3 ms·

I guess you have an ideological bent that considers it a shuffling of deck chairs. At the end of the day, I would rather have private companies holding the rec

I guess you have an ideological bent that considers it a shuffling of deck chairs. At the end of the day, I would rather have private companies holding the records than government for reasons that should be obvious.

EdSharkey 11y ago
But isn't this just like forcing these businesses to be a free-of-charge private cloud storage for the government? Oh, silly me, of course there's gonna be payola bigtime for providing a service like this. If the government can query the whole trove whenever she deems there is a need, what difference does it make where the hard drives live? Just more lacklustre theatre where nothing really changes and the partners/cronies get some extra loot.
- carboncopy 11y ago
  Sadly you're right, our tax bucks are going to go toward huge overcharging by these companies. As of 2013, the FBI was paying $325 per wiretap (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/10/what-government-pays-to-snoop-on-you/2504819/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/10/what...)
asgard1024 11y ago
> I would rather have private companies holding the records than government for reasons that should be obvious They are certainly not obvious to me. With government, there is a democratic oversight, you can (at least in theory) vote to have these records destroyed or stop collecting them and so on. However, when private company does it, what kind of control do you have over them? Especially if they are 3rd party.
- DennisP 11y ago
  The only reason we have any democratic oversight over the NSA's actions is that Snowden broke the law to let us know what they were actually doing.
- rev_null 11y ago
  Government has a monopoly on violence. Private companies do not.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    In the theory from which that line originates, it is definitional rather than descriptive: under that theory, whatever has a monopoly on legitimate use of force in a territory is called the State, whether or not it is the thing that purports to be "the government" or not.
  - zaccus 11y ago
    There's a bill of rights and a system of checks and balances that protects me from the government. None of those things exist with private companies, not even in theory.
- jgroszko 11y ago
  Yeah I don't see why it's better to have private companies hold the data either. Private companies have a different set of incentives, such as mining that data for advertising...
mauricemir 11y ago
And what given American history makes you think that companies will behave better than government? At least Governments are somewhat accountable.

EdSharkey 11y ago

But isn't this just like forcing these businesses to be a free-of-charge private cloud storage for the government? Oh, silly me, of course there's gonna be payola bigtime for providing a service like this. If the government can query the whole trove whenever she deems there is a need, what difference does it make where the hard drives live? Just more lacklustre theatre where nothing really changes and the partners/cronies get some extra loot.

carboncopy 11y ago
Sadly you're right, our tax bucks are going to go toward huge overcharging by these companies. As of 2013, the FBI was paying $325 per wiretap (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/10/what-government-pays-to-snoop-on-you/2504819/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/10/what...)

asgard1024 11y ago

> I would rather have private companies holding the records than government for reasons that should be obvious They are certainly not obvious to me. With government, there is a democratic oversight, you can (at least in theory) vote to have these records destroyed or stop collecting them and so on. However, when private company does it, what kind of control do you have over them? Especially if they are 3rd party.

DennisP 11y ago
The only reason we have any democratic oversight over the NSA's actions is that Snowden broke the law to let us know what they were actually doing.
rev_null 11y ago
Government has a monopoly on violence. Private companies do not.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  In the theory from which that line originates, it is definitional rather than descriptive: under that theory, whatever has a monopoly on legitimate use of force in a territory is called the State, whether or not it is the thing that purports to be "the government" or not.
- zaccus 11y ago
  There's a bill of rights and a system of checks and balances that protects me from the government. None of those things exist with private companies, not even in theory.
jgroszko 11y ago
Yeah I don't see why it's better to have private companies hold the data either. Private companies have a different set of incentives, such as mining that data for advertising...

mauricemir 11y ago

And what given American history makes you think that companies will behave better than government? At least Governments are somewhat accountable.