Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer presented her company’s side of fighting the National Security Agency over requests to have a look-see at the data of Yahoo users. It’s a tough fight, said Mayer, and one that takes place necessarily in private. Mayer was asked why tech companies had not simply decided to tell the public more about what the U.S. surveillance industry was up to. “Releasing classified information is treason and you are incarcerated,” she said.
Go directly to jail?
No.
How would that work, exactly? Would black helicopters — silent black helicopters — land at Yahoo Intergalactic HQ and take Marissa Mayer away in chains? Wouldn’t that defeat the whole secrecy thing to see her being dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the building?
No really, what would happen?
So I asked my lawyer, Claude.
I’ve written about Claude Stern many times and he appeared, playing himself, in Triumph of the Nerds. Claude has been my lawyer since the early 1990s and is today a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP, one of America’s largest law firms devoted solely to litigation (so don’t even think of suing me). Quinn Emanuel is, to put it bluntly, 600 bad-ass lawyers who hate to lose and rarely do. As far as I know Quinn Emanuel does not represent Yahoo.
My inclination, if I were Marissa Mayer, would be to tell the NSA to make my day: “Take me to jail, but understand my company will pay whatever it costs to fight this, we will force it into the open, and — by the way — I’m still breast-feeding, so my baby comes too.”
Film at 11.
Here’s what the far more level-headed Claude says: “Companies typically do not yield to government interference unless they feel there is something to their advantage. Does anyone really believe that NSA would arrest FaceBook’s CEO if it did not comply with a random, illegal order? Please.”
Notice how Claude cleverly replaced Yahoo’s Mayer with Facebook’s Zuckerberg, who is clearly not breast-feeding? But his point is still the same: companies could stand up to these NSA orders and most likely beat them if they chose to.
Either these companies are, as Claude suggests, getting more from the NSA than we are presently aware of, or maybe each CEO is just hoping someone else will be the one to stand up to the bully. I prefer to think it is the latter case. And since I know a lot of CEOs and the way they tend to think, I’d put money on that being the situation.
The CEOs and their companies, then, are ether gutless or corrupt. Charming.
The NSA orders are illegal, it’s not treason to reject them, and even if it were technically treason there is still a right to both due process and — in 21st century corporate America — to spend whatever it takes to beat the rap.
There’s no way Marissa’s baby would spend even an hour in jail, which is exactly why I wish she’d take a public stand on the issue, this nonsense would go away, and we could get back to solving real problems.
Bell will always comply with a lawful request for access. I don’t know this first hand, but I think it’s reasonable to expect that we receive lots of requests from law enforcement people who have left it to the last minute, are unprepared and are suddenly in a hurry to get information they should have planned carefully to get weeks ago. In other words, I expect they are like anyone else in most jobs. I can’t officially say anything about this on behalf of my employer, this is just my conjecture alone. However, I expect that some of these latter requests get subjected to the giggle test. If it’s laughable, we say no.
The CEOs and their companies, then, are ether gutless or corrupt.
Why choose? Why not both gutless and corrupt? The gutless are often corrupt, and the corrupt, gutless. They go together like salt and pepper. And from I can tell of American political and corporate leadership today, there’s a LOT of salt and pepper.
I’m with Roman on this – gutless and corrupted. “We can send a few GAO contracts your way” would do a lot to sway a publicly traded (or even private) company. Along with that is “we can make sure you never get a government contract”, in addition to the threat of jail time.
I second “gutless AND corrupt” as well. For my example, you need go no further than the shutdown of the “Groklaw” site run by Pamela Jones. She shut it down for the same “cannot protect the security of my sources” reason as many of the secure mail services. The big difference is that Groklaw had nothing to do with national security – it was more of a corporate watchdog site. To me it smells like “scratching the backs of the cooperating,” on the part of the NSA.
I just wish she’d spend more time fixing the mess they now call the “New” yahoo mail.
It just sucks.
If Yahoo Mail is what I have to measure her accomplishments by then she has more issues than NSA matters.
Yeah, my Yahoo email account has been down for extended periods of time over the last couple weeks. I’d really wish they’d focus a bit more on quality and less on a pretty new logo.
I think you miss a key point here, Bob. Call it a hunch but I’ll bet that a lot of those companies (large, medium and small) on the receiving end of NSA “requests” have decent-sized federal contracts. So imagine a company providing services to, say, the Interior and Treasury Departments. Its CEO would have to weigh the potential loss of contracts (and inevitable employee firings) against standing up on this issue. Not an easy decision for anyone….
Yes, Yahoo has federal contracts. Go to https://www.usaspending.gov/search?form_fields=%7B%22search_term%22%3A%22YAHOO%21+INC.%22%7D to find a list of them. However, with 25+ years in the federal government at multiple locations, IMHO these contracts have nothing to do with NSA “requests”. NSA simply does not have the leverage outside their immediate community to influence these other civilian agency contracts.
Oh yes, they do. Any U.S. Federal agency’s Procurement organization can place a “stop doing business with this company” order on any commercial entity. It is managed through the “Excluded Party List System” (EPLS) and it temporarily suspends the Federal government from awarding any new business to the excluded party. The scope of the order can – and often does – include all Federal agencies and all divisions of the affected company.
I don’t think that a major government contractor would be affected by a simultaneous government prosecution. Look at IBM and Motorola, two companies that the government prosecuted for bad corporate behavior and eventually wrung consent decrees from, under which strictures they operated until they exited the relevant businesses.
Both IBM and Motorola had entire divisions devoted to government businesses, and these business continued to operate during the prosecution and after signing the consent decrees.
I actually suspect that Yahoo does relatively little business with the Feds in comparison to these companies, so the cost of a theoretical withdrawal of Federal business would be smaller than was at risk for IBM and Motorola.
So these precedents push me to agree with John P Rehberger that the government would not stop doing business with Yahoo. Plus the list that he provided seems like awful small dollars for Myers to be worried about.
> NSA simply does not have the leverage outside their immediate community to influence these other civilian agency contracts.
Qwest refused to comply with an illegal “spy on my customers” order. According to the CEO, this is the reason they were denied other government contracts.[1] Their business went downhill until they were taken over.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202485.html
Where it is stated, somewhere above, that it’s difficult weighing up potential loss of business (etc) against doing the right thing (i.e. telling the NSA “no”), THAT IS corrupt!!! That’s exactly how blackmail works. Blackmail suckers people into believing they get a benefit from giving in to one or more illegal actions. They don’t!!! They just become susceptible to more blackmail and become willing participants in a crime – active co-conspirators.
And by the way, when someone who is currently doing business with you asks you to agree to their criminal request, that is two crimes, not one. The criminal request is one and blackmail is the other, even if it isn’t explicit.
As the government itself long ago said, “Just say no!!!”.
Whether such requests are legal or not depends on how the Supreme court interprets the Constitution and all relevant laws passed since then. Until then we don’t know. Unfortunately actions prior to a decision are not exempt from the decision. So the big companies felt it was in their best interest to cooperate in the mean time, reasoning that if it’s ok for us to have access to customer data, it would be just as ok for the NSA to have access to it.
CEOs rarely obtain those positions by fighting for what is right.
Why would they start now?
It is easy to imagine them saying “what do we need to do to make this go away?”
They could lose out to foreign competitors who aren’t going to be involved with the NSA…..
It always comes down to money…. period
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Theory: This too shall pass.
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It’s cheaper to just comply with the government than fight them. And very few customers will pull their business from a company if they are complying with the law, or in this case, a representative of the law (Government). Most people just want to go about their day, and when it comes to privacy, most people figure, screw it, what’s the big deal anyway. And if the company ends up in the spotlight, they do what Yahoo just did. Most people will say ok, and the others will say, well every other company is doing it, what are my choices, and then soon forget. People don’t want to be bothered, companies know this, they bet on it.
……………………………………………………………………
Theory: Don’t F with the IRS.
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The other factor I’ve always wondered about was, if companies are afraid if they fight, that it won’t be long before they have the IRS with microscopes up their … well you know what. In which case it’s still about money.
………………………………………………………………………
Theory: Better to have friends than enemies in government.
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And then there’s the situation where sooner or later a big company is going to want to buy another company and they may need legislation to rule that it is still ‘Fair” in the marketplace . . . in which case you want friends not adversaries in the government pipeline….. oh yea that’s about money too.
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– just my 2 cents, waiting on change
I’m in agreement with your assessment. Law suits for the government are free. But they cost money for everyone else. Lawsuits are a sport of King’s, Corporations and the cursed. It’s not the cost of resisting the NSA its also the opportunity cost of not going along with. “A” might be big, and B might be big, but A+B is really big.
Yahoo, Google, Facebook and the rest thought they could get some goodwill and back-scratching from Big Brother, without any of their customer-products ever knowing.
However, Snowden has exposed them to the light, and now the cockroaches are running for cover.
We are going to see more of countries like Brazil going after Google, the momentum is gathering. This will be bad for business and get the CEOs’ attention. Maybe they will grow a pair (or whatever Marissa’s equivalent is).
Look at what happened to Snowden. We’ve learned two things from various government employees and Sunday morning pundits about Snowden:
1. What he revealed is not all that secret. Pleeeze! We all knew about this. I don’t know why all those news organizations are so upset.
2. He’s a traitor. A criminal who is giving aid and comfort to our enemies! He should be tracked down, thrown in jail, and the keys tossed! He’s no better than Hitler. No, I didn’t mean to say that. That violates Godwin’s law. Sorry I got carried away. I meant Stalin. I can say Stalin and not lose the debate. Right?
Private Manning is getting 25 years in prison for releasing what he did. That’s longer than many people get for murder and rape. Whether or not you think what Private Manning did was right or wrong, 25 years is about 30% of your entire life. It’s 50% of your entire adult life. When Manning gets out of prison, he will be over 50 years old. Almost half of his 20s, and all of his 30s and 40s will be spent behind bars.
Remember that this isn’t government covert agents coming in the middle of the night and making their requests. These are court orders. They’re warrants signed by a judge. As part of our society, we don’t want people ignoring warrants. It’s the limit of privacy put on in our Constitution: If a court orders you to provide information, you have to provide it — if it doesn’t interfere with your right to self incrimination.
The problem is that these warrants are from a little known court that meets in secret for an agency whose activities we know nothing about. Even most congressmen, the people who pass the budget, don’t know how much money is given to this organization.
Maybe a CEO of one of these companies should stand up, but the truth is that their trial won’t be public: Instead, this secret court could simply throw them in jail for contempt of court. One day Meyer will be in her office, and the next day, she’s in jail for contempt. There would be some stories about her, but…
Today, Marissa Mayer went to jail for refusing to comply with a court order. We’ll have more of the story later on, but we now have word of a copycat twerking incident by another female pop star. Stark Brackman is at the People’s Music Awards where the incident took place. Stark, I understand you have video of the incident?…
Correction. Alleged traitor.
Btw, where a person stands on Snowden is an indicator of one of two things:
Either where they sit in the elite pecking order of our establishment, because Snowden was really just thumping the establishment, and people not a part of that really don’t care what he’s done or said OR how psychologically one is addicted to authoritarian structures, again, because he’s thumping people on the top of the structure, the people with authority. .
[…] Link. They are not bred to challenge authority. […]
I can’t help but think about all the Nazi officers in 1945 who got in a huge trouble. They said it wasn’t their fault — they were just following orders. That’s pretty much the same line I’m hearing from all these big whigs in the tech world these days about why they didn’t fight or perform civil disobedience, when presented with these illegal orders.
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
Martin Niemöller
I wish it were that easy Cringely. You need to read the following book: “Three Felonies a Day”
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379080603&sr=8-1&keywords=three+felonies+a+day
The U.S. Federal Government has so much power these days they would have arrested her for something else and they would have never admitted it was about her refusing the Federal Court orders to turn the information over. You need to talk to you Lawyer friend about criminal matters rather that civil matters. Completely different laws there.
Regards,
Martin
I suppose the feds could do whatever they want to but the bigger question is could they make it stick? The examples in the book you cite generally involve little people, not CEOs of Yahoo who still own $300+ million in Google stock. Marissa Mayer’s sudden absence would be noticed, it would be talked about, it wouldn’t be forgotten the next day because the public takes prurient interest in the affairs of celebrities and Mayer qualifies. Since she’d be grabbed to punish Yahoo, Yahoo would defend her. Eight hundred million people go to Yahoo so 800 million people would be exposed — at zero cost to Yahoo, by the way — to her side of the story. There’s a tendency in comments like yours to see government as all-powerful but that’s not the case. How many hours would it take for Congressional hearings to be called about her arrest? One hour? Two hours? The NSA, for all it’s arrogance, would quickly find itself “twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.” What’ the source of that quote? Watergate. These lessons apparently have to be learned over and over again.
CEO’s are like politicians. They pick their fights, the fights they think they can win. It is uncertain if they could win a fight with the NSA, but the more important question — what would they gain or lose in a fight? If there is nothing to gain, why fight? If there is nothing lost in not fighting, why fight.
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Politicians like excuses for not doing something and plausible deniability. For a CEO the NSA gives them both. They have a good excuse to do nothing and they can push the blame and responsibility onto the NSA.
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Complying with the NSA’s requests costs a CEO two things. There is a cost to give the NSA access to the information they want. Though I suspect the NSA is paying the companies for those costs, probably at a nice profit. The other item is the CEO’s conscious. If you’ve read some of Bob’s columns, you’ll know with some CEO’s that is clearly not a problem.
underlings probably reject bad subpoenas all the time. not a lot of CEOs have the cojones to stand up and say, “this is illegal.”
whatever else I think about our old nemesis, Joe Nacchio, he did that at Qwest. NSA wanted a blind tap on everything, which is technically impossible, as well as not founded in the law. so Evil Joey Nachos waved the law at them.
granted, the boys of Fort Meade probably got their papers in order and came back. but something as simple as that, and it’s the first time a CEO slapped the table that I ever heard of.
Money makes the world go around and the CEO that would choose to stand up to the bully would see a profit in it.
So the question to you, as a means by which the CEO gets to the profit (read: advertising eyeballs): If CEO X went public to say he/she ain’t working on Maggie’s Farm no mo’ (to quote Mr. Dylan), would you reward that CEO with your business? That would make it worthwhile. If Marissa made such an announcement on the 6 o’clock news, she’d expect that would cause all of us concerned about this to immediately start doing searches on Yahoo!, open at least 1 Yahoo! email account, etc, etc.
But if we send emails back and forth from our gmail accounts, saying how brave she is, then she (as a CEO) loses because Yahoo! doesn’t get paid.
So Bob, what would YOU do in this instance??
I guess those Stanford grads don’t have to bother taking any liberal arts classes like history.
It’s kinda sad to think a CEO of a major US company doesn’t know that the the Constitution defines treason and that revealing confidential/secret documents is not there.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
Sorry, that ship has sailed. Look at what IBM is doing to its customers and employees. Look at what other CEO’s are doing in their companies. Shareholder value is the only thing of value. The lessons of history, even recent history are being ignored.
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The decision on whether or not to comply with government requests for data is an interesting topic to discuss and debate. However for most companies it is really only an ethical question. Do I risk a legal fight with the government over something THEY are doing? If it doesn’t hurt shareholder value the answer is NO.
The counterpoint to your question would be where the CEOs would say that they didn’t want to end up like Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio. Coverage of his trial linked his arrest and prosecution to Qwest refusing to cooperate with the NSA pre-9/11. The telecoms sector was a murky place at that time with Enron’s Broadband Network, WorldCom and a raft of bankrupt alternative telcos so I guess we’ll not know the definitive truth for a long time.
Cringely wrote: “The NSA orders are illegal, it’s not treason to reject them”
Here is what an article in Business Insider reported that Mayer actually said:
“In 2007 Yahoo filed a lawsuit against the new Patriot Act, parts of PRISM and FISA, we were the key plaintiff. A lot of people have wondered about that case and who it was. It was us … we lost. The thing is, we lost and if you don’t comply it’s treason.”
I don’t think it is fair to say the request was illegal if Yahoo fought the order through a court case, and the court ruled that Yahoo had to comply. That is sort of the definition of not an illegal order, challenged in court and the court rules it is valid. OK, playing a little loose with the definition, but you get the point. It wouldn’t be black helicopters, it would be contempt of court findings, fines, possibly jail time. Maybe it would be probation, either way I don’t think she could say “I’m just not going to comply with this court order, what are you going to do about it? Go ahead, I dare you.” At least I assume the Yahoo lawyers told her she shouldn’t do that, and it sounds like she listened.
You read a quote in an article. I watched the video. She said in the video what I wrote that she said. It was a direct quote. I’m not allowed to make those things up, which is precisely why I don’t get sued.
“… and we could get back to solving real problems”
The NSA IS A REAL PROBLEM. What part of “The Constitution of the USA” don’t you understand, Bob?
I just watched the entire interview as well, at
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/a-strong-microsoft-is-good-for-the-industry-overall-says-marissa-mayer/
or just the relevant section here:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/a-strong-microsoft-is-good-for-the-industry-overall-says-marissa-mayer/
Yes, the line you quoted was in there, as well as the section quoted from the Business Insider article. The quote from BI was correct as well. I thought it might be relevant, especially regarding the phrase used by Mr. Stern, “did not comply with a random, illegal order?”
Your interpretation was that “companies could stand up to these NSA orders and most likely beat them if they chose to.”
“Stand up to” in a legal context generally refers to fighting an improper order in court, which is exactly what Ms. Mayer says that Yahoo did. The real problem here is that when you have to fight a request through the FISA court, no one else gets to see the arguments or even the judgement, so there is no way to independently evaluate what exactly Yahoo fought, or how.
So the premise posted by Mr. Stern, “random, illegal order” does not seem to hold up, so therefore your conclusion “[t]he NSA orders are illegal, it’s not treason to reject them” does not hold up. At least I think most people would not consider a legal order which had been challenged in the court with jurisdiction and upheld by that court to be “illegal.”
I do think the term “treason” used was inaccurate and is a bit of a distraction from the core argument. Does it really affect how much you end up having to spend on lawyers whether you are indicted for treason or improper release of classified material, or providing material support to terrorists, or any other nonsense they seem to use these days?
[…] ← What if Marissa Mayer went to jail? […]
[…] Much more – including a high-powered lawyer’s opinion – in the full article here. […]
When you look at their financials, Google’s revenues don’t make sense. I’ve often wondered if the whole company isn’t just a creation of the NSA as a legitimizing and friendly (“don’t be evil”) face to the organizations collection of data-mining systems that happily invite us to give them all of our communications and personal data and files. After all, I can’t see how they can rack up billions in revenue each year from click ads…when was the last time you clicked on one?
and what about cloudflare… what’s their business model? Like Google ( with Analytics ) they offer a free service in return for seeing every one of the customers who come to your site. Is it just building customer profiles or are they getting a piece of a secret pie?
Ok, taking off my tin hat now.
Like you, I also avoid ads. But it’s a matter of statistics. There are just enough people reading spam, website ads, and TV/Radio commercials to make them profitable. We should be grateful, since they are paying for our entertainment and enlightenment.
Changing the subject a bit (but still related)….the foolishness of all this NSA/ Big-Brother snooping of data is that IMO it’s not very difficult for anybody who is technically even half-comptetent to disguise/spoof their identity, or otherwise make sure anything you do on Yahoo is not truly trace-able to the real YOU.
And that exposes the government’s claims that the purpose of all their monitoring of the entire general population’s communications is to find “the bad guys” (and stop them before they do anything bad) as a total fallacy.
I mean, how difficult is it for any determined person to steal someone else’s computer, go connect to the internet at some public wi-fi spot (Starbucks or whereve), and do all their Yahoo-ing from a bogus account they’ve created from there for about an hour? Repeat again the next day, the next day, etc.
Sure, I know there’s surveillance cameras everywhere, but I suppose they could wear a mask, or whatever. Bottom line is that there’s no way the snooped data could ever be traced back to its original source.
My point is not that I want to get into a technical discussion of how to operate on the internet untraceably, but just that our average honest U.S. Joe or Jose Citizen is the one who leaves his trails everywhere, not determined bad guys. All of this supposed government “monitoring” of the public’s communications isn’t generally going to lead them to anybody whose intent is “nefarious” enough to make themselves untraceable on Yahoo. What is DOES do is enable Big Brother to keep tabs on the communications of the other 99.99% of the citizenry who are honest lawe-abiding people.
It’s like gun control…..does nothing to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but sure makes things tough for honest citizens. But that’s another topic (for another forum 🙂
Qwest stood up to the NSA, in 2006:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_of_NSA_surveillance_requests
The company lost hundreds of millions of dollars in Government contracts, and the Fed went after Joseph Nacchio, the CEO – trawled through every transaction, every document and every conversation (public and private). The ultimate fishing expedition and yes, it worked: everybody’s got someting they can be ‘got’ on and, buried in the details of the company share buyback program, there was a case for Insider Dealing.
The CEO did jail time for that, and lost half his fortune.
Would you care to ask why other CEO’s are gutless, after that example?
Every one of them has something they can be sent to jail for – maybe, by that argument, all of them should be in jail – and there’s a question to ask about how much wrongdoing our governments turn a blind eye to when big corporations are committing it.
But you might want to ask about the ‘justice’ in selective law enforcement, and the power that it gives to the unjust… In between wondering: “What have they got on me?”
Yes, you.
Or: “What could they get, when the fishing’s already been done by the surveillance machine, and the shelf-miles of laws and regulations are so full of contradictions and ‘gotcha!’ clauses that everyone in a profession or a business has already racked up a decade of jail time, if ever a prosecutor is set on them with unlimited resources?”
Every telecoms CEO – every one of them – knows what Nacchio did, and why the Federal Government made an example of them.
Oh, and Yahoo tried a legal challenge – their company officers knowing that they risked jail time and bankruptcy – and lost. Now they are complying with the law, and they know that Nacchio’s cell is free for the next target of a vindictive government.
Did that happen in Free America? I’m disappointed.
“Did that happen in Free America?”
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No such place, the illusion of freedom is supplied to the proles, true freedom resides in those that go along with the government, Same as it always was.
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Even better would be if all of the companies CEO called a press conference, and at that press conference they all just stated all the details, for each company…all at the same time…is the US government seriously going to incarcerate, or even try to sue all of them at the same time? Will the headline be: US Government single handily destroys the NASDAQ?
If I was them, I’d just start one website, and post all the requests they’ve been given so far, and then keep posting them….I think they call this a blog…they should be able to figure it out…
[…] What if Marissa Mayer went to jail? – I, Cringely: “Companies typically do not yield to government interference unless they feel there is something to their advantage. Does anyone really believe that NSA would arrest FaceBook’s CEO if it did not comply with a random, illegal order? Please.” […] The CEOs and their companies, then, are ether gutless or corrupt. Charming. […]
The REAL reason why the tech co’s and telcos complied with the FISA data requests:
Every company wants to become a GSE. Just like JPMorganChase-do you think the gov’t is going to let anything happen to IT? JPMorgan, Goldman, MorganStanley issue the government’s debt, for god’s sake!
Companies become GSE’s by becoming ‘national champions’ AKA Too Big To Fail, or, by being an oligopoly provider of an essential government service-in this case providing all the emails of its customers.
Do you really believe that Verizon & AT&T are takeover targets after the disclosures of them being espionage enablers?
They’re ALL glad to assist!
The inmates are running the prison:
The US Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, had its base called the Information Dominance Center—built to look like the bridge of the USS Enterprise from Stark Trek:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/nsa-mind-keith-alexander-star-trek
Former NSA director Hayden says terrorists love Gmail is the preferred “ISP of terrorists worldwide,” – And then expressed a distaste for online anonymity, saying “The problem I have with the Internet is that it’s anonymous.” He then asked, “is our vision of the World Wide Web the global digital commons – or a global free fire zone?” Given that Hayden also compared the Internet to the wild west and Somalia, Hayden clearly leans toward the “global free fire zone” vision of the Internet.
“silent black helicopters — land at Yahoo Intergalactic HQ and take Marissa Mayer away in chains?”
They would beam her up: The US Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, had its base called the Information Dominance Center—built to look like the bridge of the USS Enterprise from Stark Trek:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/nsa-mind-keith-alexander-star-trek
Former NSA director Hayden says terrorists love Gmail is the preferred “ISP of terrorists worldwide,” – And then expressed a distaste for online anonymity, saying “The problem I have with the Internet is that it’s anonymous.” He then asked, “is our vision of the World Wide Web the global digital commons – or a global free fire zone?” Given that Hayden also compared the Internet to the wild west and Somalia, Hayden clearly leans toward the “global free fire zone” vision of the Internet.
The inmates are running the prison:
I’m glad that, before I came upon this article, someone had already pointed out the example of Joseph Nacchio. When Nacchio, on the advice of his lawyers and also on principle, refused to turn over subscribers’ personal information to the NSA, Qwest began to lose government contracts. And then, because Nacchio continued to diversify his holdings by selling company stock as its fortunes deteriorated due to loss of those contracts, he was hauled into court and jailed for insider trading! Government lawyers convinced the judge not to allow Nacchio to point this obvious retaliation out to the jury during his trial.
After Nacchio was pilloried for defending his customers’ rights (he was no saint, by any means, but this was one thing he did that was quite heroic), no telecom or Internet exec dared defy or even question a request from the NSA. It had successfully become America’s Stasi.
This might be a rather simple question……..How can the government force an individual to accept classified information without that person being properly qualified/investigated and agreeing to receive such information? If the person receiving the information was a foreign national or someone with dual citizenship they’d be in deep trouble when the info was leaked, even intentionally. Something just doesn’t add up here.
They wouldn’t put Mayer in jail or file criminal charges.
Social workers would show up at Mayer’s house and her baby would be detained for investigation of Mayer’s psychological fitness or some such. There would be a service plan. Mayer would keep her baby only if the social workers/shrinks approved her compliance with the service plan. Everything about the social worker involvement would be secret, Cal. WIC § 827. And, just like that, Yahoo would resume cooperating with NSA and would build in the requisite backdoors….