This is the attitude of someone that has already decided to perpetuate the status quo, being reminded of the fact his position does not stand up well under public scrutiny. The conversation is impossible now because it always was. Or rather, it was highly unlikely to happen, even less likely to change anything, and only possible at all for the most hair-splitting of reasons.
I see this kind of rationalization up close so often I'm uncomfortable with how little it makes my blood boil anymore. A public revelation puts egg on someone's face, they bellyache that if the problem was brought to them properly they could have fixed it. It relies on two assumptions that for any instance of this at least one of is blatantly false. A) The exec wasn't aware of the issue already, and happy to keep it going so long as public doesn't find out and B) that the person who just went public not only could have somehow gotten a conversation with him in private, but would have been able to change his position.
And just because the DOJ and the gov say it's legal does not mean it's legal per se.
Also, no matter how much we dislike such arguments, there's no such thing as "many of us at AT&T were disturbed by what we've been hearing about the NSA". The people who work for AT&T are AT&T. They all share the burden of what AT&T did.
This isn't some insensitive, extremist whining. I know, from personal experience, how hard it is to reflect on the ethics of the bigger picture you fit in. I'm not insinuating we should now start lynching AT&T employees, since we can't get at the bigger fish. However, a lot of employees who are disgruntled at the social and ethical behaviour of their company actually have an option to leave; this would be a correct approach, not complaining about not being able to talk to bystanders.
"Collective" responsibility is, by no means, absolving of personal responsibility. Even AT&T imply it on their careers page:
> At AT&T, we’re connecting the world like never before. Ready to get in on the action? Together we’ll do great things.
This isn't an option for a lot of people; the folks doing tech support or working in the shops and barely get along on minimum wage don't have that option. The decision makers and tech leads do.
I'm not talking out of my ass. I have resigned from a very well-paid position because of ethical reasons, and there was far, far less at stake than general privacy matters.
Oh, man - there's a t-shirt for you. Just add the AT&T and NSA logo...
Now things have changed, and it's starting to be appropriate to pressure AT&T and company to Do The Right Thing.
In my opinion THAT'S what the general public needs to recognize. The stakes for whistleblowers have been raised to the absolute limit.
And how does your answer "Probably because..." address my question "What is the name of the law...". I am asking you for an actual objective fact, the name of the law, not for you to take a wild guess about "Why" anybody is doing anything.
Are you even replying to the right posting, or just constructing a coatrack on which to hang your off-base raging accusations? Care to try again and cite the name of the law that I asked for?
Substantive change occurs only when people get pissed off.
Dragnet surveillance in cooperation with the NSA is a whole other thing. It might use some LI facilities, but, in many cases, LI specs for telecom equipment would not cut it for NSA purposes. Hence all the switches having LI capability and the NSA having their own cable taps and backhaul.
“There are many of us at AT&T who are disturbed by what we’ve been hearing about the N.S.A.,” this person said. “But when you see that,” he said, pointing to the T-shirts, “a conversation becomes impossible.”
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The conversation became impossible when your company decided to willingly give up everything and anything about its customers for a fee. Were it not for customer apathy, I'd like to think your entire shitty company would have been fucked out of existence by now for what they continue to do. But not really, because your company probably would have just been given a bailout for failing at everything but sucking government dick.
Fuck you nameless executive. I wish I could request anonymity as easily as you can. Your shitty company brought this upon itself and there is nothing to discuss until it stops being the NSA's bitch.