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My conspiracy theory hat comes out every time a large US company seems to stand up against the government for the privacy of their users and wins. I always ass

My conspiracy theory hat comes out every time a large US company seems to stand up against the government for the privacy of their users and wins. I always assume the company secretly gave the government what they asked for, and the government agreed to play along for marketing purposes. I suppose that the boring truth is that Facebook just used it's vast financial resources to protect itself in a way that lavabit never could

seph-reed 7y ago
The former seems so much more likely to me. Probably because my German teacher had us watch ["The Lives of Others"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others) and at this point it would be absolutely insane to imagine that the obsession with power that exists in the government would fail to find a way to read data that's literally stored on someone else's computer where you could never tell if it's been read. Seems like a no brainer, but without proof most people would rather just call it a grey area. Which is a fine enough narrative. Doesn't change much either way.
- duncan_bayne 7y ago
  Except that we have proof, at least as far as the US Government is concerned. Snowden provided us with proof in abundance that they will "find a way". How anyone can consider this a gray area in 2020 is beyond me.
  - ggggtez 7y ago
    This comment thread really is nonsense. So Facebook and the government are secretly working together in a conspiracy to falsify court records while secretly they cooporate the whole time and the case was never actually tried? What planet are you on? And the proof is Snowden, because... ??? Or are you all just agreeing you have your own conspiracy theories, and aren't directly commenting on what each other are saying?
    - dexen 7y ago
      >secretly working together in a conspiracy to falsify court records A simple & plausible scenario: a governmental agency requests Facebook conducts a broad surveillance sweep. Facebook resists for obvious reasons, goes to court. Somebody at the middle level of one talks to somebody at the middle level of the other, figure out what the agency really wants - a small, well specified chunk of data - which gets requested separately & promptly delivered. Having gotten enough data now, the agency lets the original, big case falter simply by limiting the efforts and expenditures. That's not even conspiracy, that's just a bunch of people figuring out how to quickly get done with their mundane responsibilities. #BanalityOfEvil
      - ycombi3 7y ago
        And this is how it's done unfortunately.
    - duncan_bayne 7y ago
      > So Facebook and the government are secretly working together in a conspiracy to falsify court records while secretly they cooporate the whole time and the case was never actually tried? What planet are you on? That's, ummm, not my point at all, and I honestly don't see how you took it from what I wrote. What I meant was just that Snowden's revelations revealed a bunch of 'alternative' methods, beyond a court-ordered wiretap. Collusion, cable tapping, shipping intercepts ... all seem to have been on the table for the NSA and GCHQ. My point was just that I'd be very surprised if this court result prevented the type of interception that was being requested.
    - dang 7y ago
      Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how wrong other commenters are or you feel they are. Lashing out like this convinces no one, and only discredits your case—which, if you know more of the truth than others, is a bad thing. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- kyuudou 7y ago
  Thanks for fitting "Das Lieben der Anderen" into a comment thread! One of my favorite movies of all time. I think the Stasi would be thrilled with the amount of power they could have nowadays. May all FB and gov employees be the Good Man.
gowld 7y ago
Why would that be so? Why wouldn't they just skip the annoying charade and the anti government precedent, and just give over the info secretly in the first place, least work for everyone? And don't you think at some point one of the retired engineers or execs would leak the truth?
- cryptonector 7y ago
  "Hey Joe, look at the news! If we use Messenger, we can't get wiretapped!" That's a limited ruse because at some point evidence has to be entered into the record at trial, and if the fact that the government could reach Messenger after all came out, this scheme wouldn't work again. Of course, often investigators can back-reconstruct evidence that they can present -- and if in some case they can't, well, maybe next time. Other times trial evidence might not even be a goal. So a limited ruse, but not that limited. Is it plausible? I think so. Is it likely? No idea.
jauer 7y ago
> I suppose that the boring truth is that Facebook just used it's vast financial resources to protect itself in a way that lavabit never could This is the accurate take :) Facebook, like Google, was very unhappy about the wholesale tapping of cables revealed in the Snowden docs and rapidly moved to encrypt all the things formerly assumed safe/inscrutable. If you give an inch to a government you then have to deal with every other government wanting their inch too. The easiest way to deal with this is to vigorously fight every request from a government. You can't do a secret backdoor that bypasses this because it will get discovered eventually and then same problem occurs.

seph-reed 7y ago

The former seems so much more likely to me. Probably because my German teacher had us watch ["The Lives of Others"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others) and at this point it would be absolutely insane to imagine that the obsession with power that exists in the government would fail to find a way to read data that's literally stored on someone else's computer where you could never tell if it's been read. Seems like a no brainer, but without proof most people would rather just call it a grey area. Which is a fine enough narrative. Doesn't change much either way.

duncan_bayne 7y ago
Except that we have proof, at least as far as the US Government is concerned. Snowden provided us with proof in abundance that they will "find a way". How anyone can consider this a gray area in 2020 is beyond me.
- ggggtez 7y ago
  This comment thread really is nonsense. So Facebook and the government are secretly working together in a conspiracy to falsify court records while secretly they cooporate the whole time and the case was never actually tried? What planet are you on? And the proof is Snowden, because... ??? Or are you all just agreeing you have your own conspiracy theories, and aren't directly commenting on what each other are saying?
  - dexen 7y ago
    >secretly working together in a conspiracy to falsify court records A simple & plausible scenario: a governmental agency requests Facebook conducts a broad surveillance sweep. Facebook resists for obvious reasons, goes to court. Somebody at the middle level of one talks to somebody at the middle level of the other, figure out what the agency really wants - a small, well specified chunk of data - which gets requested separately & promptly delivered. Having gotten enough data now, the agency lets the original, big case falter simply by limiting the efforts and expenditures. That's not even conspiracy, that's just a bunch of people figuring out how to quickly get done with their mundane responsibilities. #BanalityOfEvil
    - ycombi3 7y ago
      And this is how it's done unfortunately.
  - duncan_bayne 7y ago
    > So Facebook and the government are secretly working together in a conspiracy to falsify court records while secretly they cooporate the whole time and the case was never actually tried? What planet are you on? That's, ummm, not my point at all, and I honestly don't see how you took it from what I wrote. What I meant was just that Snowden's revelations revealed a bunch of 'alternative' methods, beyond a court-ordered wiretap. Collusion, cable tapping, shipping intercepts ... all seem to have been on the table for the NSA and GCHQ. My point was just that I'd be very surprised if this court result prevented the type of interception that was being requested.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, regardless of how wrong other commenters are or you feel they are. Lashing out like this convinces no one, and only discredits your case—which, if you know more of the truth than others, is a bad thing. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
kyuudou 7y ago
Thanks for fitting "Das Lieben der Anderen" into a comment thread! One of my favorite movies of all time. I think the Stasi would be thrilled with the amount of power they could have nowadays. May all FB and gov employees be the Good Man.

gowld 7y ago

Why would that be so? Why wouldn't they just skip the annoying charade and the anti government precedent, and just give over the info secretly in the first place, least work for everyone? And don't you think at some point one of the retired engineers or execs would leak the truth?

cryptonector 7y ago
"Hey Joe, look at the news! If we use Messenger, we can't get wiretapped!" That's a limited ruse because at some point evidence has to be entered into the record at trial, and if the fact that the government could reach Messenger after all came out, this scheme wouldn't work again. Of course, often investigators can back-reconstruct evidence that they can present -- and if in some case they can't, well, maybe next time. Other times trial evidence might not even be a goal. So a limited ruse, but not that limited. Is it plausible? I think so. Is it likely? No idea.

jauer 7y ago

> I suppose that the boring truth is that Facebook just used it's vast financial resources to protect itself in a way that lavabit never could This is the accurate take :) Facebook, like Google, was very unhappy about the wholesale tapping of cables revealed in the Snowden docs and rapidly moved to encrypt all the things formerly assumed safe/inscrutable. If you give an inch to a government you then have to deal with every other government wanting their inch too. The easiest way to deal with this is to vigorously fight every request from a government. You can't do a secret backdoor that bypasses this because it will get discovered eventually and then same problem occurs.