Microsoft and Google unite to sue US gov't for more transparency

I have a dream....

......that these companies will just blow the whistle on the government anyway despite their gag orders, and when the public speaks up....perhaps the public can tell the government where the NSA can stick it.

I have a dream....

trust us: it's just a wee back door

Stretch

I learned in all this that Facebook's General Counsel (they are getting in on the suit too) is named Colin Stretch. I misread that as Colon Stretch. Probably because we're all getting fucked in the ass by the government and by these companies who'll spin any outcome of this so fast an impromptu fiction would probably be closer to the truth.

So its all about money then. As long as it didn't hurt their bottom line they didn't care. But now....

Colon Stretch

A pain in the arse for these companies is obviously what all this is about!

They are probably beginning to suffer financially so a useful PR move is on the books,I wonder how their cloud businesses etc are doing now people are looking for NSA free alternatives.

Anyone who thinks that moving their email, or their social networking to a site which is not hosted in the US, is deluded. Snowden's disclosures are the the tip of the iceberg I feel, and I cannot imagine that there are many places on earth that are outside of the reach of NSA surveillance. In fact, I would go as far as to say that I'd feel more comfortable with Google, as they are clearly made aware of the data that is shared, as distinct from a non-US site where the data is likely just slurped without a second consideration.

did everyone catch the Microsoft Privacy expert?

ccc talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cx_vumGbXM

For once I agree with Microsoft and Google.

Even if Snowden wasn't involved, something as big as this level of surveillance would eventually out itself.

What the US Government has done is substantially damage its own IT industry. There's much competition in IT outside the US these days and those on the outside can easily look elsewhere.

It's anyone's guess how many billions the US has lost already, and that's probably only a small fraction of what it'll eventually lose.

What the gov agencies are afraid of

What the gov agencies are afraid of is the near-real-time disclosure of a NSL or FISA/FISC letter tipping off the suspects that they were on the (S)hit list of surveillance.

I suspect, tho, that in reality, the agents do NOT need our passwords under demand during interrogations. They already have the power to compel Google, MS, Yahoo, and others to turn over direct, remote, invisible/ghosted/parallel, real-time access to our email activities. They already have code that in the form of a few pixels can hijack our sessions and to on an every-logon-of-target upload bits and pieces of our hard drives in the background so as to not spike the CPU. I've since 1995 suspected that criminals could do this, but over the past 10 years been willing to suspect the government more than criminals DO DO, and it probably is how they brought down some of the more resilient but ultimately careless criminal kingpins, not just by microwave lasers and in-room cameras, and sonic/electromagnetic detection of keyboard clicks and CRT hazery-imagery of passwords.

Forcing us to hand over passwords probably obfuscates the existence of huger, greater capabilities, stuff Snowden probably has not even released. Hence, the UK heavy handedness in helping itself to some US intel, and also chummy-cousin-kissings. That just reinforces that ANYone passing through the UK can be called anything it takes to basically steal hard drives and electronics even for non-security reasons, even to economically destroy or psychologically torment very specific people. I suppose people will plan their flights accordingly now, if they even remotely associate with newspapers or speak out on such matters. So, I wonder often whether I will ever set foot on UK soil or territories, or if I have to, just take NO electronics having personal, proprietary, business plans or stuff that just franky isn't any of the UKs effin bizness. OTOH, maybe I'm just momentarily "over the top", but at some point, in the next 5 or so years, "over the top" will be the new norm, the new baseline.

Pointless exercise

Even if MS/Google were to achieve their goal, who would believe anything they had to say on the subject? It just isn't possible to tell if they are being legally coerced to lie about the extent of the snooping whilst insisting they are perfectly free to divulge everything. The only safe assumption is that any of your data that has gone outside your walls is in the hands of anyone who wants it bad enough.