Since when do these companies get such a big say in our Democracy? Since when is "Facebook, Microsoft, Apple Make Year-End Lobbying Push to Curb NSA Spying" a headline and not "American people rally the vote to stop sweeping surveillance"?
Personally, I think it's mostly a show to bolster consumer confidence (rant purposefully left out). But let's say it's not. Why should a handful of private individuals be more important for the direction of legislature than democratic consensus AND what's written into law by the Constitution.
A fluffy feel good piece about how the elite are on your side. Bullshit through and through.
I'm not upset that (publicly) these corporations are against surveillance, I'm upset that it matters.
Yes we live in a Representative Democratic Republic. But I don't remember voting for the board of directors.
>A fluffy feel good piece about how the elite are on your side. Bullshit through and through.
These guys aren't the elite. The elite are from a different generation, and different industries. This is part of their play to replace them with the new generations.
And this is the US system "functioning as intended", btw.
> Yes we live in a Representative Democratic Republic. But I don't remember voting for the board of directors.
You don't have to vote for the board, the supreme court and constitution ensures the elite is always to have more say than you.
The US government was structured specifically to contain the power of the propertyless majority against the new propertied elite. You couldn't even vote if you weren't a property holder until at least 1850.
The founding fathers didn't like the UK aristocracy because it was hereditary and corrupt, but they certainly wanted to protect and grow that they and other minority "gentlemen" had collected.
There was a swing to more populist influence for the past century, but now with bipartisan distrust at a high, the Citizens United decision, and the very slow uptake of issues like Lessig's Mayday PAC, we are decades away from having any substantive progress on this. I'd underscore: by design. Give the power to the people, but not so much that the elite aren't first among equals.
I get it. The system is broken, and there are no good choices to vote for (when a race is even contested at all), so why bother? Except that the reason why the system is broken in the first place is that no one shows up at any stage of the game.
* We don't show up in local and state elections, where the politicians are elected who draw the maps and gerrymander the congressional districts.
* We don't show up for the primaries, where the candidate who is going to win that gerrymandered district is selected.
* Then we don't show up for the general election. Admittedly, most races are a foregone conclusion by this stage, and there aren't good candidates to choose from. However, even at this stage there is always at least a "lesser of two evils". With only 35% turnout, the outcome could be flipped in even the most gerrymandered of districts if people were simply engaged and showed up.
Money drives the system, but only because the public is so disengaged, and votes for whoever has the funds to shout at us the loudest. I don't know how you break the cycle of cynicism and instill some civic responsibility in the average Joe, but there's never going to be some external savior who swoops in from the outside and magically makes things less corrupt. Is has to come from us.
People rarely care about government decisions that do not affect them directly. People are generally blind to secondary effects of any government policy. Price control and Minimum-wage are prime examples.
Facebook or Microsoft are not entities in themselves but they represent their investors which are just people just like you and me. Whatever these companies do essentially represents the will of those people. It makes perfect sense for their lobbying because they are the ones who are likely to get affected in long because of increases cost of their services and reduced credibility.
The American people just went to the polls to demonstrate that NSA surveillance is not something they particularly care about. If you're an anti-surveillance civil liberties type, you might be better served backing the companies that have dollars at stake in opposing surveillance than wait for the voting public to come around to caring about the issue.
You'd rather see us all live in an Orwellian surveillance society than have American corporations owned by American shareholders defend America? All right, you'll no doubt get what you want, though ultimately at the cost of the republic you claim to be defending.
I find this article interesting in that it describes a direct clash of motives between two major systematic problems in American government at present: corporate capture of politics, and the runaway NSA.
What needs to happen is for both of these forces to be curbed, before they find a compromise that I don't expect to be in the best interest of the people.
If you look at which companies can actually make things happen in DC[1], it's the ones that are regulated (the reasons for this should be obvious with some thought). Those are not Silicon Valley companies, by and large, but telecommunications firms like AT&T and VZ.
[1] AT&T/VZ/Comcast rolled Google/eBay/etc. on Net neutrality in Congress. Twice. Silicon Valley-backed NN bills were defeated in both the House and the Senate. And heck, Silicon Valley can't even get a permanent R&D tax credit passed. They've been trying forever to get a ECPA reform passed (this has failed). DMCA reform? Over a decade, nothing. They should be heavyweights or superheavyweights but they're bantamweights instead.
I don't think it's that much of a clash. These companies are the exception, which makes for a noteworthy article.
There's one sector in particular that has been suspiciously mum about the whole thing. A sector that relies heavily on secure communications and has tremendous influence on the US government: Wall Street.
It's difficult to be against things on principles when the outcome is desired, but I'd argue that's the only 'right' thing. I.e. lobbying should be condemned even though the outcome may be in line with ones interests (reducing gov-spying in this case).
Money. Not altruism or moral compass or even customer demands.
But lost foreign dollars is the wrong argument, right? Restricting the NSA from bulk collecting US citizen data has nothing to do with their legal rights to do the same to non-citizens.
I'd venture to guess that the NSA cares very little how Brazil builds a trans-Atlantic line, they'll still secretly tap it.
And a big HA! for Verizon being sad about the NSA collection while they're unabashedly MITM-ing 100% of its wireless customers.
Of course money. You make the argument that your audience is most likely to hear. And between lobbying and campaign contributions, jobs for their constituents, lost tax revenue and so on... money is the argument Congress is most likely to hear.
I'd be interested to see if the tech companies could push out something to their users to help educate them. Something similar to the news feed notification Facebook pushed out asking for donations to fight Ebola.
The real resource these companies have to use is the attention of their users, not money.
> push out something to their users to help educate them
That is not going to happen b/c it would draw the users' attention to the problem of mass surveillance being conducted (be that explicitly or implicitly) by tech giants for the gov't.
So with all these companies' support what I don't understand is why an IP standard is not being worked on that demands asymmetric encryption. I envision an ideal future where the IP layer is encrypted, possibly with multiple algorithms, the http layer is encrypted separately, and the javascript message passing layer is encrypted still separately from that.
We already know that encryption works mathematically, but human factors get in the way. No one should ever be able to snoop on someone's traffic content in this day and age.
"Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Republican on the Senate’s intelligence committee, has said there’s no urgent need to pass the bill. The law authorizing the NSA to collect bulk phone records expires on June 1, meaning the new Congress can wait until then to pass legislation, Chambliss told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in October."
So this is a public discussion and debate that the country is going to have any way between now and next Fall.
The question then becomes "Why this news article right now?"
Looks a bit like political posturing. If your party is on the way out, you can pretty much propose anything you'd like. Nobody is going to vote it trough, so you get credit for taking a position that you'll never have to live through or defend. It's a win.
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for limiting NSA. I'd just like it to really happen, instead of reading 100 articles like this over the next ten years while nothing ever changes, which is the way this seems to be playing out.
For whatever reason, the establishment, that is, both parties, seem to have secretly decided that it's perfectly okay to have the government sifting through all of our personal lives. I like seeing this lobby group make an economic argument to the Republicans: this is killing our tech sector. I like seeing folks in both parties make a freedom argument: this is the not values our country was constructed on. I even like my personal argument from pragmatism: our country cannot keep operating in such a manner. But all of these arguments seem to just bounce off a stone wall. I hear all kinds of people talking, I see speeches made and bills sponsored that will never see the light of day. I see bills that have a chance of passage that look like they hamstring the government but in fact just allow it to keep doing what it's doing. The only thing I'm not seeing is any real movement here. I'm hoping that will change.
I don't understand. President Obama seems to be a great friend to the NSA, and I understand the NSA has greatly expanded powers under his administration. President Obama threatened openly in a press conference to punish whistleblowers after the Snowden fiasco blew up.
Why should we put any faith in President Obama and lobby him to do the right thing now? The opacity, doublespeak and contempt shown to the people by this administration ranks it at the bottom in my book.
[+] [-] xnull2guest|11 years ago|reply
Personally, I think it's mostly a show to bolster consumer confidence (rant purposefully left out). But let's say it's not. Why should a handful of private individuals be more important for the direction of legislature than democratic consensus AND what's written into law by the Constitution.
A fluffy feel good piece about how the elite are on your side. Bullshit through and through.
I'm not upset that (publicly) these corporations are against surveillance, I'm upset that it matters.
Yes we live in a Representative Democratic Republic. But I don't remember voting for the board of directors.
[+] [-] parasubvert|11 years ago|reply
These guys aren't the elite. The elite are from a different generation, and different industries. This is part of their play to replace them with the new generations.
And this is the US system "functioning as intended", btw.
> Yes we live in a Representative Democratic Republic. But I don't remember voting for the board of directors.
You don't have to vote for the board, the supreme court and constitution ensures the elite is always to have more say than you.
The US government was structured specifically to contain the power of the propertyless majority against the new propertied elite. You couldn't even vote if you weren't a property holder until at least 1850.
The founding fathers didn't like the UK aristocracy because it was hereditary and corrupt, but they certainly wanted to protect and grow that they and other minority "gentlemen" had collected.
There was a swing to more populist influence for the past century, but now with bipartisan distrust at a high, the Citizens United decision, and the very slow uptake of issues like Lessig's Mayday PAC, we are decades away from having any substantive progress on this. I'd underscore: by design. Give the power to the people, but not so much that the elite aren't first among equals.
(EDIT: clarity)
[+] [-] StevePerkins|11 years ago|reply
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-tu...
I get it. The system is broken, and there are no good choices to vote for (when a race is even contested at all), so why bother? Except that the reason why the system is broken in the first place is that no one shows up at any stage of the game.
* We don't show up in local and state elections, where the politicians are elected who draw the maps and gerrymander the congressional districts.
* We don't show up for the primaries, where the candidate who is going to win that gerrymandered district is selected.
* Then we don't show up for the general election. Admittedly, most races are a foregone conclusion by this stage, and there aren't good candidates to choose from. However, even at this stage there is always at least a "lesser of two evils". With only 35% turnout, the outcome could be flipped in even the most gerrymandered of districts if people were simply engaged and showed up.
Money drives the system, but only because the public is so disengaged, and votes for whoever has the funds to shout at us the loudest. I don't know how you break the cycle of cynicism and instill some civic responsibility in the average Joe, but there's never going to be some external savior who swoops in from the outside and magically makes things less corrupt. Is has to come from us.
[+] [-] zkhalique|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tn13|11 years ago|reply
Facebook or Microsoft are not entities in themselves but they represent their investors which are just people just like you and me. Whatever these companies do essentially represents the will of those people. It makes perfect sense for their lobbying because they are the ones who are likely to get affected in long because of increases cost of their services and reduced credibility.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] PavlovsCat|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javert|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cowpig|11 years ago|reply
What needs to happen is for both of these forces to be curbed, before they find a compromise that I don't expect to be in the best interest of the people.
[+] [-] declan|11 years ago|reply
If you look at which companies can actually make things happen in DC[1], it's the ones that are regulated (the reasons for this should be obvious with some thought). Those are not Silicon Valley companies, by and large, but telecommunications firms like AT&T and VZ.
And it's those telecommunications firms that have long-standing surveillance "partnerships" with the NSA, according to leaked Snowden docs, which I wrote about last year here: http://www.cnet.com/news/surveillance-partnership-between-ns...
Here's one reason those regulated telecom companies may not be eager to see reform happen:
"ATT, Verizon, Sprint Are Paid Cash By NSA For Your Private Communications" http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attveri...
[1] AT&T/VZ/Comcast rolled Google/eBay/etc. on Net neutrality in Congress. Twice. Silicon Valley-backed NN bills were defeated in both the House and the Senate. And heck, Silicon Valley can't even get a permanent R&D tax credit passed. They've been trying forever to get a ECPA reform passed (this has failed). DMCA reform? Over a decade, nothing. They should be heavyweights or superheavyweights but they're bantamweights instead.
[+] [-] drjesusphd|11 years ago|reply
There's one sector in particular that has been suspiciously mum about the whole thing. A sector that relies heavily on secure communications and has tremendous influence on the US government: Wall Street.
[+] [-] sandstrom|11 years ago|reply
It's difficult to be against things on principles when the outcome is desired, but I'd argue that's the only 'right' thing. I.e. lobbying should be condemned even though the outcome may be in line with ones interests (reducing gov-spying in this case).
This illustration comes to mind: https://mayday.us/campaigns/illustrations/be-a-good-politici...
[+] [-] themartorana|11 years ago|reply
But lost foreign dollars is the wrong argument, right? Restricting the NSA from bulk collecting US citizen data has nothing to do with their legal rights to do the same to non-citizens.
I'd venture to guess that the NSA cares very little how Brazil builds a trans-Atlantic line, they'll still secretly tap it.
And a big HA! for Verizon being sad about the NSA collection while they're unabashedly MITM-ing 100% of its wireless customers.
[+] [-] fpgeek|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lylebarrere|11 years ago|reply
The real resource these companies have to use is the attention of their users, not money.
[+] [-] applesand|11 years ago|reply
That is not going to happen b/c it would draw the users' attention to the problem of mass surveillance being conducted (be that explicitly or implicitly) by tech giants for the gov't.
[+] [-] CyberDildonics|11 years ago|reply
We already know that encryption works mathematically, but human factors get in the way. No one should ever be able to snoop on someone's traffic content in this day and age.
[+] [-] final|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|11 years ago|reply
So this is a public discussion and debate that the country is going to have any way between now and next Fall.
The question then becomes "Why this news article right now?"
Looks a bit like political posturing. If your party is on the way out, you can pretty much propose anything you'd like. Nobody is going to vote it trough, so you get credit for taking a position that you'll never have to live through or defend. It's a win.
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for limiting NSA. I'd just like it to really happen, instead of reading 100 articles like this over the next ten years while nothing ever changes, which is the way this seems to be playing out.
For whatever reason, the establishment, that is, both parties, seem to have secretly decided that it's perfectly okay to have the government sifting through all of our personal lives. I like seeing this lobby group make an economic argument to the Republicans: this is killing our tech sector. I like seeing folks in both parties make a freedom argument: this is the not values our country was constructed on. I even like my personal argument from pragmatism: our country cannot keep operating in such a manner. But all of these arguments seem to just bounce off a stone wall. I hear all kinds of people talking, I see speeches made and bills sponsored that will never see the light of day. I see bills that have a chance of passage that look like they hamstring the government but in fact just allow it to keep doing what it's doing. The only thing I'm not seeing is any real movement here. I'm hoping that will change.
[+] [-] lwh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] trvz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 001sky|11 years ago|reply
A Democrat controls the NSA (POTUS).
They don't need to lobby anyone in congress.
[+] [-] EdSharkey|11 years ago|reply
Why should we put any faith in President Obama and lobby him to do the right thing now? The opacity, doublespeak and contempt shown to the people by this administration ranks it at the bottom in my book.