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> 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.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
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.)
        glogla 13y ago
        There is no evidence of anyone taking longer term approaches. There is much evidence of Zuckenberg, Page and other just surrendering. It works the other way around than you say. Surrendering is short term win at the price of long term loss. Taking short term win at price of dooming us all is not nice behavior, even if being a dick might be intelligent.
- Qz 13y ago
  The whole reason we even know about all this is because someone did have that courage.
  - peterjancelis 13y ago
    Yes, but do we really think that person will lead a long and untroubled life now?
    - e_w 13y ago
      Isn't this exactly the reason why these companies, which are infinitely more influential than the person who leaked it, have a civic obligation to take a stand?
    - pbz 13y ago
      And this summarizes everything that's wrong with the current ethos. We expect everything to be safe, and we expect everything to be easy. Nothing is above our comfort level and safety. Maybe the knife hasn't cut deep enough, or maybe we don't have the stamina to get off our couch. Either way, sad.
      - peterjancelis 13y ago
        I see nothing with this ethos and I'm a full blown anarcho-capitalist so it's not a lack of scepticism towards government that is to blame. The reason is that internet is winning over the state, which is now forced to a reactionary role adapting with regards to new technologies that come out at an accelerating pace. Some examples: Youtube and social media make war crimes more difficult to hide, Silk Road makes the war on drugs irrelevant, Bitcoin will make monetary policy irrelevant, open transactions will make the law system irrelevant, 3D printing will make border tariffs irrelevant, etc. Every software commit is a sign of progress, a log of someone trying to make the world a more voluntary, peaceful and decentralized place. Given all of this, please excuse me in not caring about the idiots in Washington, London, Brussels, Paris, Moscow and Bejing who want to make me believe they are worth my time and emotional investment.
    - 13y ago
- s00pcan 13y ago
  Or, in the timeless words of Robert Oppenheimer: "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds." meaningless, irrelevant words.
- drivebyacct2 13y ago
  Or they simply know more than we do. Maybe they've gotten the answers to "Why?" that we want and that convinced them? That's the "conspiracy" that almost worries me more. Not that I hold any real faith in such a thought.
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    That conclusion requires three things to be true simultaneously: 1) The government has some actual legitimate reason to do all of this which outweighs the danger of excessive government power. 2) Disclosing the reason to the public would eviscerate its effectiveness. 3) Allowing the government to say "trust us, we're the government" about anything from now on and get a free pass, because it could be this situation, will not result in the outrageous atrocities that governments have been known to commit when government accountability to the public is literally prohibited by law. I don't even buy the first two as being especially plausible, but the third is why this cannot stand.
    - drivebyacct2 13y ago
      I 100% completely agree with you. Everything else aside, as I said elsewhere, I'm tired of being treated like a child and told to shut up and not question things. That's what repressive governments do. "Just trust us, we know what's best for your "safety"".
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    In how many instances in history has "We don't tell you for your own good." ever worked out to be true once the facts come out?
- css771 13y ago
  Sorry to go OT but those lines are not Oppenheimer's originally. They are from the Bhagavad Gita.
- fijal 13y ago
  "First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."
  - Chris2048 13y ago
    That's a reply to who you should fight for things that don't effect you (or your group), not for when individuals don't want to join a greater fight for the sake of their dependants.
  - jamespo 13y ago
    This isn't reddit. It also isn't particularly relevant.
    - bernardlunn 13y ago
      This story is no longer just a tech story.
  - conroe64 13y ago
    That quote should be, "I didn't speak out because I saw what happens to those that do."
    - PavlovsCat 13y ago
      But that's kind of the point; if you don't speak out, it WILL happen to you anyway. As they say, if you don't deal with politics, politics will deal with you.
- gingerjoos 13y ago
  Just FYI : Oppenheimer was quoting the Bhagavad Gita. see http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer#Quotes http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer#Quotes
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Not a bad quote in context considering how things go for the Pandavas after the great battle that follows the Gita. That really is the sort of turning point from the harsh but adventurous world of the virtuous heros to the fallen world when the Pandavas fall from Dharma. Even Yudhisthira cannot stand by his principles to win the battle, and they suffer greatly as a result.
- dasil003 13y ago
  Whoah, hold on, I don't think anyone is saying this is easy or there aren't risks for Zuckerberg. However to say he shouldn't stand up against tyranny and abuse of government power because he has responsibility to parties x, y and z is exactly the line of thinking that allows totalitarian governments to thrive. Government power is not absolute, that power is derived from the people. No one person can stand up to the government, but the government can't fight everyone, and if Google, Facebook, et al stood up to them and signed some light on this issue it would not be so easily papered over by the spooks. Beyond that, in terms of public surveillance, Zuckerberg has real power in this sphere. You could even argue that he has more power than any individual has ever had. Certainly there is no bigger global database of personal information than Facebook. It doesn't matter if Arrington is being a hypocrite. It doesn't matter if I'm being a hypocrite. Zuckerberg, and indeed all technologists should stand up on this issue. If we love what computers can do, we owe it to the world to fight so that they don't become the Orwellian tool of control that totalitarian regimes have always dreamed of. We can't put the genie back in the bottle—data is going to be out there—but we can force the government to be more transparent. We can stand up and say that a handful of isolated terrorist attacks is not justification to ratchet up governmental power to something a thousand times more terrifying than any homicidal extremist ever could be. This is fundamentally one of the most important issues of our time, certainly far more important than the fate of any one company.
  - vadiml 13y ago
    Risking one’s own well being to help the community is basically a definition of an altruistic behaviour. Nobody and i mean NOBODY can reach and keep the position of CEO of big international corporation by exhibiting altruistic tendencies. The environment is too competitive and it promotes egoism and punishes altruism. (BTW, The same reasoning stand for political leadership too). So, I don’t think we can really expect this call to be heard…
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      That is a problem to be solved then.
- Ygg2 13y ago
  If a man of such power and influence can't speak up, then what hope is there for others? Guess only those that have nothing to lose can speak.
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > He has a family, a social life, and a whole lot of people at Facebook who depend on him. He also has more means to defend himself, move out of harm's way, get active support from other people. > Bradley Manning had a different kind of freedom, the kind that comes with nobody around you who can get hurt. This is just nonsense. Manning has a family too (parents).
- robomartin 13y ago
  > 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. He also has over a billion people who would raise hell if the US Government came down hard on him for doing nothing more than tell the truth about a government program and laws that few people would agree make sense. Having him put it all on the table to defend his user's privacy would say more about the company than any marketing or press release ever could. We, as individuals, are utterly powerless against our government. That's a fact. Just try to go up against the IRS or even your local Labor Board. People like him have the ability to really disrupt the surveillance state in ways we cannot. What would happen if all major 'net CEO's and founders agreed to tell the government to stuff it? They are going to arrest all of them? They woukd have angry mobs burning down Congress. These CEO's have real power. Perhaps it's high time they start exercising it.
  - FajitaNachos 13y ago
    I'm pretty sure most of the one billion people you are referencing wouldn't give a shit if Mark Zuckerberg was in jail so long as Facebook was still up and running.
  - hobs 13y ago
    >Having him put it all on the table to defend his user's privacy ... Defend their privacy so he can immediately sell it to the highest bidder?
  - gcv 13y ago
    To be fair, Khodorkovsky was a billionaire, too. He'll get a third prison sentence on more trumped-up charges shortly. The existence of various kangaroo courts ("military tribunals") in the US security apparatus since the Bush 43 administration suggests that Zuckerberg's money and influence are nowhere near enough to protect him. The buck for such decisions stops at the Oval Office, and its current occupant has no reelection campaigns to worry about.
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.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
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.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

deleted 13y ago

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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.)
      - glogla 13y ago
        There is no evidence of anyone taking longer term approaches. There is much evidence of Zuckenberg, Page and other just surrendering. It works the other way around than you say. Surrendering is short term win at the price of long term loss. Taking short term win at price of dooming us all is not nice behavior, even if being a dick might be intelligent.
Qz 13y ago
The whole reason we even know about all this is because someone did have that courage.
- peterjancelis 13y ago
  Yes, but do we really think that person will lead a long and untroubled life now?
  - e_w 13y ago
    Isn't this exactly the reason why these companies, which are infinitely more influential than the person who leaked it, have a civic obligation to take a stand?
  - pbz 13y ago
    And this summarizes everything that's wrong with the current ethos. We expect everything to be safe, and we expect everything to be easy. Nothing is above our comfort level and safety. Maybe the knife hasn't cut deep enough, or maybe we don't have the stamina to get off our couch. Either way, sad.
    - peterjancelis 13y ago
      I see nothing with this ethos and I'm a full blown anarcho-capitalist so it's not a lack of scepticism towards government that is to blame. The reason is that internet is winning over the state, which is now forced to a reactionary role adapting with regards to new technologies that come out at an accelerating pace. Some examples: Youtube and social media make war crimes more difficult to hide, Silk Road makes the war on drugs irrelevant, Bitcoin will make monetary policy irrelevant, open transactions will make the law system irrelevant, 3D printing will make border tariffs irrelevant, etc. Every software commit is a sign of progress, a log of someone trying to make the world a more voluntary, peaceful and decentralized place. Given all of this, please excuse me in not caring about the idiots in Washington, London, Brussels, Paris, Moscow and Bejing who want to make me believe they are worth my time and emotional investment.
  - 13y ago
s00pcan 13y ago
Or, in the timeless words of Robert Oppenheimer: "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds." meaningless, irrelevant words.
drivebyacct2 13y ago
Or they simply know more than we do. Maybe they've gotten the answers to "Why?" that we want and that convinced them? That's the "conspiracy" that almost worries me more. Not that I hold any real faith in such a thought.
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  That conclusion requires three things to be true simultaneously: 1) The government has some actual legitimate reason to do all of this which outweighs the danger of excessive government power. 2) Disclosing the reason to the public would eviscerate its effectiveness. 3) Allowing the government to say "trust us, we're the government" about anything from now on and get a free pass, because it could be this situation, will not result in the outrageous atrocities that governments have been known to commit when government accountability to the public is literally prohibited by law. I don't even buy the first two as being especially plausible, but the third is why this cannot stand.
  - drivebyacct2 13y ago
    I 100% completely agree with you. Everything else aside, as I said elsewhere, I'm tired of being treated like a child and told to shut up and not question things. That's what repressive governments do. "Just trust us, we know what's best for your "safety"".
- Zigurd 13y ago
  In how many instances in history has "We don't tell you for your own good." ever worked out to be true once the facts come out?
css771 13y ago
Sorry to go OT but those lines are not Oppenheimer's originally. They are from the Bhagavad Gita.
fijal 13y ago
"First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."
- Chris2048 13y ago
  That's a reply to who you should fight for things that don't effect you (or your group), not for when individuals don't want to join a greater fight for the sake of their dependants.
- jamespo 13y ago
  This isn't reddit. It also isn't particularly relevant.
  - bernardlunn 13y ago
    This story is no longer just a tech story.
- conroe64 13y ago
  That quote should be, "I didn't speak out because I saw what happens to those that do."
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    But that's kind of the point; if you don't speak out, it WILL happen to you anyway. As they say, if you don't deal with politics, politics will deal with you.
gingerjoos 13y ago
Just FYI : Oppenheimer was quoting the Bhagavad Gita. see http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer#Quotes http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer#Quotes
- einhverfr 13y ago
  Not a bad quote in context considering how things go for the Pandavas after the great battle that follows the Gita. That really is the sort of turning point from the harsh but adventurous world of the virtuous heros to the fallen world when the Pandavas fall from Dharma. Even Yudhisthira cannot stand by his principles to win the battle, and they suffer greatly as a result.
dasil003 13y ago
Whoah, hold on, I don't think anyone is saying this is easy or there aren't risks for Zuckerberg. However to say he shouldn't stand up against tyranny and abuse of government power because he has responsibility to parties x, y and z is exactly the line of thinking that allows totalitarian governments to thrive. Government power is not absolute, that power is derived from the people. No one person can stand up to the government, but the government can't fight everyone, and if Google, Facebook, et al stood up to them and signed some light on this issue it would not be so easily papered over by the spooks. Beyond that, in terms of public surveillance, Zuckerberg has real power in this sphere. You could even argue that he has more power than any individual has ever had. Certainly there is no bigger global database of personal information than Facebook. It doesn't matter if Arrington is being a hypocrite. It doesn't matter if I'm being a hypocrite. Zuckerberg, and indeed all technologists should stand up on this issue. If we love what computers can do, we owe it to the world to fight so that they don't become the Orwellian tool of control that totalitarian regimes have always dreamed of. We can't put the genie back in the bottle—data is going to be out there—but we can force the government to be more transparent. We can stand up and say that a handful of isolated terrorist attacks is not justification to ratchet up governmental power to something a thousand times more terrifying than any homicidal extremist ever could be. This is fundamentally one of the most important issues of our time, certainly far more important than the fate of any one company.
- vadiml 13y ago
  Risking one’s own well being to help the community is basically a definition of an altruistic behaviour. Nobody and i mean NOBODY can reach and keep the position of CEO of big international corporation by exhibiting altruistic tendencies. The environment is too competitive and it promotes egoism and punishes altruism. (BTW, The same reasoning stand for political leadership too). So, I don’t think we can really expect this call to be heard…
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    That is a problem to be solved then.
Ygg2 13y ago
If a man of such power and influence can't speak up, then what hope is there for others? Guess only those that have nothing to lose can speak.
lazyjones 13y ago
> He has a family, a social life, and a whole lot of people at Facebook who depend on him. He also has more means to defend himself, move out of harm's way, get active support from other people. > Bradley Manning had a different kind of freedom, the kind that comes with nobody around you who can get hurt. This is just nonsense. Manning has a family too (parents).
robomartin 13y ago
> 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. He also has over a billion people who would raise hell if the US Government came down hard on him for doing nothing more than tell the truth about a government program and laws that few people would agree make sense. Having him put it all on the table to defend his user's privacy would say more about the company than any marketing or press release ever could. We, as individuals, are utterly powerless against our government. That's a fact. Just try to go up against the IRS or even your local Labor Board. People like him have the ability to really disrupt the surveillance state in ways we cannot. What would happen if all major 'net CEO's and founders agreed to tell the government to stuff it? They are going to arrest all of them? They woukd have angry mobs burning down Congress. These CEO's have real power. Perhaps it's high time they start exercising it.
- FajitaNachos 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure most of the one billion people you are referencing wouldn't give a shit if Mark Zuckerberg was in jail so long as Facebook was still up and running.
- hobs 13y ago
  >Having him put it all on the table to defend his user's privacy ... Defend their privacy so he can immediately sell it to the highest bidder?
- gcv 13y ago
  To be fair, Khodorkovsky was a billionaire, too. He'll get a third prison sentence on more trumped-up charges shortly. The existence of various kangaroo courts ("military tribunals") in the US security apparatus since the Bush 43 administration suggests that Zuckerberg's money and influence are nowhere near enough to protect him. The buck for such decisions stops at the Oval Office, and its current occupant has no reelection campaigns to worry about.

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.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

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.