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Something that people in silicon valley just don't get is that that the above argument also applies to tech corporations like Google who collect personal data f

Something that people in silicon valley just don't get is that that the above argument also applies to tech corporations like Google who collect personal data for living and then say "trust us, we'll do no evil". The industry is upset about Snowden because it cost them sales in China, but for the most part while it talks the talk it doesn't walk the walk. * If we're going to talk about WWII a good example would be IBM and their role in the holocaust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

leoc 11y ago
Why restrict it to the past? Let's talk about Cisco and Falun Gong http://business-humanrights.org/en/cisco-systems-lawsuits-re-china http://business-humanrights.org/en/cisco-systems-lawsuits-re... .
higherpurpose 11y ago
I agree, and I think Cisco, for example, is almost as bad as IBM was then, by being the architects of the "lawful intercept" [1] (backdoor [2]) protocol for their routers in China and elsewhere, which then facilitates the government's catching, torturing or killing of the dissidents. At the very least Cisco is as bad as the Hacking Team. [1] - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3924 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3924 [2] - https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-dc-10/Cross_Tom/BlackHat-DC-2010-Cross-Attacking-LawfulI-Intercept-wp.pdf https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-dc-10/Cross_Tom/Bl... There are other, much more loved, tech companies that do similar things, too. They know who they are. I just hope history won't be kind to them.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  No. It's important to separate technology creators and users. Physicists should bear no blame for the use of atomic weapons. Cisco, IBM and others are, likewise, just technology providers. Google, OTOH, actively uses its technology.
  - Buge 11y ago
    If Cisco has people onsite helping to install their products and providing support for China's operations, and takes feature suggestions and implements stuff specifically to help China that's more than simply being a technology provider. Yes Google is intentionally using its technology to serve ads, but it's not intentionally using its technology to give information to the NSA, and is in fact trying to get everything encrypted to specifically stop the NSA.
stretchwithme 11y ago
Its certainly true if private companies have to disclose what they collect to the government. If the government doesn't have any records about who's collecting what, its a bit more difficult to make them turn it over. Of course, we are taking about business people, so they'll always be some who will sell it for the right price.
chestnut-tree 11y ago
"...tech corporations like Google who collect personal data for living" I agree. The largest and potentially most-revealing information about you is captured by technology companies like Google and Facebook. The Amsterdam registry recorded "Name, Date of birth, Address, Marital Status, Parents, Profession, Religion, Previous Addresses and Date of Death" Create a Google account and you are asked to provide: Name, Gender, Date of birth, Location, Mobile phone number. This is some of your most private and personal information and it's tied to your actual behaviour on the web. Google's ability to track you across the web and across devices is simply unprecedented. Google omits basic facts in their privacy policy about the data they collect about you. Things like: how long they keep your data (presumably forever), whether the data is anonymised, whether your searches or activity are disassociated from your identity, and who sees your data inside the company. Does Google use your mobile number solely for two-factor authentication and absolutely nothing else? Google doesn't tell you. Do they really need your date-of-birth? And is it only used for age verification? Could they simply ask if you're 16 or over? Sure they could, but date of birth tied to your online activity is so much more valuable when it comes to crunching all that big data on user behaviour. The amount of information that Google captures about you is gargantuan. They know more about your online (and possibly offline) behaviour than you know about yourself. Just to be clear, I don't believe Google does anything nefarious with your data. But even if you trust them, why is it considered perfectly acceptable for them to track you to such a relentless degree?
- Buge 11y ago
  The real reason they ask for mobile number is to stop spammers creating a ton of accounts.
  - psykovsky 11y ago
    Or maybe that was just a convenient excuse at the time. Now they present me a screen to input my phone number every time I login. I choose to ignore it.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  They also are really insidious about how they get you to sign up more of your data. View a YouTube link on a fresh Android phone it puts you on the sign-in screen, hit back the video plays, they make it look like you have to sign in to watch the video hence make it easier to follow what you watch. Run Chrome for the first on an android phone, the sign-in button is bigger and clearer, the skip button is small and greyed out. Chrome history can only be suspended, accidentally enable it and it's on forever again, no warning. Login from one google account and then accidentally login in from another and it tries to join them (this is so bad I new hit incognito mode before signing into anything google makes). All of these things in isolation seem relatively minor but the goal is clearly an all encompassing pervasive monitoring of everything you do (so much so that my next phone will not be Android, I'm seriously considering a dumb phone and using my tablet). I don't trust Google and tbh as a company I don't like them very much.
oneloop 11y ago
I was gonna say that at least in the tech world if you don't like a company you can just not use their products. But then it occurred to me that if you don't like a country you can just move...
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
  Moving to a different country is an expensive luxury that's not available to some people. Also, US politics has a clear role in world politics, and these policies will be universal if we don't make it clear that they are not okay.
- polymatter 11y ago
  > if you don't like a country you can just move... you know many many people risk their lives under extreme conditions to do exactly that. See Latin Americans trying to get to US or Africans into Europe. Hell I am in the process of emigrating from one Western country to another, and its an incredibly stressful process with no guarantee of success for me.
- boyaka 11y ago
  Or you can work to purge the scum that is ruining the country your ancestors worked to make great, and that you were born and raised in.
agumonkey 11y ago
I recently learned that French national ID cards were put in place during WWII / Vichy regime. Weird.
AgentME 11y ago
I agree, but the government can collect your data by force, and there's discussions to increase that force (banning of encryption), so in my mind that makes it a more pressing issue.
mverwijs 11y ago
Relevant IBM ad from those days: http://philosecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/hollerith.jpg http://philosecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/hollerit...

leoc 11y ago

Why restrict it to the past? Let's talk about Cisco and Falun Gong http://business-humanrights.org/en/cisco-systems-lawsuits-re-china http://business-humanrights.org/en/cisco-systems-lawsuits-re... .

higherpurpose 11y ago

I agree, and I think Cisco, for example, is almost as bad as IBM was then, by being the architects of the "lawful intercept" [1] (backdoor [2]) protocol for their routers in China and elsewhere, which then facilitates the government's catching, torturing or killing of the dissidents. At the very least Cisco is as bad as the Hacking Team. [1] - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3924 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3924 [2] - https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-dc-10/Cross_Tom/BlackHat-DC-2010-Cross-Attacking-LawfulI-Intercept-wp.pdf https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-dc-10/Cross_Tom/Bl... There are other, much more loved, tech companies that do similar things, too. They know who they are. I just hope history won't be kind to them.

MichaelGG 11y ago
No. It's important to separate technology creators and users. Physicists should bear no blame for the use of atomic weapons. Cisco, IBM and others are, likewise, just technology providers. Google, OTOH, actively uses its technology.
- Buge 11y ago
  If Cisco has people onsite helping to install their products and providing support for China's operations, and takes feature suggestions and implements stuff specifically to help China that's more than simply being a technology provider. Yes Google is intentionally using its technology to serve ads, but it's not intentionally using its technology to give information to the NSA, and is in fact trying to get everything encrypted to specifically stop the NSA.

stretchwithme 11y ago

Its certainly true if private companies have to disclose what they collect to the government. If the government doesn't have any records about who's collecting what, its a bit more difficult to make them turn it over. Of course, we are taking about business people, so they'll always be some who will sell it for the right price.

chestnut-tree 11y ago

"...tech corporations like Google who collect personal data for living" I agree. The largest and potentially most-revealing information about you is captured by technology companies like Google and Facebook. The Amsterdam registry recorded "Name, Date of birth, Address, Marital Status, Parents, Profession, Religion, Previous Addresses and Date of Death" Create a Google account and you are asked to provide: Name, Gender, Date of birth, Location, Mobile phone number. This is some of your most private and personal information and it's tied to your actual behaviour on the web. Google's ability to track you across the web and across devices is simply unprecedented. Google omits basic facts in their privacy policy about the data they collect about you. Things like: how long they keep your data (presumably forever), whether the data is anonymised, whether your searches or activity are disassociated from your identity, and who sees your data inside the company. Does Google use your mobile number solely for two-factor authentication and absolutely nothing else? Google doesn't tell you. Do they really need your date-of-birth? And is it only used for age verification? Could they simply ask if you're 16 or over? Sure they could, but date of birth tied to your online activity is so much more valuable when it comes to crunching all that big data on user behaviour. The amount of information that Google captures about you is gargantuan. They know more about your online (and possibly offline) behaviour than you know about yourself. Just to be clear, I don't believe Google does anything nefarious with your data. But even if you trust them, why is it considered perfectly acceptable for them to track you to such a relentless degree?

Buge 11y ago
The real reason they ask for mobile number is to stop spammers creating a ton of accounts.
- psykovsky 11y ago
  Or maybe that was just a convenient excuse at the time. Now they present me a screen to input my phone number every time I login. I choose to ignore it.
noir_lord 11y ago
They also are really insidious about how they get you to sign up more of your data. View a YouTube link on a fresh Android phone it puts you on the sign-in screen, hit back the video plays, they make it look like you have to sign in to watch the video hence make it easier to follow what you watch. Run Chrome for the first on an android phone, the sign-in button is bigger and clearer, the skip button is small and greyed out. Chrome history can only be suspended, accidentally enable it and it's on forever again, no warning. Login from one google account and then accidentally login in from another and it tries to join them (this is so bad I new hit incognito mode before signing into anything google makes). All of these things in isolation seem relatively minor but the goal is clearly an all encompassing pervasive monitoring of everything you do (so much so that my next phone will not be Android, I'm seriously considering a dumb phone and using my tablet). I don't trust Google and tbh as a company I don't like them very much.

oneloop 11y ago

I was gonna say that at least in the tech world if you don't like a company you can just not use their products. But then it occurred to me that if you don't like a country you can just move...

Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
Moving to a different country is an expensive luxury that's not available to some people. Also, US politics has a clear role in world politics, and these policies will be universal if we don't make it clear that they are not okay.
polymatter 11y ago
> if you don't like a country you can just move... you know many many people risk their lives under extreme conditions to do exactly that. See Latin Americans trying to get to US or Africans into Europe. Hell I am in the process of emigrating from one Western country to another, and its an incredibly stressful process with no guarantee of success for me.
boyaka 11y ago
Or you can work to purge the scum that is ruining the country your ancestors worked to make great, and that you were born and raised in.

agumonkey 11y ago

I recently learned that French national ID cards were put in place during WWII / Vichy regime. Weird.

AgentME 11y ago

I agree, but the government can collect your data by force, and there's discussions to increase that force (banning of encryption), so in my mind that makes it a more pressing issue.

mverwijs 11y ago

Relevant IBM ad from those days: http://philosecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/hollerith.jpg http://philosecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/hollerit...