The leaks showed that particular people cooperated with NSLs, which forbade them from discussing what had been done with any of their colleagues, management, legal departments, spouses, family, spiritual advisors, mental health providers, or attorneys, on the threat, under colour of law, of being tried and convicted in a closed court, and ending up wearing a black bag on their head and standing on one leg.
“National Security” is our time’s great shame: the pervasive dread of an official power dragging one off in the middle of the night, never to be seen again, until the photographs leak.
I think this is the part that pisses me off the most.
Edward Snowden ended up in Russia seeking asylum from the USA, yet the turds who committed the actual crimes will never even be known by name, much less face “justice” (whatever that means these days).
Yeah! Only big private companies, like Google and Facebook, should be allowed to take my data and use it in ways I never intended because they can arbitrarily change terms-of-use agreements after the fact. Wait, nevermind.
False equivalency there… as bardfinn pointed out it’s nothing to do with an “isolated case”, it has to do with employees of a company being bound by the law. You are pissed at the law itself but you don’t know it because somehow this has been sold to you as companies misbehaving instead of government agencies enforcing complicity.
Actually I believe by law they are required to keep at least 2 years of historical data on you. Furthermore it is obvious that in any transaction between you and a business the business has the right to retain any and all records they wish. The reason I mentioned credit card companies is because it is entirely analogous. Do you have a credit card or any store loyalty card? If so you’re participating in the same, or worse, already. The other thing is that Google, unlike credit card companies, are unlikely to resell data on you because thats the core of their business… that’s their secret sauce.
I’m still somewhat unsure as to how you think Google are “invading users privacy” to sell advertising… there’s nothing they don’t explicitly make clear in dealings with their services. They also make very clear what their policies are and don’t constantly change them to new defaults that are less secure, as Facebook does frequently.
On your final point: NO DUH. What would be their motives for not leveraging their products to make a profit? I’m sure their shareholders would be a bit pissed. Please explain how I’m losing privacy by using gmail with adblock plus enabled? A computer is parsing the contents of emails and attempting to display relevant ads. My computer tells ad servers “no… no…” (Consuela style) and my gmail looks clean and purrdy. Yes, they may be building a profile on me but that’s something they’re not going to on-sell and it’s not something that will affect my behaviour as the ads they’re trying to send me wont ever make it to my screen.
The bottom line is that if the NSA/FBI/CIA cares to spy on you you’re gonna be fucked whatever you do. Users can do things to hide their activity and communication but take the example of our good friend Dread Pirate Roberts… if the operator of such a site can be tracked down then you or I haven’t got much hope. Unless you want to not use the internet… that’s always an option.
Don’t savvy me, bro. “We’re fucked whatever we do” and Google is just keeping their Apache logs for two years?
Bend truth to be an apologist, go ahead, but that doesn’t make your utterances true. Example: Google saves all of your search terms forever, against your name if you have a Google account, with their magical everlasting cookie (by which you could normally easily be identified) otherwise. From my experiences in the business of Web development, that’s highly unusual behaviour, to which they’re in no way compelled by law. But they will surrender these data to the authorities if asked.
Which puts Google engineers’ outrage at being spied on into perspective, is all I’m saying. They’ve already been part of the problem for a long time.
You’re the only one bending truth… prove where I’m wrong, respond directly to my comments or stfu.
They can do what they like with information you type into their servers and that’s no different than other sites.
But they will surrender these data to the authorities if asked.
They deny requests for data as well, but I know that doesn’t factor into your propaganda. Google and Twitter are two of very few companies who have ever gone to bat for their users.
I think you’re probably a trolley. Here’s what I wrote in response to your point about Google’s legal obligations:
That’s a valid point you didn’t adress. Google is collecting much more sensitive data about its user for much longer time than is necessary, and by so doing it puts these sensitive data at risk, e.g. of being seized by spooks who’d like access to more or less eveything without a warrant.
And the “whatever we do, we’re fucked” meme is tiresome and has become the most predictable staple of those who want to defend the status quo.
Conversation pre Snowden:
I’m concerned there might be widespread surveillance of our communications and Google etc might be putting our data at risk.
HAH! Where’s your tin foil hat?
Conversation post Snowden:
The NSA are monitoring our communications. We must protect ourselves.
Well, what’d you expect! Spies be spying, man! And whatever we do, we’re fucked, anyway!
But, as it happens, there’s a lot of things we can do to protect ourselves. Not trusting Google is one of them. (Encrypting our communications, taking precautions, etc., as they will teach you to a cryptoparty, are others. Caveats apply, but they do make a difference.)
Wire and cables are probably likely to fall afoul, you’re going to be using someone else’s infrastructure or land to support your network… wireless is less regulated, in the sense that you have a right to broadcast within certain limits. usually around 1 watt EIRP (or some other acronym I almost remember). With highly directional antennas, you can set up a transport network which wouldn’t be easy to listen in on, especially if you routed everything via encrypted tunnels. Security of this sort is only as good as the other side of your connection (the vpn endpoint has to know the keys too), and eventually you’ll have to exit out if you want to communicate with the world, but you could have a fairly secure London Area Network… if I could motivated enough to get up on my roof, I’d set up at least one node here in the south.
