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I'm not sure how much you can really blame Facebook or Google here. My understanding is that a corporation is legally compelled to comply with a National Securi

• dredmorbius 13y ago
  I'm not sure how much you can really blame Facebook or Google By creating an infrastructure in which the data are collected, centralized, individually identified, unencrypted, and specifically associated with vast trails of other nominally unassociated online information (search history, logins to other sites, analytics on other sites, etc.). This is in the sense of Lawrence Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. The architectures of Facebook, Google, and other social networks, advertising networks, mobile phone systems, phone apps, PC-based snooping (inclusive of Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, and other systems), etc., etc. These systems are designed in ways which maximize their utility to a national surveillance network, despite alternative architectures being available. As an example of alternatives, Twitter and Reddit, at the very least, don't demand / promote "real names", or (mostly) track information across third-party sites, at least not to the extent Facebook and Google are doing.