Well, I can certainly understand why people would try to suggest this is like an investigation, or some sort of warranted search, but neither is in fact the case here. This is an unconstitutional fishing trip that Yahoo executives invited a non-domestic surveillance agency in to conduct without the knowledge or consent of their users or system administrators. It’s redundantly illegitimate.
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A significant number of Americans do indeed believe exactly that, and are careful not to examine that belief.
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I absolutely agree, of course. Just as cops can murder with “good faith”, I imagine that the Federalas can claim that this is the only possible way that they can get the information they need.
I’m just saying that being bankrupted with legal bills (to prove what should be obvious) while some other employee does the exact same thing in your absence isn’t in most persons’ best interests.
I mean, what do you realistically think wood happen if one employee “bravely stood up” and sabotaged a Federal investigation into terrorist activities, alsongside insubordination towards the orders of their executives?
Obviously this was done to their systems without the knowledge or consent of the sysadmins, hence why they thought they were hacked. But to take the systems offline to “clean” and remove all traces would be potentially catastrophic to their daily work as well. There’s nothing but risk, and “personal validation” doesn’t pay the rent, nor does it prevent getting blacklisted from the industry.
Ugh, my poor aunt is still being stalked by a retired cop ex 
He knows exactly what he can get away with, and he’s friends with plenty of those still on the “force”.
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Yes, but you know what? History makes it as clear as crystal that complicity won’t stop the fucking fascists. That’s what this in fact is: a government mobilization of the private sector undertaken in order to undermine the protections of liberal democracy and strengthen their illegitimate tyranny under totalitarian rule. That is textbook fascism!
Well, I suppose it’s more the foundation for fascism. An infrastructure for it. It being there makes me feel less safe against potential fascism under some hypothetical POTUS, and that’s a helluva state of affairs. I feel the opposite of safer knowing it’s there, and spiritually aggrieved.
It’s hard not to take the Internet personally; I grew up here; it’s an impossible ephemeral intimate thing connecting me to small tribes of humans across the globe with an ethos of trust and consent that includes a paramount respect for privacy and integrity of communications passing down the network, and in particular, trying to provide the same decorum of privacy as the post when implementing e-mail. I should hope that it is still understood that for an operator to read others’ e-mail spools or private files is beyond bad manners!
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I’d just like to set the record straight here; and defend the honor of our hardworking nerd mercs:
The rootkit deployed at Yahoo was not ‘buggy’; it was specifically tailored to be inconspicuous and avoid detection when integrated into the target’s systems. Adding an area of anomalously high code quality and suspiciously smooth operation to Yahoo’s systems presented an unacceptably high risk of discovery. We were forced to re-engineer the implant to more effectively emulate the appearance and feel of indigenous software.
Love,
The equation group.
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Don’t worry, the government can still be reformed! ::wiggly fingers::
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I did say “reasonable person”
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