Realistically though, can you imagine there being so many CEOs knowing that this thing is going on and being forced to lie about it, and not one of them spilling the beans?
Even if the gov tries to arrest them for leaking classified information, they'd be near-impossible to convict following the inevitable massive public outcry.
You don't get to be CEO unless you can learn to lie & keep secrets.
OTOH, I'm more skeptical about the implementation side. Have you ever set up a feed between two different organizations that needs to transmit a massive amount of data in real-time? It's an immensely complicated undertaking requiring a whole team on both sides, with managers, engineers, techwriters, QA, and support staff. It seems a little unbelievable to me that one of them wouldn't spill the beans, particularly if asked to participate in a morally-questionable program.
Yeah, there is very little chance of CEOs leaking. The obligation they feel most is their obligation to the interests of their company. It definitely wouldn't be in a company's interests to rebel against the government of the country in which the company is headquartered.
Implementation side would definitely be very difficult, but you could screen the candidates for those who are sympathetic toward it. Ensure they understand how important it is that the program stays secret. Keep retention high, and perhaps even have some ongoing benefits for any employees who do churn but were part of the program. It definitely wouldn't be easy, but I think it is doable.
With a technical field, though, you have the added constraint that you need people who are familiar with the technology involved. At the low-level infrastructure level of a company like Google or Facebook, that might number in the dozens-to-hundreds - not exactly a huge pool to choose from, particularly when implementation will require quite a few people. And you need someone to do the choosing who can both be trusted by the government and knows all the people with the relevant technical skills.
There's also the issue of how to hide the source code (to my knowledge, both Google and Facebook use one source repository for the whole company, to which virtually everyone has access). This can be gotten around - I'm sure that there are private repositories off to the side that you could use to build a binary - but this is yet another integration point that could be discovered. (Eg. some SRE notices that network bandwidth is high for a DC, traces it to a machine, notices the machine is consuming a large amount of CPU, gets root and runs 'top', and suddenly notices an unknown process siphoning off all data. At this point, how could they not assume their network is being attacked - because that's really what this is, the U.S. government hacking into the company's DCs - and pull the alarm? So all the SREs, abuse teams, internal security, etc. would have to be briefed, which is small compared to the whole company but still a huge surface area for a top-secret project.)
>"You don't get to be CEO unless you can learn to lie & keep secrets."
That doesn't actually answer the parents question. What is the likelihood that a bunch of tech leaders would know about this and it wouldn't get out? That any group of people wouldn't let this out?
I agree with the latter half of your comment, but the first sentence is as powerful as saying, "The only way to keep a secret between three people is if two of them are dead."
They both sound like ominous truths, but neither is a particularly compelling argument.
>Even if the gov tries to arrest them for leaking classified information, they'd be near-impossible to convict following the inevitable massive public outcry.
It's not about arresting them. It's about harassing them and their businesses -- which the government can very easily do.
Also, who said those kind of CEOs are champions of public freedom? Google? Microsoft? Facebook? Because they're techies they're supposed to be "on our side"?
Not to mention it's very easy for the government to pamper them, and make them feel very patriotic and whatever for contributing to this cause for the safety of the US, etc etc.
CEO's and public figures? Definitely, if the NSA and similar agencies had the power to label them as traitors and / or terrorists (with all due consequences) and/or destroy their companies.
I agree, and this is the exact same reason why 9/11 conspiracy theorists have such a weak argument: of the 535 representatives in Congress, NOT ONE spoke up and said it was an inside job? Or any of their interns, assistants, etc.
Even if the gov tries to arrest them for leaking classified information, they'd be near-impossible to convict following the inevitable massive public outcry.