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Curious, has Paul Graham funded any startups with the direct intent of fighting the NSA and/or enabling better privacy?

by aantix 13y ago

alan_cx 13y ago
Well, I have said that the big guys at Google, MS, etc should be funding and championing internet and general freedom. So, perhaps include PG in this group. However, the problem is that as soon as such a campaign becomes strong, and that is assuming all parties agree on a policy or two, the government, especially a US one, will hit the media with fear mongering attack ads that slander such people as terrorist sympathizing, non patriotic, traitors. Witness Snowden's treatment. So, it would take only the strongest and bravest rich people, who are happy to risk all to get involved with such a venture. And such people are in it because the love start-ups and tech, they never signed up for politics. Perhaps circumstances will drag them in? The other way of course is for such business leaders to fund and lobby existing parties to, well frankly, bribe them in to policies that promote freedom over fear and risk. That for me is playing the existing game. Now, I don't know about others here, but then the likes of the media, oil or industrial military complex do that, I call it corruption. Frankly, while I sit here aghast at how government now treats people in general, I cannot see a reasonable clam way to solve this satisfactorily. I think, sadly, that it will carry on until there is a snapping point in the population, and some sort of revolution happens. I don't see that happening any time soon, Im not sure it ever will. As others have said, they have their job, mortgage, kids at colleges, and so on. Much easier to just accept it and let government continue to persecute the minority (not necessarily in a racial sense) it chooses to. In the end, the vast majority of us a comfortable cowards. Who cares if a few people get screwed over. "We" have too much to lose. Yes, me included.
betterunix 13y ago
Startups are not the answer here. Privacy is not something you can buy as a service; Hushmail should have proved this beyond any doubt. Privacy protecting technologies hamper typical startup revenue models based on targeted advertising, and would necessarily have to do so in order to provide the privacy we actually need in the face of the NSA. There is also the matter of the NSA maliciously sabotaging privacy protecting technologies. Really what we need is something like GnuPG, but easier to audit, easier to use, and with a standard that is not constrained by a need for backward compatibility (and which clearly follows constructions given by researchers, rather than using ad-hoc techniques).
- api 13y ago
  There could be startups here, but they would have to have different revenue models like directly charging for apps instead of monetizing eyeballs.
jellicle 13y ago
They would need to be located outside of the U.S. to have any resistance to U.S. spying, which would complicate the money issues immensely, and also go against the supposed major benefits of hanging around Silicon Valley.

Curious, has Paul Graham funded any startups with the direct intent of fighting the NSA and/or enabling better privacy?

by aantix 13y ago

Curious, has Paul Graham funded any startups with the direct intent of fighting the NSA and/or enabling better privacy?

Well, I have said that the big guys at Google, MS, etc should be funding and championing internet and general freedom. So, perhaps include PG in this group. However, the problem is that as soon as such a campaign becomes strong, and that is assuming all parties agree on a policy or two, the government, especially a US one, will hit the media with fear mongering attack ads that slander such people as terrorist sympathizing, non patriotic, traitors. Witness Snowden's treatment. So, it would take only the strongest and bravest rich people, who are happy to risk all to get involved with such a venture. And such people are in it because the love start-ups and tech, they never signed up for politics. Perhaps circumstances will drag them in? The other way of course is for such business leaders to fund and lobby existing parties to, well frankly, bribe them in to policies that promote freedom over fear and risk. That for me is playing the existing game. Now, I don't know about others here, but then the likes of the media, oil or industrial military complex do that, I call it corruption. Frankly, while I sit here aghast at how government now treats people in general, I cannot see a reasonable clam way to solve this satisfactorily. I think, sadly, that it will carry on until there is a snapping point in the population, and some sort of revolution happens. I don't see that happening any time soon, Im not sure it ever will. As others have said, they have their job, mortgage, kids at colleges, and so on. Much easier to just accept it and let government continue to persecute the minority (not necessarily in a racial sense) it chooses to. In the end, the vast majority of us a comfortable cowards. Who cares if a few people get screwed over. "We" have too much to lose. Yes, me included.

betterunix 13y ago

Startups are not the answer here. Privacy is not something you can buy as a service; Hushmail should have proved this beyond any doubt. Privacy protecting technologies hamper typical startup revenue models based on targeted advertising, and would necessarily have to do so in order to provide the privacy we actually need in the face of the NSA. There is also the matter of the NSA maliciously sabotaging privacy protecting technologies. Really what we need is something like GnuPG, but easier to audit, easier to use, and with a standard that is not constrained by a need for backward compatibility (and which clearly follows constructions given by researchers, rather than using ad-hoc techniques).

api 13y ago
There could be startups here, but they would have to have different revenue models like directly charging for apps instead of monetizing eyeballs.

jellicle 13y ago

They would need to be located outside of the U.S. to have any resistance to U.S. spying, which would complicate the money issues immensely, and also go against the supposed major benefits of hanging around Silicon Valley.