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Cowards

• jmduke 13y ago
  There's a meme on Reddit that revolves around 'so brave': basically calling people/posts/comments out for obvious pandering. This reads like a pastiche of Keith Olbermann, all bravado and empty gusto. Arrington writes: What has these people, among the wealthiest on the planet, so scared that they find themselves engaging in these verbal gymnastics to avoid telling a simple truth? and then acknowledges that doing so, if it meant breaking FISA, is illegal. Because their lawyers might be telling them what they are required to do. But their soul should be telling them what they must do. What the hell does this even mean? Listen, I completely agree with the central premise that we need to have an actual conversation both about privacy in the age of Facebook and the Kafka-esque way the U.S. government has engineered these catch-22 gag orders. But given Arrington's experience both with AOL and with the overall notion of privacy, I'd expect something with a little more substance and perspective.
  • sage_joch 13y ago
    > What the hell does this even mean? It means that if telling the truth is illegal, they should have the courage to break the law.
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    • scythe 13y ago
      Y'know, I'd like to believe I'd do that in this situation, too. But people are more generous in theory than in practice. You have to realize: Mark Zuckerberg isn't just looking out for Mark Zuckerberg by posting what he did. He has a family, a social life, and a whole lot of people at Facebook who depend on him. To whom, perhaps, it would not be fair for Zuck to martyr himself on the great gallows of the United States of Atrocity in futile protest of its horrifying surveillance subterfuge. It's very easy to ignore this sort of thing when it's not your ass on the line. Bradley Manning had a different kind of freedom, the kind that comes with nobody around you who can get hurt. The feds turned Sabu, the infamous LulzSec hacker, by threatening his three-year-old daughter. The United States government is not above such tactics. I don't, frankly, believe that Arrington himself would behave much differently in the same situation. Life is not that easy. Or, in the timeless words of Robert Oppenheimer: "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds."
      • treeface 13y ago
        I think the point the OP is making is that if it were someone like Mark Zuckerberg, the protest wouldn't be futile. It would likely trigger a nationwide debate about the constitutionality of the program and it would possibly be overturned in court.
        • scythe 13y ago
          The point of my post is that these people are surrounded by other people to whom they have obligations. You can't respond to two words without considering the context of the paragraph! It should be obvious that even a so-called "successful" action comes with extreme stress on one's associates. It means subjecting other people to risk. This cannot be considered lightly.
          • cerebrum 13y ago
            I don't get your point on obligations. He has a family ok, but nothing would prevent him from resigning from Facebook and writing a post explaining his reasons for doing so(unwillingness to spy on its users). He would still be a rich man able to provide for his family and there are tons of others who could step into his place. I'm not saying he should do that but with the amount of money he has he can afford to lose a job and still don't worry about his financial future.
            • peterjancelis 13y ago
              The government would go after Facebook as an entity when Zukerberg speaks out. This means other FB directors could be held liable, shareholders could sue him for breaching his fiduciary duty, his life could be made hell even if PR wise it's impossible to arrest him, etc. We are talking about the most powerful monopoly on force humanity has even seen here, a group of people who consider it their right to kill people or detain them indefinitely without a trial. I support what you say in theory, but a sign of intelligence is to take longer term approaches to solving the issue. (I would hope they are furious at the government for doing this or at least for hurting their business, I know I would be.)
    • bambax 13y ago
      Exactly. Just because it's "illegal" doesn't mean it can't be done -- just as, just because what the government asks is "legal" (??!?) doesn't mean it has to be complied with. "What will happen?" is an excellent question that is not even asked. Certainly not everything is an acceptable risk; if Larry Page seriously believe he would risk spending the rest of his life in prison for publishing national security letters, then sure, we'd all do the same. But is this the case? How do we even know if nobody's testing it? Besides, why can't Google or Facebook be a little creative, and (for example) declare that the only way they'll be able to send information is by fax...? That's kind of what HN is doing (it will only accept DMCA requests via fax or regular mail).
      • threeseed 13y ago
        Because CEOs need to act like adults not petulant little children. You obey the law. Period. And if you don't agree with it you lobby directly or encourage your users to do so.
        • wavefunction 13y ago
          Not if the law is immoral, but run along little authoritarian.
        • bambax 13y ago
          The whole business model of Silicon Valley is based on not obeying the law. It's called "disrupting", and how it works is "let's break laws and regulations we disagree with until they're either changed or recognized as obsolete". This is how Uber works, or AirBnB... but not only. Facebook or Google routinely ignore European privacy laws. Twitter ignores European laws about free speech (which you and I may consider "bad" laws, but which are laws nonetheless). So why is it that suddenly everyone hides behind the "law"?
        • chii 13y ago
          you don't have to obey the law, you choose to obey. When you decide to not obey the law, you also decide to face the consequences. When the law doesn't sit well with you, you should indeed choose to not obey, then fight the consequences.
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    • wwweston 13y ago
      > It means that if telling the truth is illegal, they should have the courage to break the law. Personally, I think they found a way to tell the truth without breaking the law. They apparently said what they were required to say, to the letter. People found it transparently suspicious. Now the secret appears to be out. Could be an accident, I suppose.
      • einhverfr 13y ago
        They should have at least remained silent. By issuing grossly misleading denials they look silly and dishonest. And yes, cowardly. Had they said, "We do not comment on matters of national security," such would have been honest, careful, and truthful and it would have been darned hard to prosecute them or put them at risk for effectively revealing that the press was right.
      • Zigurd 13y ago
        I don't think it looked quite so good. The "no direct access to our servers" line spoken by all four CEOs sounded like something out of North Korea, but they all also had the option to send this message through a relatively faceless spokesperson instead of throwing their own credibility on the pyre. None of them addressed the incongruity of having all the major news outlets contradicting them, after apparently finding the major points of the story supportable.
        • waterlesscloud 13y ago
          It makes sense to me that Zuckerberg and Page came out personally. The idea that all their data is open to snooping is an existential threat to their companies. If true, their user bases (and thus revenues) would plummet. They absolutely had to deny it in the strongest terms possible.
          • samsonasu 13y ago
            Their data /is/ open to snooping. We'll see if their user bases plummet. For some reason I doubt it.
          • 13y ago
    • bernardlunn 13y ago
      As Bob Dylan put it "to live outside the law you must be honest".
    • natrius 13y ago
      I don't think we have enough information to come to that conclusion. Plain old FISA orders are lawful and constitutional. There's no good reason to disclose them, but there is a good reason to push for a limited term on their secrecy. As described, PRISM is far from a plain old FISA order. It sounds like they're collecting data broadly. If that's the case, that's worth leaking. Someone thought so.
      • einhverfr 13y ago
        Also consider this. They have a 51% confidence that the target is foreigner. In the case of gmail, "please send me a random 10 users' info, data, and emails" gives you over a 70% chance that any given one in that sample is a foreigner. With Facebook it is closer to 85%. So think about that. It means the filters could deliberately overinclude Americans and still meet their standards.
      • asmithmd1 13y ago
        "Plain old FISA orders are lawful and constitutional." Maybe that is currently true; jailing Japanese Americans also passed court muster. Secret orders from a secret court doesn't square with the ideals of America I was taught in civics class.
    • viscanti 13y ago
      > It means that if telling the truth is illegal, they should have the courage to break the law. The time for these companies to fight was before they gave away their user's info, not after they got caught doing so. If they weren't going to standup and do the right thing then, it's unrealistic to expect that they'd somehow find the courage now.
  • sillysaurus 13y ago
    It means that people should at least be willing to challenge immoral behavior in a court, even if it's legal. We don't need to have a "conversation". We need to challenge this behavior in courts, and win.
    • jd007 13y ago
      To challenge immoral behavior in court may be much harder than you think, and TBH I don't think it's even needed here (though IANAL so this is me speculating). I think it's enough to claim that what NSA did is unconstitutional.
      • mtgx 13y ago
        I don't think he meant challenging Google and Facebook in Court, but challenging the government and the Patriot Act and hew new FISA in Court.
  • hamburglar 13y ago
    I especially liked the fake incredulity: why would some of the richest people on earth not want to be turned into the next Bradley Manning? Well gee, I simply can't imagine their motivations!
    • milkshakes 13y ago
      I, for one, would love to see the government try to Bradley Manning Mark Zuckerberg for telling the truth. It would at least be more interesting than the current Orwellian dialogue we are having with our government and corporate leaders, and it would probably be more substantive too.
      • adventured 13y ago
        Nobody really wants to end up as the first Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the new fascist America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky
        • sounds 13y ago
          Although I agree with your point, Khodorkovsky is likely guilty as charged; Russia probably was just selectively enforcing the law until he started to threaten American oil interests. (The real outrage in Khodorkovsky's case isn't that he has been repeatedly convicted while still imprisoned. The real outrage is that ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco found a way to destroy their Russian competition.)
      • nraynaud 13y ago
        there are other ways to handle a lone wolf, even if powerful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko The whole premise is that the NSA is protecting the USA of terrorism by spying and that the USA is in a war against terrorism. Then the one who go against NSA is a traitor in a war time. Stop any rational argument here. BTW, I think you look slightly traitor to me... On a side note, I see the whole xenophobia that's implied by all this. The NSA exists only to strip foreigners of their privacy, without any due process or supervision, and the only accusation here is that they might have stripped some of the 5% of the global population of their privilege of due process and constitutional rights. And there is a lot of suspicion that the NSA was used for economic spying in the war between Boing and EADS, and probably other cases.
  • InclinedPlane 13y ago
    Why has this program been secret for more than a day, or a month? Are we to believe that the leaders of the most technologically advanced companies on Earth are so unsophisticated they can imagine the only way to let the world know a secret is to tell it directly? Governments and companies know how to leak. The only logical conclusion is that these surveillance programs are not actually significantly upsetting to most of these folks.
  • pfortuny 13y ago
    Do you understand what a conscience is? Only if you do you can understand that post. Really. "Legal" is worthless if it is inhuman. So one MUST stand against inhuman laws.
  • mtgx 13y ago
    His point is basically this: “All it takes for evil to succeed is for a few good men to do nothing...” ― Edmund Burke That's so true. If they came out now, the country would be better for it. But they are deciding to be accomplices of the out of control and abusive government. I thought Google, at least, would be better than this, after the whole China situation.
    • vorg 13y ago
      Yes, if Google don't stand up to the US government over this blanket gag order, it sort of invalidates their efforts over censorship with the Chinese government.
    • StavrosK 13y ago
      > If they came out now, the country would be better for it. It's easy to ask for other people to fight for your rights. What are you doing about it?
      • protomyth 13y ago
        Nice... Getting the run-around for the IRS and the media seems to be the lot for those trying to get it together.
  • primitur 13y ago
    >to have an actual conversation both about privacy Let us have a conversation about that: Why should Mark Zuckerberg, et al., know things about you that the government shouldn't? Or, to put it another way, shouldn't the very thing which represents You, the People, have as much information about you as, "They", the Corporations, do? After all, Mr. Z, et al., can quite easily tell you things about yourself which, 3 words into the sentence, would give the government a lot of information it needs to optimize itself. To Serve You. Whereas, the corporate stance is "we will own the consumers, all the consumers, and we will encourage them to endless consume our product", the government stance is: "how do we keep 240million people from cannibalizing themselves". Mr Z., et al., are being mighty disingenous with this position, because the fact of the whole matter is, the Government would be the absolute BEST customer for him/them/et al., there is no better way to feed a consumer than to get the Government on your side, as we see with Pharmaceuticals, Farming, Oil, etc. There are multiple points of view in this argument, is all I am trying to say, and by setting the above in word I hope to have at least set the scene for my real, tl;dr, which is this: Privacy is a trap. Those who are fully exploiting the nature of the system, simply keep no secrets .. and trade never willingly with those who do.
    • yaix 13y ago
      > Why should Mark Zuckerberg, et al., know things about you that the government shouldn't? 1. Because the user decided to give their own info to FB, but not to the gov. 2. The gov has many more powers than FB. If FB knows something about you that "may be suspicious" they can't put you in jail for it, maybe even without a trial. 3. If some FB employee is able to steal data, it would have bad consecuences for the FB stock, so there is probably all kinds of barriers in place to stop employees to do just that. If some bureaucrat manages to sell off you data there is no consecuene for them. etc.
      • primitur 13y ago
        1. You also chooose your participation in government. 2. Right, so because Mr. Z. et al., don't have a 'license to kill', there is a difference. This is the only difference. 3. Which do you trust more, McDonalds or Congress?
  • grandalf 13y ago
    A tangential ad hominem about Arrington's personal life does not constitute a counter-argument.
  • mbesto 13y ago
    It's pretty simple, Arrington is stirring the pot, and the bees are coming in. In this case bees are good for his business.
• arthulia 13y ago
  If they are indeed aware of PRISM, I have a feeling that both Mark and Larry are avoiding legal action (or threats of legal action) made by the NSA. To me, that is the most likely reason for not "standing up" and coming out about the truth. To the best of my knowledge, they do fight heavily to keep their data out of government hands because these exact kind of situations are horrible for their companies' reputations.
  • Glyptodon 13y ago
    I think the diatribe is sort of right, though - if they really wanted to end these kind of problems for good all they've got to do is come clean and go public. The second they get 'disappeared' the outcry will force something to actually be done. Likewise, if they really cared about their companies, they'd realize the huge PR advantage to not telling half-truths and going along with whoever's compelling them to cooperate like sheep.
    • jboggan 13y ago
      Want to be the company that people flock to for storing their information? Want to gain the trust to win the coming market conflict over digital wallets and online payments? Defect, call the government's bluff. You will be aided and rewarded.
• chime 13y ago
  What if companies that do not wish to do evil adopted unspoken signaling mechanism for silent protests? What if every time n NSLs were fulfilled since start of year, they donated to EFF? What if $1 was donated to EFF for every 1 GB of data they shared? Would that be illegal?
  • Semiapies 13y ago
    What if they released remarkably similar statements that very specifically denied the specific things they're not supposed to be admitting to doing... Or perhaps that's the charitable interpretation.
  • gohrt 13y ago
    Of course it would be illegal. Same as if they said "eway eceivedray one-a ationalnay ecuritysay etterlay." Any way they intentionally communicate information is a disclosure. English language isn't treated specially.
  • eightyone 13y ago
    What you're talking about is referred to as a warrant canary. There's a nice Wikipedia entry on the subject, if you're interested. [1] Check out [2] for an example of one. Perhaps we should be pressuring companies like Dropbox (whom was implicated as "coming soon" in the documents leaked) to implement such a system. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary [2] http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt Edit: Now thinking about it, Dropbox was probably already hit with a request. Maybe we should focus on other services that may be of future interest to the government?
  • reeses 13y ago
    I'm sure an Adwords campaign offering information on FISA would net you some data on who and where requests are being made. It wouldn't be explicit and the people wouldn't have to tell you WHY they are looking for information on FISA. However, when you saw blips from people paying $99 for your packet of case law on 4th amendment protections with respect to stewardship of online data, you'd have the start of a signal. That is, for all of about ten minutes until you couldn't find a hosting provider or payment processor on Earth who would return your phone calls. Not that it would matter because a "Chinese PLA hacker nuked your box, your bank account, and your house from orbit." [Insert relevant quotes regarding government requests on named individuals from Eric Schmidt here.]
• prayag 13y ago
  I can't believe that people are getting mad these private enterprises. If you want your government not to spy on you, tell THEM. The governments was made to serve the people. The companies are going to do what they think is their best fiduciary responsibility. Get mad at your representatives in congress, not your email providers.
  • alan_cx 13y ago
    Well, who donates more to get the lobbying ears? Individuals, or huge businesses? Do you think your congressmen will listen to you, or a man donating millions to campaign funds? Politicians don't mind being hated, but I bet the likes of Page and co very much do. Reading their statements reads like they don't personally like this at all. Pressure the people paying donations. Its the best chance you have.
  • argumentum 13y ago
    Amen. Perhaps it's because we expect so little of our government that we lash out at Zuck, LP etc as they at least answer to the free market, and therefore can effect change.
  • lesedilino 13y ago
    Asking your government to change the laws when your government has shown you have no power over it is a waste of time. There's a growing intellectual understanding that corporations control the governmental processes from start to finish. Therefore, asking the government to change is stupid. If the King rules your country, petition the King for mercy. If an oligarch rules your country, petition the oligarch for mercy. If a corporate elite rules your country, petition the corporate elite. Democracy is, quite simply, completely dead. Gone. Done. The government does not institute change based on democratic opinion. You have no control over your government. They aren't the real seat of power in this society. Having said that, most of the power resides on Wall Street and in the Military-Industrial-Security complex rather than Silicon Valley corporations. But these Silicon Valley corporations are now rich enough to change the laws. They can crown themselves King with the right kind of manoeuvring, and Arrington here is trying to get them to do so. Petitioning Larry Page or Paul Graham to have a conscience is far more fruitful than voting for the government you want.
• mayanksinghal 13y ago
  Yup, because instead of expecting politicians who made the laws and judges who approved the FISA orders, let's call out the CEOs. I don't even understand the outrage that most US citizens are showing at the moment for the said firms even after realizing that any access that may have been provided was through the channels that the governments had 'legally' set up. And that at least some of the companies had resisted. It seems very unfair to me, largely as an outsider and yet a stakeholder, that the only people who are being held accountable in the piece are the CEOs who had little to do with the fiasco.
  • rdtsc 13y ago
    Just because the laws, judges and politicians are not behaving well, doesn't make CEOs' behavior admirable. The allegation is that they are deliberately misleading. I don't know if it is true but that is what they are attacked for. Heck maybe people perceive that a single CEO like Page or Zuckerberg do have more power to change things than those in Congress or Obama. That says something as well. It is also a battle of expectations. Maybe many expect NSA, Obama and other secret government agencies to fuck everything, but they thought, heck at least the "Do No Evil" Google will stand on our side, or my buddy Zuck will.
  • adventured 13y ago
    The private henchmen that help make police states possible, should always be called out. The government could never even remotely come close to implementing their policies without vast help from the private sector.
• jmillikin 13y ago
  > Or to put it another way, who the hell needs “direct > access” or “back doors” when companies are building > “secure portals” for them instead? The primary argument against government agencies having direct access to private data is that it removes the data's caretaker from the decision-making process. That is different from having an access portal for agencies to submit warrants or other legal requests. There is no obvious reason why a company should have an ethical obligation to resist lawfully issued warrants. This article would have been much better if it had focused on the ethically dubious nature of FISA, and how problematic it is to interpret the fourth amendment as applying only to American citizens. But that wouldn't have driven as many clicks.
  • sillysaurus 13y ago
    There is no obvious reason why a company should have an ethical obligation to resist lawfully issued warrants. Then who will? Think about it: companies are the only entity who can challenge this kind of behavior in courts. But that wouldn't have driven as many clicks. Nice ad hom, but it's mistaken. Arrington is many things, but he actually feels the way he writes.
    • jmillikin 13y ago
      >> There is no obvious reason why a company should have >> an ethical obligation to resist lawfully issued warrants. > > Then who will? Think about it: companies are the only > entity who can challenge this kind of behavior in courts. The concept of search warrants is built into the constitution, and is supported by countless judicial decisions. Challenging the ability for the government to demand customer data would take much more than a few tech companies.
    • saalweachter 13y ago
      Courts have proven that they are a lousy place to change national security policy. Courts established the principle of keeping things secret for the sake of national security (even though it later turned out that the case establishing this had nothing to do with national security; the gov't just claimed it did to avoid liability for negligence). Whenever someone tries to challenge secret, warrantless infringements of privacy, the courts throw out the case as lacking jurisdiction: since no one can publicly acknowledge that you are being spied on, you can't sue the government for spying on you. The only way to change the policy on this is in Congress. If you really want to make a difference, call your Congressman and yell at them for spying on you. Call them daily, call your Senator, call other people's Congressmen. It still might not help, but nothing Google or Twitter or Facebook can do is going to.
• monkmartinez 13y ago
  All it takes is one. One person with strong sense of the natural order of life and the courage to stand up. It may be scary as hell... I can appreciate that. However, everyone is born with the ability to reason. From reason we can innately sense what is right and wrong (not based on emotions). Do what is right, after all... if doing the right thing was easy, EVERYONE would do it.
• zhemao 13y ago
  The system the NYTimes article outlines is still quite different from what the original leak suggested. According to the Times article, the requested data isn't placed into the locked mailbox until the FISA request is reviewed by somebody at the company. This is nowhere near the same level of access as what the PRISM leak suggested. So if what the Times article says is true, Zuckerberg and Page's statements weren't misleading at all. They really do "review each and every request." The fact that they've built special systems for giving the government the data is not too surprising or scandalous. If I ran a site getting the same number of FISA requests that Google and Facebook presumably get, I'd probably also design a special system to make the process more convenient and secure. Short of openly challenging the NSA in court, this is probably the best response we could hope for. It gives the company control over what data is released and is much more secure than a back door which could be compromised.
  • coopdog 13y ago
    But what if the FISA request is 'everything'. Yes they're complying, someone gives it a look over then adds everything and keeps it updated in real time. They don't have direct access to the servers, they're complying with the law, they have everyone's data. The worst bit is that this is all kept secret. If it's all so acceptable then why didn't the public at least get told.
  • lawnchair_larry 13y ago
    You're confusing the two leaks (I did too, it's deliberately confusing). The PRISM project does not even require FISA approval. The reason it exists is to not require FISA approval. The analyst just has to check a box saying that they reasonably believe that there is a 51% chance that the target is foreign.
  • Achshar 13y ago
    Did you even read the NYT article? They said requests can be very broad, like logs for certain search terms and people staying in the company building for weeks with all the data being gathered in government laptops. That is pretty much realtime and "direct access".
• staunch 13y ago
  I'd think most programmers can understand their reasoning behind creating "secure portals". If you're being forced to hand data over to the government you may as well do it securely and consistently. Rather than some ad hoc process of burned CDs or USB drives, just create some simple software that makes the process secure, reliable, and traceable. The alternative is USB drives and Fedex envelopes, which is harder to track and probably less secure.
  • md224 13y ago
    I don't know if Arrington is saying they shouldn't have built the portals... I think he just wants them to openly admit it and be transparent about the work they're doing with the government.
    • staunch 13y ago
      They've clearly stated that they're complying with laws that require them to hand over specific user data. These companies are using secure portals as opposed to envelopes filled with CDs. So what?
    • kllrnohj 13y ago
      Kind of like this? http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests
  • wavefunction 13y ago
    securely, like letting the chinese up in your grill? Don't try to play us
• deleted 13y ago
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• dylangs1030 13y ago
  An article that waxes poetic, yet is so very hollow and devoid of realism. What would you have these companies do? Band together in a mighty ring of technological resources and begin a Privacy Revolution? This is unrealistic. As an American, I am saddened and angered by the recent news of the past two days. I am disgusted with what our government has done - what it has hidden from us, to take advantage of us unawares. But we need to consolidate our anger. We have to aim it precisely, and arm ourselves against the proper enemy. It will not help the tech community to bicker amongst ourselves and be disappointed with CEOs for what the NSA has done. This community has great resources. Let those resources stand. Experts from every tech center in the country, across industries spanning finance, security, engineering, and many more - we are all pooled here. We can make an impact. But not if we are busy attacking those whose positions we cannot possibly corroborate. Their hands were tied. In an ideal world, every man and woman would be consumed with a righteous fury and ignore whips, imprisonment and even death for the greater glory of what is right. This is not that world. This is not idealism. The government wronged us. The government made the first move. The government forced their hands, made them cooperate by ratifying unethical conduct and making it illegal (and treasonous, as a violation of national security) to resist. Who would have acted differently in their position? And what would it have achieved? I recognize that it is discomforting that we cannot simply believe tech leaders after what today's events have shown us. I get that. But they are not the ones who violated our privacy. They were the medium. That is not fair to them. If they made a mistake, it was only in trying to navigate perilous waters somewhere between honor and law. Unfortunately, the law is not on their side. With Mark Zuckerberg jailed or Facebook sued by an insurmountable public agency, or Google's assets seized and its constituent leaders punished, who would be benefitted? Should we ask them to suffer and violate laws just for a truth that has come out only hours later? If you want a takeaway from this, it's simple. It's unfair to hold people to expectations of high moral standing when they have unknown pressures put upon them. And in light of that, we need to remember who the true wrongdoers here are. If Larry and Zuckerberg have made mistakes, so be it. But know that they paled in comparison to the NSA, and that is our prime prerogative.
  • milkshakes 13y ago
    Arrington was addressing the leaders of these companies, not the organizations themselves. While corporations obviously do not have consciences nor moral compasses, his point was that humans do, or at least they should. And I think he was pretty clear about what he would have those leaders do: > Perhaps you could all get on a conference call tonight and double dare each other to do it all together, at the same time. > “The NSA makes us do things that crush our Constitution, and then they make us never talk about it.” > I hope one of them does They don't need to lead any revolutions, or even leak classified information. The cat is out of the bag, so to speak. All he's asking for is for them to not lie to us, especially when they know that we know that what they're saying is demonstrably false.
• btilly 13y ago
  Nice. Quote the NY Times article describing how things work, and fail to quote the bit where the employees tasked with responding to FISA orders, and who were possibly involved in the program, were legally not allowed to inform the CEO of what they were doing. CEOs who are not informed can release statements indicating the depth of their ignorance without being deliberately dishonest. That said, the alleged situation frankly astounds me. The government SHOULD NOT have employees at companies devoting company resources to projects that the people running those companies are not allowed to know about. But that is exactly what the NY Times claimed.
  • anigbrowl 13y ago
    Oh come, why do you have to spoil the confirmation bias party?
  • deleted 13y ago
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  • reeses 13y ago
    First, since we do not know the information obtained, we can't say if the CEO or CFO should be informed. If the scope of what they were required to deliver included information that could have an impact on the financial disclosures of the company[1] then, under Sarbanes-Oxley, they are at least required to put controls in place to communicate or prevent inaccurate financial reporting. This could also be why the CFO was not involved in the denials, because they've at least separated NTK. As for the portal, the lowest common denominator would be an ftp server. Maybe they put it on fbiguy3@gmail.com's Google Drive so he had to log in. I'd like to think I'd encrypt it with a huge whopping GPG key, email it from a gmail to a yahoo address under my control, and ask,"Did you get that?" but I know I'd just piss down my leg and give them what they wanted. Finally, Google is rather proud of the predictions or observations it can make based on (they say) trends in search queries. For example, it is now taken as fact that "Google can predict the flu better than the CDC/WHO/etc." I would not be surprised if Google and other companies could tell at least how many FISA requests have probably been generated by segmenting requests for related searches. (Of course, LexisNexis, FindLaw, and the like would have even better information when paying customers do their due diligence on compliance with unreasonable requests.) [1] E.g., Send us all credit card information for customers from outside the USA.
• modeless 13y ago
  "While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is not." This is the crux of the matter, but this statement is not strictly true. If a company only sent information on 1.44MB floppy disks, or started requiring NSA agents to run an obstacle course or something, they would be held in contempt of court. These requests have an implicit requirement of ease of access, and what that means is ultimately up to a judge's discretion.
• mintplant 13y ago
  Wait. That's it? That's all PRISM is--a special method of handing over information that is requested via court order? Is this correct?
  • anigbrowl 13y ago
    But it's the principle of the thing, even though we evaluate the risk of terrorism in terms of incidental probabilities, rather than the principle that you should be able to go about your life without being randomly killed. This is different because it's destructive of liberty, unlike corporations doing the exact same thing for profit.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • lawnchair_larry 13y ago
    No, it's a way of handing it over without a court order.
  • Achshar 13y ago
    A hidden/secret court order that can at times ask for broad thing like search term logs and > In one recent instance, the National Security Agency sent an agent to a tech company’s headquarters to monitor a suspect in a cyberattack, a lawyer representing the company said. The agent installed government-developed software on the company’s server and remained at the site for several weeks to download data to an agency laptop. > In other instances, the lawyer said, the agency seeks real-time transmission of data, which companies send digitally. That is more than what they currently do.
• fredBuddemeyer 13y ago
  arrington needs friends in silicon valley a lot more than he needs your clicks. whatever you think of the man this is an honest and indignant post and it's an example of the courage he speaks of. it is fascinating that this concept is so difficult for an otherwise intelligent community to grasp and a reminder of why we still need journalists.
• cromwellian 13y ago
  Arrington is a drama queen IMHO, there are more important voices like the EFF, ACLU, et al to listen to on this issue. It's hard to trust where this indignation is clickbait fake, or real.
• prollyignored 13y ago
  At this point, we are just guessing. * Backbone route * SSL, MIM hack * indirect access like real-time backups. * sudo RO access via vpn * Remote Access to BigTable queries * Team inside the company * What china does. Gotto love lawyers. They harp on the most ambiguous term. Cowardice is an accurate term to describe ferengi, not to mention unpatriotic. Who wants to give up the Jacuzzi ?
• mtgx 13y ago
  "What we have in our hands now is the first concrete proof of U.S.-based high-tech companies participating with the NSA in wholesale surveillance on us, the rest of the world, the non-American, you and me," he said. - Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Finnish software security firm F-Secure. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/europe-surveillance-prism-idUSL5N0EJ3G520130607 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/europe-surveillanc...
  • Achshar 13y ago
    That is the most terrifying thing to me. The US government can do anything with their people. It's their government after all and they are responsible for running it. But US government doing wholesale surveillance on everyone else? Fuck them if thats what is happening.
  • lawnchair_larry 13y ago
    I'm not even sure how "we're only spying on our friends" is supposed to make anything better. Like no one in any other country has a right to privacy.
• marcamillion 13y ago
  This is classic Prisoner's Dilemma. If all of them come out at the same time - everybody benefits. But if 1 of them screws everybody over, the screwed will be royally screwed.
• trustfundbaby 13y ago
  > Will you do it, Marissa? Or you, Ballmer? Or you, Armstrong? Will anyone stand up and say the truth? Will anyone stand up to the secret organization with the secret courts and, simply, do what’s right? Despite the consequences? Despite what your lawyers tell you? Silly man. Exactly how hard is it to ask someone else, with way more to lose than you, to be a martyr for a cause you feel strongly about?
  • polarix 13y ago
    Moreover, these people cannot speak the truth since they do not know it. The surgeries were done far away from the C-suite.
• saalweachter 13y ago
  I love the guilty-until-proven-innocent angle of these personal attacks against CEOs and companies. There is literally no evidence anyone could produce which would prove to anyone's satisfaction that (a) Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc don't hand over every last shred of data they have to the NSA, the KGB, and whatever China's equivalent is, or that (b) the CEOs of the respective companies didn't personally sign off on every single violation of privacy while kicking puppies. Corporations can't have alibis. Mark Zuckerberg can't say, "Oh, I was in Cincinnati for the last 5 years, and I don't have cell coverage there, so I can't possibly have been involved." I usually avoid defending billionaires, because they can dry their tears on their giant stacks of money, but so far this is just a he-said-she-said, and if all of the tech companies are saying they're innocent, it's the responsibility of the accusers to pony up some evidence they're guilty. Slide shows are one thing, but if you want to prove to me that the system does what you say it does, we need a document dump: millions of random emails, Facebook messages, whatever that have been illegally accessed through this system, which could plausibly not have been accessed without the kind of far reaching access that the tech giants are being accused of having provided.
  • polarix 13y ago
    The best hope for evidence would be engineering and construction documentation of the reporting mechanisms.
    • corresation 13y ago
      What sort of reporting mechanism? One of the articles (the one that Arrington thinks refutes the public denials of these companies, even though it does no such thing) talks about Google trying to organize a more efficient, standards approach to responding to lawful orders for specific data. That has nothing to do with this wholesale data pipe that is supposedly in place.
    • joesb 13y ago
      And, if given those document, why would you trust it? They could still be lying. If you don't trust what they are saying now, why would you trust any document created by them?
• wangweij 13y ago
  If a company is brave enough to close its business in China, what prevents it from doing the same in US?
  • adventured 13y ago
    The fact that Google had very little market share in China, and made almost no money. Versus 3/4 of its $50 billion in sales coming from the US ad market.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• hkmurakami 13y ago
  *"It is further ordered that no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order." But why is that stopping them? Do they really see themselves being dragged away, Bradley Manning style – to sit for years in a prison before even being given the dignity of a trial? Because that’s not going to happen. Please Google, hire Mike Arrington and task him to spill all your beans so he can put his butt behind his words instead of raindancing on the sidelines.
• Aqueous 13y ago
  There are cowards and then there are people who willfully exaggerate. A backdoor implies unfettered access to data for batch collection and processing. That's what this story was about at the beginning - the government was indiscriminately collecting and possibly analyzing your private data using some sort of massive, sinister Big Data operation, the scale of which we can not even conceive, and these big web companies were essentially handing them the keys to their telecommunications networks and telling them to go wild. This has been downgraded again and again, now to a few websites constructing a "secure mailbox." Most of us, including Arrington, know exactly what that means. A secure portal/mailbox is exactly what it sounds like: it is the equivalent of sending someone e-mail with a curated collection of data, except for instead of sending an e-mail you are posting it to a private web page accessible through some sort of authenticated login page. And if this data is only in response to a FISA warrant or subpoena and only regarding data posted by non-citizens, suddenly your outrage begins to look a little melodramatic, and what's happening begins to look a lot like what we already knew was happening for years. Just because we've known about it for years doesn't make it right, but can we at least admit that the novelty of the original story is long gone?
  • wavefunction 13y ago
    It's more about seizing the moment of widespread outrage to effect change, rather than ho-humming like a jaded hipster.
    • twoodfin 13y ago
      "Fake but accurate!"
    • Aqueous 13y ago
      The line between 'seizing' widespread outrage and 'manufacturing' it is perilously thin.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    • deleted 13y ago
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• tripzilch 13y ago
  Cute speech, but if you need to rely on the honesty or courage of CEOs of huge corporations (that are in the business of trading private info, no less) to step up and protect you from your government, then I wouldn't keep too much hope. Imagine someone urging CEOs of Big Oil / Pharma / [0] corps to do the same? Would you take it seriously? "Someone in the Oil Industry should stand up because what the US is doing in the Middle East is wrong!" To be clear, my point is not that it's wrong to demand this, or even that it's stupid (it is naive, but understandable). The point is that this is something that an actual democracy should be able to solve because its people demand it. Not by relying on CEOs of powerful corporations to do the right thing. [0] or farming, weapons/steel, the US prison industry ...
• fauigerzigerk 13y ago
  "Or to put it another way, who the hell needs “direct access” or “back doors” when companies are building “secure portals” for them instead?" The extent of his confusion is breathtaking. Apparently very few people get what this is all about. The real question is this: Does the government (a) mine content and/or metadata in these service providers' databases for suspect activity, or (b) can it only access specific accounts after naming the account holder? What happened at Verizon is (a). Page and Zuckerberg say it's not what happens at Google and Facebook. What Page and Zuckerberg meant when they were talking about "scale" is that the government cannot mine their databases for suspects. Not directly, not indirectly, not through a secure portal or in any other way. The government can and does make requests (lots of them) to have specific accounts opened, and what Google/Facebook apparently do is to make that process technically more efficient via a secure portal.
  • foobarqux 13y ago
    I think the "real question" is whether people are okay with the government being capable of retrieving personal information that they thought was private. Public outrage is justified even if the nuance is not understood. Moreover if the government is doing dragnet surveillance on telephone records it is only a matter of time before they expand the program to tech providers even if it hasn't already.
  • mshron 13y ago
    I agree, this is the question. And the answer is "both". From the NY Times article: > FISA orders can range from inquiries about specific people to a broad sweep for intelligence, like logs of certain search terms, lawyers who work with the orders said. There were 1,856 such requests last year, an increase of 6 percent from the year before. Imagine a 2x2 matrix of intelligence requests, with one side being "narrow" vs "broad" and the other being "short" vs "long" duration. Verizon was long and broad, the worst kind. The tech companies are trying to imply that they were short and narrow, at least most of the time, and the journalists are trying to imply that they were long and broad, but never come out and say it because they have no evidence. If we had better transparency about FISA, we could answer this question ourselves. Just knowing how many requests were for individual user's data would be extremely helpful.
• djhworld 13y ago
  I think the whole thing becomes even more of a farce when you read quotes like this on the BBC news > Meanwhile, the BBC has learned that Twitter was invited to join the Prism programme last year but rejected the approach from US authorities.
• Kiro 13y ago
  Sorry, I have not been following this thing at all but why do they think Google is lying? The new "top headline story" doesn't link to anything for me.
• soofaloofa 13y ago
  It seems like I am in the minority here but I see nothing wrong with making a required government process more efficient. The companies in question would have to provide this information anyways and streamlining the process seems logical.
  • rmrfrmrf 13y ago
    Americans don't usually take kindly to the government messing with due process.
• FiloSottile 13y ago
  @Pinboard: "If any of these companies had spine, they would have sent the data they were ordered to disclose on iomega zip drives. Click click click" This.
• rasterizer 13y ago
  Google CLO responding to the NYT et al: We cannot say this more clearly—the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box. Nor have we received blanket orders of the kind being discussed in the media. It is quite wrong to insinuate otherwise. We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process. And we have taken the lead in being as transparent as possible about government requests for user information. https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/TMh6gUVrwMq https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/TMh6gUVrwMq
• bernardlunn 13y ago
  Danny Sullivan, who is a good source on search issues, thinks it was a check in check out system based on FISA requests. The point about not being able to mention FISA requests is then a 1st Amendment issue not 4th.
• whyme 13y ago
  Well Page and Zuck may not be able to tell the truth about the action, but they have enough clout to fight the Gag law itself. i.e. They could lead publicly rally's/protest against the gag laws and they could be really effective in this without breaking the law.... And yet still, they do not.
• tokenadult 13y ago
  Rather than calling anyone a coward, I will acknowledge that standing up for freedom is never easy. I know through direct personal acquaintance people who spent hard prison time during Taiwan's transition from dictatorship to democracy, who were arrested after leading peaceful public protest demonstrations of the kind that happen every day here in the United States. I have seen what kind of sustained effort--and, yes, individual courage--it takes to move a society from a default condition of tyranny to a default condition of freedom and rule by the people. Rather than name-calling, let's learn how to fight for freedom. I posted yesterday, to NO upvotes, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840000 a link to the free online book From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation by Gene Sharp, http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf an experienced activist and supporter of people power democratic movements that originated under some of the world's toughest dictatorships. We can learn a lot more from him and his writings and those of his collaborators http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html http://www.aeinstein.org/organizationsde07.html than we can learn from anyone on Uncrunched or TechCrunch or any high-tech publication about how to win freedom even while under intense pressure from dictators. Try it. Don't decry anyone else for lacking courage. Build up your own courage. Build up your own effective communication with other freedom fighters, so that the movement for freedom has solidarity, unity of purpose, and resilience. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. (Anyone can participate: as a foreign student in Taiwan in the early 1980s, I was able to turn Chinese-language speech contests for foreign students into opportunities to express dissent from the dictatorship in the hearing of government officials of the dictatorship. This just takes courage and preparation.)
  • x0x0 13y ago
    It's a hell of a lot easier when you're rich beyond belief; have access to the best legal counsel; have an enormous media platform; have access to lobbyists; have cultivated personal connections to legislators; can pick a very public fight which the NSA dreads getting dragged into; and can threaten obama / the democrats' link to a rich, donor heavy constituency. What John Kiriakou did took courage. What these ceos need is a hell of a lot less. edit: We've seen how these ceos can react when they care, ie when something threatens their income. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA edit2: punctuation
• brunopedroso 13y ago
  Stop complaining, start doing something! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5844582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5844582
• 6d0debc071 13y ago
  What I find odd isn't that they don't tell the truth. I never expected them to. That they didn't remain silent on the issue is odd though. What can denying possibly gain them at this point other than tanking their credibility?
• edw519 13y ago
  First they came for the terrorists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a terrorist. Then they came for the whistle blowers, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a whistle blower. Then they came for the illegal aliens, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not an illegal alien. Then they came for the hackers--and there was no one left to speak for us.
  • tptacek 13y ago
    Whistleblowers and illegal aliens might be morally equivalent to trade unionists and socialists, but terrorists are not equivalent to communists; I said nothing when they came for the terrorists because the terrorists were trying to murder my children.
    • throwaway420 13y ago
      The government is trying to label just about everybody as a terrorist or suspected terrorist and using this hyped up fear of terrorism to justify a growing police state.
    • iandanforth 13y ago
      Two points 1. The US has killed many many more children in its retaliation for attacks than any so called 'terror' organization has. (http://www.policymic.com/articles/20884/is-america-like-adam-lanza-u-s-drone-strikes-have-killed-176-children-in-pakistan-alone http://www.policymic.com/articles/20884/is-america-like-adam...) 2. The fear of your children dying is the ultimate weapon for people to control you. There is a strange dichotomy between the pride parents of soldiers have in their child's courage to defend liberty, and the 'do-anything-it-takes-to-protect-my-babies' mindset that seems to pervade the civilian population. One leads to people standing up, the other, cowering.
      • zaphar 13y ago
        One of the governments primary jobs is protecting you from aggressors. You may not agree with the method a government uses but that doesn't change it's job description. So when they come for the terrorist they are pursuing a legitimate governmental role. When they come for the whistleblower and illegal alien it becomes debatable whether they are pursuing a legitimate governmental role. It's very definitely an apples to oranges comparison there.
• TheCondor 13y ago
  There are some fundamental issues here that are upsetting, to say the least. It's a dark day when telling the truths illegal and I'm pretty sure that's not what was intended by the forefathers... Re: cowards, It's easy to say that when you don't have skin in the game. These guys do and I too expect more of them but I can't fault them, nobody wants to go to prison. Something completely legal, completely within their rights and abilities that they can do is lobby and spend and campaign to end the patriot act and they are billionaires...
• grandalf 13y ago
  One thing to keep in mind about both Facebook and Google is that both were late arrivals to their respective markets... created by founders from elite schools who were able to get funded to build a "Cadillac" version of something that already existed. This kind of entrepreneurial success is closer akin to being successful in finance and less about innovation than about mapping a set of ideas to a set of value props that appeal to holders of risk capital. This is a highly "establishment" mindset... but since that doesn't make a compelling creation story, emphasis is placed on the riskiest and most personality-driven elements. So it's perfectly expected that both firms act cautious and conservative in a situation like this.
• trekky1700 13y ago
  You can't really use the way someone frames a sentence as evidence for guilt. The terminology they used, like back door, was simply what they were accused of having. And the nitpickiness of pointing out that they said direct access rather than access is, in my opinion, crossing the boundaries of reason. We know, and have known for years that these sites provide data to the US when required by law. That would be considered access, which could easily explain the terminology. Just because it's not the most sensational story doesn't mean it's not the true one. If we're going the conspiracy theory route: what if the documents are phony? What if the leak was made up? Basically, rather than wildly speculating based on he said she said and the framing of a sentence, why don't we try to be intelligent and wait for some real information. None of this speculation does any good.
• moultano 13y ago
  According to Cnet, they are telling the truth, and not in some weasel word sense of it. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-to-tech-companies&#x2F http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57588337-38/no-evidence-of...; They are already standing up for freedom in the way that we would want them to. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57587005-38/justice-department-tries-to-force-google-to-hand-over-user-data&#x2F http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57587005-38/justice-depart...;
• ThinkFirst 13y ago
  Coward. Not a nice word at all. I have been called this many time but I still don't know why?
• grappler 13y ago
  Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, in the WaPo story: “information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect. In the intelligence world, this is an important program. It is “among the most important and valuable” programs. That makes it a desirable project to work on. If you're in this industry, you want your name attached to this project. To get that kind of assignment, in addition to being smart and capable, you need to be seen as dedicated and loyal. It's not impossible that a leaker will end up on such a project (indeed it seems to have just leaked). But the culture will select against anyone seen as a potential risk, in a variety of ways.
• avisk 13y ago
  All, Can somebody compile Non-US alternatives for email, search,etc? On top of my mind : Search : yandex.com Google Docs : zoho.com Email : fastmail.fm (Paid)
• TheMagicHorsey 13y ago
  Look this article is ridiculous. I'm embarrassed with everyone that thinks this is some sort of conspiracy to hand over information to the government without process. Both Google and Facebook hand over data for INDIVIDUALS when the government issues a lawful request (such as by subpoena or warrant). Subpoena's do not have judicial review the way warrants do, but they are not OPTIONAL. A company MUST comply under US laws if the government issues a lawful request. Both Facebook and Google have lawyers on staff that carefully vet requests. If you have an issue with how our F'in government asks for too much information, then take issue with our laws. You cannot fault Google or Facebook for obeying laws that you, through your representatives, put in place. I am fully in support with restricting the power of the state to compel private information from corporations, but I certainly won't blame a corporation for obeying the law. Now, let us tackle the issue of the so called "red carpet" rolled out for the government. When the government requests information Google and Facebook can send them the information on disk, on paper, on anything for that matter. The issue is that they want to keep YOUR information as secure as possible while handing it to the state. They want the state to have access to it, but NOT any third party. How secure will your information be if they don't set up a secure drop for the government? Do you want them to set up one-off FTP sites? Do you want them to put the information on disk for hand over? We've already discussed that direct access to the source servers is a bad idea. Do you see what I'm saying? This fucking author doesn't use his brain for two seconds. What options do Google and Facebook have to obey the law, and to keep your data as secure as possible from third parties. Some people just want to cry wolf at every turn. And then when we really need to raise a fuss (like when Google removes XMPP support from messaging) we get no traction with the public, because the community just looks like a bunch of whiners.
• sneak 13y ago
  The lack of superhuman bravery is not cowardice.
• dnautics 13y ago
  Purely hypothetical: what if the government is doing this, the CEOs are aware the government is doing this, it's only happened, say three times, and they were given the personal opportunity to review the information requests, and they felt it was justified. Then what? Would they still be cowardly?
• humbleopinion 13y ago
  there is the fear of prosecution of course, but i think that plays less a part than the threat of how the market will react to a full confession that we're giving your data away (even if it's under the pretense of "safety" or whether you trust the data given is whole or in part). so lets say Google admits, ok we give access to the gov to sift through your contacts...the vast amount of the population will say, that's messed up but will continue to use their services...who I do see leaving are the small segment of people who value their privacy and the technically savvy individuals who can roll their own services...those people could be the taste-makers of society and depending on whether you believe their influence, could pivot the market to a competitor. of probably greater importance are the government and corporate entity of the world who now will be concerned with whether they should use Google for their own sensitive data knowing that a third-party (and in the case of nation states, an overly meddlesome competitor) can access it, who historically are also known to have difficulty holding onto data (ie, leaks). So there would be definite loss of trust there. from my view, those are the greater risks for those particular CEOs...it could result in killing your own baby, as they are also the founders.
• detcader 13y ago
  The CEO answers to shareholders, not users. A CEO of a company with shareholders is not a living organism with the possibility of having a moral compass but instead a (don't snicker) machine, one that makes deterministic (ultimately predictable) decisions.
• lnanek2 13y ago
  I'm all for people getting their privacy, rah, rah. However, these leaders of companies are not free of obligations. What if you had your entire life savings in Google, Google broke the law by talking about what it is legally not allowed to do, and the stock plummeted due to the CEO being arrested? Or if the government just put a lot of oversight on them in the future and lost them a lot of business and cost them a lot of money verifying everything through lawyers (happens often after privacy violations, amusingly). Even if the leader of a company spoke with a good heart, if he broke the law and got the company in trouble, he is abandoning his duty to the company. I'd hope the board would remove him in this case, but even then there's still be a lot of damage.