
Why didn't tech company leaders blow the whistle? - ot
https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-June/008815.html
======
magicalist
Blow the whistle on what? The problem with the "conversation" going on in
these threads is that no one is defining that first.

If we're talking about the first leaked version of PRISM, we still don't even
know if it exists or how it works. Subsequent revisions have made it seem that
if the NSA doesn't have the immediate ability to query the companies'
backends, then they have some kind of carte blanche ability to ask for data
and immediately receive it. If either of these are true, then certainly, where
are the whistleblowers? If not, and there's a very real chance that neither of
these are true, then the question doesn't make sense.

If instead we're talking about FISA orders, there's nothing _secret_ to blow
the whistle on. Everyone knew what they would allow. Congress was briefed on
what they actually have allowed. The EFF has been in court for years (7 and 5
on different cases) to try to just figure out if their clients have standing
to sue over FISA. Many of the companies on that PRISM list now have
transparency reports that tell you exactly how they disclose data and provide
numbers for requests (other than FISA, which you're not allowed to do).
There's been tech blog coverage for years by sites like Ars Technica that
discuss everything from the flawed ECPA to the attempts by the Obama
administration to use national security as a guise to subvert all attempts to
find out what these intelligence programs even do, let alone who they do them
to. So, what did you expect them to blow a whistle on?

For instance, Google and Microsoft are both now reporting ranges of the NSLs
they receive; in effect, a kind of whistleblowing, albeit a legal and vetted
one. NSLs are very much like FISA orders, in that they contain gag orders and
have minimal oversight (and no public oversight) for their approval. Where's
the indignation and action over those?

If we're going for hindsight here, the real question is where the hell were
the major news outlets and where the hell were the American people? Or why has
Congress been willing to approve this program on _multiple occasions_?
Assuming incompetence in all three of those groups, the usual response to
those questions, is not an acceptable answer.

If instead we're actually looking to the future, we need to ask how we're
going to hold the Obama administration and Congress's feet to the fire to make
sure that this ends, and that any real search beyond basic information (in a
very narrow scope!) requires probable cause demonstrated before a judge, and
that notification of a warrant can't be gag-ordered and withheld indefinitely.

~~~
LowKarmaAccount
Section 215, known as the "business records" portion of The PATRIOT Act allows
"FBI agents to obtain any "tangible thing," including "books, records, papers,
documents, and other items," a broad term that includes dumps from private-
sector computer databases, with limited judicial oversight."[1]

That Section 215 exits is public record. However, the government has a "secret
interpretation" of the law that allows itself many more powers than what is
written in the publicly accessible version.

Only congressmen on the Senate Intelligence committee were briefed on the
secret interpretation. With the exceptions of Mark Udall and Ron Wyden, who
tried warn the American public without revealing anything classified (in
2011), the rest of the congressmen on the committee did not have a problem
with what the NSA was doing. Many of the congressmen on the SIC are ex-
military or receive large campaign contributions from defense contractors
and/or the intelligence community.

[1]:
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20067005-281.html](http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20067005-281.html)

~~~
brown9-2
It would appear that the FISA court agrees with that interpretation as well,
correct?

~~~
LowKarmaAccount
The court's opinion is classified. The DOJ is trying to block a FOIA suit
filed by the EFF to release the opinion.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-
secret...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/government-says-secret-court-
opinion-law-underlying-prism-program-needs-stay)

~~~
weland
_Court opinions_ can be classified? What in the actual fuck?

~~~
JanezStupar
In ex Yugoslavia we had secret laws, published by secret official journal and
enforced by secret courts.

So you could easily get persecuted for breaking the law that you were
prohibited to know it even existed.

The same was going on in east Germany and other socialist countries.

I warmly recommend watching The Lives of Others
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/))
to those who haven't seen it yet.

~~~
weland
My surprise was directed at the fact that people have this in a system
advertised as democratic. I am quite well-acquainted with cases like those you
quote.

~~~
bbotond
The Soviet Union was advertised as democratic. Nazi Germany was advertised as
democratic. Communist China was/is advertised as democratic.

~~~
discodave
My old debating coaches saying was that any country with 'democratic' or
'peoples' in it's name was most certainly not either of those things.

------
dylangs1030
There are several valid reasons why they didn't blow the whistle:

1\. As the NYTimes article leaks[1], the leaders of these tech companies _may
not actually know the extent of FISA and PRISM within their servers_ \-
employees cooperating with the NSA would be forbidden from sharing this even
with the CEOs.

2\. What are they blowing the whistle on? There are a flurry of competing
facts and fragmented stories. It came out afterwards that the NSA may not
actually have as incredible access as they originally claimed. All they had to
go on was the original Guardian article, which merely states "direct access"
\- everything else is, as the CEOs stated, covered under FISA laws.

3\. Speaking of FISA laws, it's a violation of national security to even
acknowledge the existence of FISA requests. PRISM is justified through section
702 of FISA. They wouldn't risk treason. This is reasonable. Are you on such a
high horse as to say you would do differently?

[1]: [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=all)

~~~
conanbatt
The government making a request like this to an employee of a tech company,
with a gag order that doesnt let him share that information with the company
he is working for is a blatant abuse of power. An employee has no resources to
fight something like this if he cant tell the company he works for what he is
doing, meaning that any company is vulnerable to this way of operating.

~~~
wmf
Companies like Google ought to have internal audits to detect rogue employees.
(These audits are usually put in place after the first time a curious employee
snoops on a famous person.) If the employee refuses to justify his actions,
he's fired.

------
known_unknowns
Everyone here seems to be assuming that tech company leaders actually knew the
whole picture, but that isn't necessarily the case.

Think about it: Let's say you're the CEO of any of these companies. If someone
from the NSA or the FBI serves a top secret FISA order on some poor SRE in
your datacenter, do you even qualify as one of "those persons to whom
disclosure is necessary to comply with such Order", or an attorney?

Now, _maybe_ your General Counsel knows what's going on, or maybe the
knowledge is scattered throughout your legal team. Your lawyers, who are
supposed to be representing your interests, are now bound to keep these
secrets from you, and possibly even from each other. This is something that
affects millions of people, and you can't do anything to fight it, because you
aren't necessarily allowed to know what's going on in your own company. The
only sign might be that a few previously-happy key employees suddenly seem
stressed and quit for no apparent reason.

Freedom of speech is such a basic assumption in our society that we struggle
to understand the full implications of what can happen when it's taken away.

------
betterunix
In all likelihood, because they need the government to work with them. Google,
Facebook, Microsoft -- all companies that must deal with regulations and
shareholders who care more about profits than morals. The last thing any of
them need is for the government to retaliate with stricter enforcement of
those regulations, which might hurt their profits. The FBI's latest push for
backdoors sends these companies a clear message: standing up to the government
is bad for business.

Or, if we want to be optimistic, maybe they had no idea what their companies
were participating in. Maybe the NSA people they met with were lying about
their plans or purposes. It _is_ a classified system, so maybe they felt
compelled to leave out details that would otherwise have had the CEOs fighting
back.

~~~
wslh
_... and shareholders who care more about profits than morals_

I think this issue goes against shareholders because they can lose real
customers feeling defrauded.

It's realistic to expect legal actions against Google/Microsoft/etc operations
outside US, mainly for Government accounts.

~~~
betterunix
What makes you think these companies are going to lose any substantial number
of customers? Most of the anger here is directed at the government, and it is
only a small minority of people who even are angry about this. Only a very
tiny minority of people will actually stop using Google or Facebook because of
this incident.

~~~
felixmar
In the short term nothing will change for Google, Facebook etc. But i think
you are underestimating the longer term reaction from members of this
community. The cloud in its current form is dead. Google's goal of collecting
the world's information is a dead end if everything ends up in the hands of
the NSA. New user data models with better privacy will eventually be
introduced by one or more startups that could be a treat to Google and co.

~~~
lsc
>The cloud in its current form is dead.

I've heard several people say this... I find that... unlikely.

Do you really see the type of people who use facebook; the type of people who
buy things that are advertised online, well, do you see them changing their
behavior? I'm pretty sure most of them are okay with being watched; otherwise
they wouldn't be on facebook to begin with.

And those are the users that matter.

------
hga
" _In this case a corrupt federal prosecutor (is there any other kind?)...._ "

According to superstar trial lawyer Gerry Spence
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Spence](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Spence)),
as of when he wrote his book on Ruby Ridge, in an aside WRT serious prosecutor
misconduct in that case, he has _never_ tried a case against a Federal
prosecutor in which there wasn't egregious misconduct. Come to think of it,
his skill in finding that probably helps his near perfect success rate, and
especially his signature tactic of resting without presenting a defense.

------
rdl
It's simple. Verizon, Qwest, etc. are not _tech companies_. They are
telecommunications carriers, regulated utilities, who are close to an
extension of the government.

The implausible part of the worst PRISM allegations was that
Google/Facebook/etc. behaved like that, but telcos have acted as extensions of
spy agencies for as long as they've been around -- back to the "Black
Chambers".

~~~
javert
> regulated utilities, who are close to an extension of the government.

This is a good concrete example of something I often point out, which is that
an extension of the government is what regulation _is_.

~~~
baddox
It's an important point, and one that many people miss. I often see people on
the left complain about corporations trying to lobby the government for
control, and people on the right complain about the government trying to
control corporations, but the reality is that there's basically no distinction
between the two.

~~~
rdl
There's a huge difference between large companies in regulated industries and
startups in non-regulated industries (or even decent-sized companies in
lightly regulated industries, like tech). And local/state governments vs.
federal.

------
scythe
It might be wishful thinking, but part of me wonders if Steve Jobs might have
actually been able to push back a little and prevented Apple from joining the
program at the same time as Microsoft/Google et al. Apple isn't known for
being outspoken about privacy, but Jobs is a formidable character to deal with
and, well, if anyone had the balls to say 'no', he did.

Apple wasn't added until after Jobs died, years after other major players:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Jobs doesn't have a history of EFF-like activism and has always played ball
with the government. I think its a little unhealthy to build him into this
superman juggernaut. Yes he was talented and died before his time, but he's no
NSA slayer.

------
dm2
Because treason and national security are taken very seriously.

It's well known that there is a "secret" interpretation of the PATRIOT Act and
FISA revisions that basically allow unlimited loopholes for accessing any
data. Going up against what is arguably the most powerful organization in the
world and the most powerful government in the world, while you have a nice
cushy tech job, would be dumb.

Besides that, not many engineers employees for private companies have a firm
grasp on all of the details of the law. How many people can say for certainty
that it is even illegal for the NSA to do broad data-mining of US citizens?

------
zzbzq
For the post linked in the headline, those seem like shocking accusations, but
the kind I'm now accustomed to taking with a grain of salt. It seems perfectly
plausible that the guy legitimately deserves a 6 year sentence for reasons
unrelated to any of this.

As for the subject/headline, which I'm not sure is related to the particular
post linked, it seems pretty simple. Tech companies would probably see PRISM
with much more perspective than the internet's knee-jerk reaction. After all,
these are companies who have that information at their finger tips 24/7, who
can invade all kinds of privacy without any oversight or checks and balances
and nobody would even know to get outraged. The media companies, particularly
Google, are companies that regularly collect and profile that information
anyway for the expressed purpose of profiling people in order to maximize
their ability to manipulate the public. As far as tech leaders are concerned,
the NSA is the first party to suggest doing something non-evil or selfish with
all that data.

So for things like listening to phone conversations, there's still an argument
and some outrage to be had. But I think for a lot of the companies, the
leaders would have to sooner blow the whistle on themselves than the NSA. The
whistle blowing would have to come from where it apparently did--an ideologue
who has a fetish-ized view of the public sector as something evil and invasive
even as the private sector pours over all the same information unimpeded for
selfish ends.

~~~
darkarmani
> The media companies, particularly Google, are companies that regularly
> collect and profile that information anyway for the expressed purpose of
> profiling people in order to maximize their ability to manipulate the
> public. As far as tech leaders are concerned, the NSA is the first party to
> suggest doing something non-evil or selfish with all that data.

I think you have it reversed. The NSA is the only ones doing evil at this
point. The private sector isn't in a position to use force in combination with
the data.

> an ideologue who has a fetish-ized view of the public sector as something
> evil and invasive

You mean a public sector that would be deliberately violating the Constitution
they swore to uphold? That would really be a fetish -- holding the public
sector to the Constitution.

------
yekko
Because they didn't get rich blowing whistles, or by biting the hand that
feeds them.

------
tsotha
The problem is the subpoenas come stapled to a gag order. "Why didn't tech
company leaders blow the whistle?" is really not the right question to ask,
and not the one the thread answers. They _couldn 't_ "blow the whistle"
without going to jail.

The right question to ask is "Why didn't tech companies fight the orders in
court", and the answer is, of course, if you're in a heavily regulated
industry the government can crush you without involving the judiciary. You
could win the court battle and go out of business, even if regulators don't
attack you personally over "three felonies a day".

------
kenko
Speculation: because the heads of those companies think that surveillance is
just peachy and it's their business model? That is certainly the case with
Facebook, which acknowledges that they try to encourage sharing and break down
norms surrounding privacy, then take the new norms they've created, treat them
as a baseline, and extend them further. They think this is _good_. And it's
not like the NSA is going to compete with them for advertiser $, so no bigs.

------
paul_f
This is a difficult thing to wrap your head around. My assumption is that the
vast majority of people haven't formed an opinion yet. And many others don't
have a problem with what the NSA is doing.

------
pvdm
"Do no evil" but do something much worst.

------
grecy
..Because anyone who 'blows the whistle' will have their lives destroyed, a la
Manning and Snowden.

------
midnitewarrior
The first rule of FISA Warrant Club is "do not talk about FISA Warrant Club."

------
dgellow
The first rule of PRISM is you do not talk about PRISM

------
magoon
Chicago politics? Nope, just politics.

------
magoon
Chilling

------
helloamar
Everyone falls for the MONEY

------
mmastrac
?

------
Grovara123
This article is crap - Joseph P. Nacchio is serving 6 years for Insider
Trading.

