In entirely unrelated news, when’s the last time a major corporate initiative in the tech world was blocked by anti-trust action?
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That’s because BB is mostly just a directory of wonderful things. Oh, and a place for making money from said “wonderful things.” I suspect most political gestures that do arise merely spring from guilt induced by the latter.
Edit: after reading the rest of the thread, I look forward to your new initiative!
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Why haven’t they?
I would imagine they remember what happened with those phone companies that did and didn’t go along with spying on their customers. The ones that went along got billion dollar contracts, the only one that didn’t had their CEO sent to prison for a serious bid.
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It’s maybe even more straightforward than that - anything that would be effective in preventing the government from collecting personal data through them would also be quite effective at preventing them from collecting that personal data in the first place, and then where would their profits go, eh? (Never mind that network television did quite well on advertising revenues for decades with considerably less information about their viewers…)
They aren’t doing anything significant because the unregulated status quo benefits them, pure and simple. (And that includes the lack of regulation on executive compensation, offshoring, etc., etc… Kick too much about one part and the whole Ponzi scheme falls apart.)
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It’s all about appearances. Just as modern politics has devolved into posturing that communicates how strongly a representative feels about every issue, corporations have come to understand that people are more likely to “vote” for them with money if they appear to care deeply about the same issues. The NSA has undoubtedly assured these corporations that the public would gradually be on board with surveillance once they’ve had time to adjust. Translation: If we just wait, Kim Kardashian’s nanny will be busted for dealing coke to Kanye while carrying his love-child. Then the great gelatinous blob of public caring will slump back to wallowing in their favored slop, and surveillance will become another non-issue.
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You’re not suggesting quid pro quo, are you?
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Did we find the plane yet?
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I find myself thinking of Andre Norton book covers, I don’t know why …
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I suspect that after the tech companies made threats, the NSA et al. showed the techie lords and ladies they could hang every one of them by their balls. We have created a cancer I fear can only be cured by killing the patient.
The answer to the title question seems pretty obvious to me. The information technology industry is primarily concerned with aggregating data about consumers – i.e., conducting mass surveillance – and selling that aggregate data to its customers. The customers with the deepest pockets and the greatest hunger for aggregate data about populations are states, and the richest and hungriest of all is the US federal government. No information technology company is going to be eager to alienate the most valuable possible customer.
Furthermore, it’s become obvious that the US federal government has gone to significant lengths to set up this situation, in particular by years of effort to assure that almost all international data traffic is routed through the US.
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