The fact that the government can put a gag order 300,000 times on companies and people like this is insane. Forget about "future abuses". It has already happened and keeps happening. It's pretty clear the government is very loosely using these NSL's now. Where are the checks and balance?

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/patriot-ac...

Now? It's never been any other way. I wonder if they ever intended anything else.

This is true since, at least, 2006.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3511

I'm dissapointed no tech company has decided to play hardball on this...

I am sure the Government would say that the company is with holding data essential to counter-terrorism. With a bit of Government spin I don't see how the tech company could come off positively from making such a stand.

Counter-terrorism is the new terror.

Pretty sure that no matter how outraged you or I might be by this, the person in the street would believe the spin: 'I can't believe company X really wants to support terrorists by keeping information from those that are trying to make this country safe'.

Look at the lack of outrage at the treatment of Manning (or god forbid the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay - most held without charge with no hope of a trial, simply still held because no (friendly) country will take them - and you know we can't have them going home now can we...)

They're just as cowardly as many others facing this situation, except the CEO has a lot less to lose (if you can understand this paradox, cheers)

fat, obnoxious, foreigner, fortune gained from a somewhat illicit business (let's be honest about the service he provided to both licit and illicit customers)

He was imprisoned for insider trading, appealed on the basis that a witness's testimony (relating to the data-grab) was excluded from his defence, and won a re-trial where he had his conviction and sentence re-instated.

My understanding of this sequence of events is that while the witness was improperly excluded from his trial (thereby allowing him a re-trial), it did not materially alter anything about the 19 counts of insider trading of which he was convicted. So basically he did a good thing, then did a bad thing, and went to prison for the bad thing. Seems all right.

    “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”
    - Lavrentiy Beria, head of Joseph Stalin's secret police

But google also has part of the blame: it reassured people with "do no evil" and it's fights with government, instead of telling from the start that this would happen , as they would probably have known , and offering better technical protections against such things.

But in reality , it's a complex subject. Maybe they really thought that in world with global terrorism and crime , internet surveillance is the lesser of two evils.

"I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."

Instead of praising him for honesty, people started taking his quote out of context. "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place."

I don't think there is an easy way to solve this. From law enforcement's perspective, big tech companies have already done the hard work of getting users' data; all they need is a warrant or a NSL or any other magic ticket. That is the problem we should solve.

Disclaimer: I work on Google Analytics.

This statement probably would have made more sense when Google wasn't an ISP.

[1] https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5182359

not sure if this applies to Chrome versions, but if you are using Chrome, and dont trust Google, im not really sure what you are thinking.

http://www.slashgeek.net/2012/06/15/how-to-be-completely-ano...

Also blocks as many other tracking scripts as can be found. I've found it to be faster than ghostery etc.

I don't think there's really a reasonable expectation of privacy for that sort of data. You're already sharing it with every other website you visit.

https://www.cozycloud.cc/

http://owncloud.org/

No wonder that authorities will use the data, because, well, it is just business as usual.)

The FBI has always had less access to SIGINT than the FBI.

The NSA has one purpose: SIGINT. The FBI is a much broader and, in this sphere, weaker authority.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/217550/google_watchdog_white_...

But it has been proved again and again that authority trumps conscious.

I'm sure some of the technologies I've worked on during my professional career could be used to do things under ethically dubious circumstances. They could also be used to do the exact same things with a sound ethical and legal basis that almost everyone would agree was reasonable. And they could also be used to do many other completely unrelated and useful things where there is no ethical dilemma at all. Context is everything.

I would guess that the majority of people who work in any kind of manufacturing or information services industry could say the same thing, probably including technicians working on communications systems at the kinds of organisation you mentioned. Most of those people have no way to know or influence the way their work will ultimately be used further down the line. Society is too big and too complex to expect action or accountability for everything at that level.

That means the only practical position is to say that responsibility for (mis)use of general purpose tools must lie with the (mis)user, and if the system isn't working, that is the level where any fixes need to be applied.

When you sign up, they could make this an option. "Do you prefer faster access to your data or have you data located in a specific jurisdiction?"