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Analysis of text related to subjective ideas can make anything bunk ("What do they mean 'all men are created equal'? Isn't our individualism what makes us great

Analysis of text related to subjective ideas can make anything bunk ("What do they mean 'all men are created equal'? Isn't our individualism what makes us great", etc.). Line by line analysis are particularly insidious because any idea can be proposed and appear to be a reasonable response without any likelihood of response from the original party. If you want to find problems with the various companies' responses, you sure can. I am positive things have happened with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, etc. and the government that most people would find offensive. But playing semantic games that push particular agendas without the full story is misleading and imprudent.

josephagoss 13y ago
But he makes some good points, especially about the heavy use of the word "volunteer" and also "give", all which imply Yahoo! isn't freely giving access to the NSA. Yahoo! never said that they were disallowing NSA lawful requests for bulk data, which is the topic of concern. (Of course Yahoo! isn't volunteering information, that is not concern at all, if the NSA demands then its not volunteering information) The issue is that all the PR from Facebook, Google and Yahoo! are using very specific non-broad language to say they are not doing a very certain thing, a thing that is not the concern. The concern is about lawful access to all servers and not one piece of PR said this was not happening. (In the current definition everything the NSA is doing would be considered lawful as the Government post 9/11 is able to use its various provisions to allow for a whole manner of things that we might disagree with, but we are not writing the law, they are.)
- dclowd9901 13y ago
  He misses the part about them not giving the government "unfettered" access. That's narrow enough to meet the criteria of "otherwise" access. That's the problem with all of these statements. They're very specific with their language.

josephagoss 13y ago

But he makes some good points, especially about the heavy use of the word "volunteer" and also "give", all which imply Yahoo! isn't freely giving access to the NSA. Yahoo! never said that they were disallowing NSA lawful requests for bulk data, which is the topic of concern. (Of course Yahoo! isn't volunteering information, that is not concern at all, if the NSA demands then its not volunteering information) The issue is that all the PR from Facebook, Google and Yahoo! are using very specific non-broad language to say they are not doing a very certain thing, a thing that is not the concern. The concern is about lawful access to all servers and not one piece of PR said this was not happening. (In the current definition everything the NSA is doing would be considered lawful as the Government post 9/11 is able to use its various provisions to allow for a whole manner of things that we might disagree with, but we are not writing the law, they are.)

dclowd9901 13y ago
He misses the part about them not giving the government "unfettered" access. That's narrow enough to meet the criteria of "otherwise" access. That's the problem with all of these statements. They're very specific with their language.