for security purposes,
maybe that would be just enough to keep things on the up and up.

------
thisjepisje
_... David Cameron, who said in January that forms of communication that are
resistant to surveillance measures should not be allowed._

No more whispering, folks!

------
mason240
Most transparent administration ever?

~~~
alexandros
You have to admit, what they're trying to do _is_ pretty transparent though.

------
higherpurpose
> His comments were interpreted as a direct attack on encrypted
> communications, such as Apple's FaceTime and Microsoft's Skype, among
> others.

Wow, BBC is so bad at this. Law enforcement can get any type of data they want
from Skype already. They don't need anymore backdoors for that. Facetime, at
least the audio part I think is end-to-end, and I don't think they can get
access to it.

I'm amazed that after all the Snowden revelations there are news agencies (and
because ones at that) that still consider Skype "secure".

~~~
RankingMember
Not knowing much about the current standard for "best secure voice
communication", could you (or someone) shed a little light on the best Skype
alternative for the average in-the-field news reporter? I'm not a reporter-
I'm just curious.

~~~
dandelion_lover
Here is a list: [https://prism-break.org/en/all/#instant-
messaging](https://prism-break.org/en/all/#instant-messaging)

~~~
superobserver
Not comprehensive, but pretty good list. One thing I noticed that's missing
from file storage: Mega.nz; they have free 50GB service with an interesting
encryption scheme. And they should get better within the next year or so, I'd
imagine.

