Daniel Ellsberg On WikiLeaks, Google and Facebook 87
angry tapir writes "The Silicon Valley companies that store our personal data have a growing responsibility to protect it from government snooping, according to Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Discussing the growing role of Internet companies in the public sphere, Ellsberg said companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter need to take a stand and push back on excessive requests for personal data."
Ellsberg spoke as part of a panel at an event from the Churchill Club, which included Clay Shirky, Jonathan Zittrain and others discussing the WikiLeaks situation.
I dare say (Score:5, Insightful)
Personal data == money (Score:5, Insightful)
Eheh (Score:5, Insightful)
Time heals all wounds. Ellsberg was a villified as Assange is now. But the decades of Bread and Circusses have dult your memory till it now seems all quant and harmless.
Those who dare to stand out are often the oddballs of society. And society rarely looks on them kindly. Nobody likes someone who rocks the boat especially while they are sitting in it.
So you have realized that history is not a straight line. Good for you. Now realize this. History books are written by people and people have motives.
History is NOT what you read.
Re:An admirable man (Score:5, Insightful)
What Ellsberg did can be seen as patriotic, but Assange is not and was not a U.S. citizen, so even if you think there was a value in having the information leaked, he did not do it for love of country
All the more reason to respect Assange. Love of humanity is a more respectable motive than love of country.
Re:An admirable man (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
It's simple. The boss has the right to know what his employees are doing on his time as he's paying for it. In democracy the government is supposed to be working for us as we are the ones financing it, ergo we are it's boss and it's our employee.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
So it's OK to protect the information of individuals from the government but it's not OK to protect the information of the government from individuals?
Pretty much. Privacy is something that only a person can have, and government is not a person.