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I think a lot of outrage on this site and others is misplaced. Why are there more posts about boycotting than about affecting change in the federal government?

• disintermediate 13y ago
  These companies go to great lengths to avoid US tax jurisdiction, employing an army of accountants and lawyers to avoid giving money to the IRS. Perhaps they could work with the same dedication to avoid giving their users data to the NSA.
  • declan 13y ago
    That is true, but numbers matter. There's a big difference between the NSA serving 10 FAA702/FISA orders a year on Microsoft for Skype intercepts vs. 10 million. It's targeted vs. wholesale surveillance. We know from companies' disclosures the upper bound is on the order of thousands, and is likely to be far less. Put another way, there are some actual terrorists/spies/etc. out there, even if the number of terrorists is far lower than the government would like you to believe. If the NSA serves Microsoft with, say, 10 or 100 lawful orders a year to eavesdrop on those communications, is that something worthy of working with "dedication" to prevent? Probably not. What the companies should be doing is encrypting what they can to frustrate wholesale surveillance. Which Microsoft isn't doing. Which I wrote about here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57590389-38/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57590389-38/ And here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57591179-38/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57591179-38/
    • ChrisAntaki 13y ago
      When Verizon was served with a FISA request for all their customer's meta data, each day for 3 months, that counted as one order. That means Verizon might have "only" received 4 FISA orders a year.
      • declan 13y ago
        No, the Internet companies have said that's not what's happening. Facebook has said, for instance, it has received a total of requests covering 18,000 accounts over a 6-month period, which includes NSA requests and local cops trying to find a missing person: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589461-38/facebook-microsoft-release-nsa-stats-to-reassure-users/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589461-38/facebook-micro... The Facebook etc. statements were designed to address precisely the concern you raised. Verizon and AT&T, on the other hand, have remained very, very quiet. For good reason: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57591391-38/surveillance-partnership-between-nsa-and-telcos-points-to-at-t-verizon/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57591391-38/surveillance-p...
        • coldtea 13y ago
          >No, the Internet companies have said that's not what's happening. Ah, it's ok then.
          • declan 13y ago
            If you have evidence they're lying, I'd be delighted to hear it. Otherwise I'll believe them over a random HN comment, thanksverymuch.
    • grey-area 13y ago
      While I agree with you that numbers matter, having the infrastructure in place and a secret court system which simply passes almost every request allows this to be used as much as the NSA decides is reasonable, and for that use to increase exponentially over time. That in itself is dangerous, because we have no idea what future administrations would use the data for. A manual process would ensure that the number of requests is kept reasonable.
  • adventured 13y ago
    Such very different issues. Tax structures are intentionally written to leave openings (like the double irish), courtesy of lobbyists. And it doesn't take much effort to do it. For every politician that wants to bust Google for dodging taxes, there's one that wants to give them huge tax breaks for putting a data center in their state, and so on. When it comes to jurisdiction, the US Government has essentially no power, via the tax code or otherwise, to force Google to pay taxes on foreign profits unless the money is repatriated. The same is not true about national security. Political alignment is almost entirely on the side of giving the government more power for 'security' purposes. When it comes to national security laws, and having your corporation located in the US, you can forget about fighting back and winning. The laws are in place, and they can not be rolled back without a fundamental culture / attitude shift among Americans. It's arguable, in my opinion, that it's dangerous to fight the government on these issues (eg Joe Nacchio / Qwest). That's not to say someone shouldn't do it, but when your personal well being may be at risk, very few executives are likely to put their comfortable living on the line. Lobbying about taxes? Half the government is likely to be on your side when you do. Nobody really cares if you do that by comparison to national security issues.
• malandrew 13y ago
  Both can be effective. Boycotting simply brings about change by proxy, since it can prompt companies to use their legal counsel to lobby for changes. If there is one thing citizens have learned, it's that lobbyists are more effective than citizens because many of those in congress are lazy enough to accept bills written by others and pass it off as their own. Personally, I think every bill that goes to congress should be written by the congressmen and women and their staff and not by any outside agencies and consultants. Showing that a law was not written by those that were elected should invalidate the law.
  • declan 13y ago
    Except that advocacy groups the HN crowd generally likes also draft legislation for the congresscritters to introduce. Here's the Electronic Frontier Foundation's draft bill -- "Initial Improvements to Aaron's Law for Computer Crime Reform" -- from earlier this year: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/effs-initial-improvements-aarons-law-computer-crime-reform https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/01/effs-initial-improveme... BTW I'm hosting an event in SF with EFF on this topic later this month. On July 22. Details TK. Point is the writing-the-bills issue (and even the reading-the-bills issue) is a symptom of the problem, not the actual problem itself.
    • Amadou 13y ago
      I think that is an acceptable price to pay for the benefit of requiring our representative to at least understand the issue enough to restate it in their own words. That's the rule I have for my kids, if they claim they understand what I'm telling them, I require them to state it back to me in their own words. Seems like a reasonable expectation of the people hired to represent us.