Even After NSA Leaks, Government Still Trusted Over Private Firms 234
cold fjord writes "Computing reports on a U.K. survey: 'Governments remain the organizations most trusted by the public to handle personal data, despite revelations about surveillance and data collection schemes by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the U.K.'s GCHQ and other governmental organizations around the world. That's according to research by accounting and consultancy firm Ernst & Young, which suggests that more than half of people — 55 per cent — say they're comfortable sharing personal information with central government organizations ... However, consumers are more wary about sharing their data with private companies. Just one-third told Ernst & Young that they're willing to share personal information with financial institutions, while one-quarter are happy to do so when it comes to their energy provider. Only one-fifth of those surveyed said they're comfortable sharing personal data with supermarkets. ... it was web firms that people were most claimed to be wary of sharing information with — fewer than one-in-10 said they were comfortable about sharing data with social networks, such as Facebook or web search engines like Google.'"
Meanwhile, a pair of researchers have assessed the NSA's data gathering scheme and found, unsurprisingly, that it's probably not very cost effective (PDF). "Conceivably, as some maintain, there still exist some exceptionally dim-witted terrorists or would-be terrorists who are oblivious to the fact that their communications are rather less than fully secure. But such supreme knuckle-heads are surely likely to make so many mistakes — like advertising on Facebook or searching there or in chatrooms for co-conspirators — that sophisticated and costly communications data banks are scarcely needed to track them down."
Interestingly enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly enough, the number of people willing to share information with a provider seems to correlate directly with the likelihood that the provider will spam you with "targetted advertising" and "special promotions."
Re:Interestingly enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why that is such a big deal anyway. They are going to spam me with ads one way or the other; at least if I find value in the product or service being advertised, it's less of a waste of my time and perhaps it's even a valuable proposition.
But sure... let's give as much data to big brother as possible. I mean, there is absolutely nothing that a government could ever interpret--or misinterpret--from your data that could do you harm, right?
Re:Interestingly enough (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't want to give my information to either. And as someone already pointed out, any information in the hands of private companies will quickly be put into the hands of the government.
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Which is what was great about the BBS era. We ran our own damn "social networks" on our own damn machines. Who's got all that data now, eh?
That's the difference between you humans and us, you get just enough of anything to be acceptable and give Darwin the finger, but we keep evolving no matter what. [slashdot.org]
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Especially a government that now has access to your healthcare... I mean, heaven forbid I go browse to a tobacco website and be red flagged for health reasons.
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Especially a government that now has access to your healthcare... I mean, heaven forbid I go browse to a tobacco website and be red flagged for health reasons.
Do you realize that the government is a huge organization with multiple departments? And that, in the US, they are specifically designed NOT to talk to each-other without a lot of Congressional or Judicial oversight? For example, in theory the KKK could easily have used it's control of local Sheriffs to kill 100% of black people with the list of black people provided by the Census Bureau, but they never actually did that shit because local sheriffs do not have access to the Census.
Do you realize that under
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It's a bit of a stretch near term, but you can't see a day where health care costs to the taxpayers are used to justify a system to "audit" the purchases of individuals to determine their health risks? It's inevitable. A funny thing about taxes, people want to have a say in how the money is used. Look at welfare and the amount of people that want drugs tests.
Considering that's exactly what private companies were doing before ObamaCare, no it's not a stretch. But as I just pointed out, your nightmare scenario is exactly what happened before ObamaCare, therefore you are arguing in favor of ObamaCare. Why do you think all these healthy-living upper-middle-class to middle-class people are experiencing rate shock? Their insurer looked deeply into their private lives, concluded "that chick's never gonna get sick, so I should charge her peanuts," Now the insurer can't
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Smokers pay in a lot via tobacco taxes, and of course there's the reduced pension payments from not living as long.
Re:Interestingly enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why that is such a big deal anyway. They are going to spam me with ads one way or the other; at least if I find value in the product or service being advertised, it's less of a waste of my time and perhaps it's even a valuable proposition.
That's because targeted ads are failures. You research and then buy a pair of shoes online and they spam you with shoe ads for the next month when you are no longer interested.
What we need to be worried about are not ads that try (and miserably fail) at showing you stuff you might want to buy. We need to be worried about them using all of that personal information to manipulate you into wasting money.
One recent example is how Orbitz puts higher priced hotels at the top of the list for people using macintoshes. [forbes.com] The real risk to each and every one of us is their ability to figure out your mental weaknesses and use them against you so that you spend more money than you should. It is the Big Data version of bikini models in beer commercials. Lots of people like to think they are immune to advertising - but nobody is 100% immune to millions of dollars worth of research on manipulation of the human mind.
Dell does this too (Score:2)
That's because targeted ads are failures. You research and then buy a pair of shoes online and they spam you with shoe ads for the next month when you are no longer interested.
Even worse, Dell bombarded me with ads and 'coupons' for another laptop within a month of my buying one. The 'standard' user of a laptop replaces it roughly every 3 years. While there are certainly shoes that last longer, most of my purchases are for athletic types that last me roughly three months*.
*As running/exercise shoes. After that they're demoted to daily wear, then lawnmowing duty. Though lately they haven't been even getting that as I've taken to wearing my older/retired work boots. Safer.
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One recent example is how Orbitz puts higher priced hotels at the top of the list for people using macintoshes. The real risk to each and every one of us is their ability to figure out your mental weaknesses and use them against you so that you spend more money than you should. It is the Big Data version of bikini models in beer commercials. Lots of people like to think they are immune to advertising - but nobody is 100% immune to millions of dollars worth of research on manipulation of the human mind.
That still sounds like it's not a big deal compared to what the government could do to you.
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The government is run by the corporations. See revolving door, and campaign contributions for a start.
When hemp threatened the business model of someone, millions of lives were ruined. Laws like the DMCA were not thought up out of the blue by the government
Personally I see it as a size thing as much as anything. The bigger the corporation or government, the more the potential threat.
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When hemp threatened the business model of someone, millions of lives were ruined. Laws like the DMCA were not thought up out of the blue by the government
Pay to play doesn't mean that corporations run things. I think that's just how the governments of the world routinely monetize their power.
And as the NSA spying demonstrates, the US government does a lot of stuff without caring about the economic harm caused (much less obtain approval) to its supposed masters.
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When hemp threatened the business model of someone, millions of lives were ruined. Laws like the DMCA were not thought up out of the blue by the government
Pay to play doesn't mean that corporations run things. I think that's just how the governments of the world routinely monetize their power.
It's in the interest of the corporations to keep the status quo. You do have a point that some of the government are there to play power games.
And as the NSA spying demonstrates, the US government does a lot of stuff without caring about the economic harm caused (much less obtain approval) to its supposed masters.
The NSA seems to have as their main directive to support American corporations as most of the spying seems to be for economical reasons, as in industrial espionage. Of course their other directive is self-preservation which means a strong supporting government.
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"...to spend more money than you should..."
This is a convenient way to rationalize poor choices, that's all.
How much "should" I be spending on anything?
If I buy something for $5 and am happy with it, but could have gotten it for $4, am I cheated somehow? To suggest so denies the context that until very recently, my only way to find out competitive prices was to physically go to the store and look. Merchants could be as daring as they wanted to be to charge as much as they could get away with...THAT'S THEI
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As the other poster stated. targeted ads are always failures.
Once a year I hit up all the major car companies to look at the new models. I go to every one to see the cars I can't afford in my dreams down to potential cars. For the next 2 months I see nothing but ads for cars that I really don't want to buy.
I shop for christmas gifts, all I see is ads for stuff I either bought, or ignored as it wasn't what I wanted.
I have not once seen a target ad that was actually useful.
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You're a slave. You're so used to being taken for a ride, you don't even know what the alternatives are like anymore.
Spamming is illegal. You can actually complain, and you can actually escalate to your provider's help desk, and you can actua
Re:Interestingly enough (Score:5, Informative)
Even more interestingly, this survey was conducted in The United Kingdom. If the same survey was done in America, it would likely have a very different result.
Even further (Score:5, Funny)
99.28% of all statistics are manipulated to present a wanted message, 68.7% of those are made up on the spot, and 0.035% of them are actually correct.
Re:Interestingly enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans trust – naively – corporations more than the government.
Why is that naive? Corporations want money. Governments want power, and "more money" is only a subset of that. Corporations know that if they abuse my trust too much, they will lose my business. Governments have no such limitations on their abuse. Governments can send men with guns to kick in my front door. I have very little trust in corporations, but even less in government. That is not "naive", but rational.
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On the other hand, if you have representative government, you can fire it, with a little help from your friends.
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You can fire companies far easier - just stop dealing with them.
Hard to do when a proportional handful of them provide the vast majority of products on the market.
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You can fire companies far easier - just stop dealing with them.
Hard to do when a proportional handful of them provide the vast majority of products on the market.
Still better than government. In America, the majority of political "products on the market" are provided by just two political parties. I have far more power to choose when I go to the grocery store than when I go to the polling booth. And, unlike the political "market", I don't have to eat the groceries I didn't buy.
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Still better than government. In America, the majority of political "products on the market" are provided by just two political parties.
Despite the belief of many, America does not have a monopoly on Government.
I have far more power to choose when I go to the grocery store than when I go to the polling booth.
Apples to oranges.
What do you do when one company owns all the grocery stores within easy reach of you ?
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Despite the belief of many, America does not have a monopoly on Government.
Yea, "in America" (which I assume means in the US as a whole) it's a duopoly with a few niche third party competitors.
Apples to oranges.
Which are quite comparable, especially in the context of the grocery store analogy.
What do you do when one company owns all the grocery stores within easy reach of you ?
You can still travel to other stores. Just buy a lot more at a time. And it's worth noting that in most of the US, this situation just doesn't exist.
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What do you do when one company owns all the grocery stores within easy reach of you ?
That's a good description of a government. A government owns all the [insert government service here] in the country.
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Yea, "in America" (which I assume means in the US as a whole) it's a duopoly with a few niche third party competitors.
However, many other countries do not have this problem.
Which are quite comparable, especially in the context of the grocery store analogy.
No, they're not. How is buy groceries comparable to an election ?
You can still travel to other stores.
Not if they're not "within easy reach".
Just buy a lot more at a time. And it's worth noting that in most of the US, this situation just doesn't exist.
Th
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That's a good description of a government. A government owns all the [insert government service here] in the country.
Yes. You might say that's the whole point of publicly funded services.
Or in simpler terms, a tautology.
It's generally only true at the edges, though. There are really only a handful of publicly-funded services with no privatised option at all (eg: police).
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You can only fire services that you pay for, except for government. If you try to fire government by not paying them for their shitty services they'll come get you with guns and put you jail.
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You can only fire services that you pay for, except for government. If you try to fire government by not paying them for their shitty services they'll come get you with guns and put you jail.
That's because they no longer have the option of exiling you to some other locale where you can't derive any benefit those services.
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Ok, so they'll put you in exile at gun point. I'll feel better now... Sounds like a moral institution.
Why do you say that there won't be any services without government? A society is not a government. Just because you're currently depending on government for services doesn't mean that only government can provide these services.
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This is why corporations control the government through campaign donations. That way they get the best of both worlds.
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Corporations want power too because it leads to more profits. And, trust me, if a corporation wants to arrange to kick your door in and do bad things, I'm pretty sure they can afford to make that happen.
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Corporations want to take your money.
This is just a standard conflict of interest. One which incidentally exists with government officials as well contrary to your assertion. And the corporation has less power than the government does with which to indulge that conflict.
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Corporations know that if they abuse my trust too much, they will lose my business.
small companies, yes.
corporations (read: large), no.
there is a continual consolidation and merge process that shows no signs of stopping. your choices are reduced over time. if you want widget X, you have to buy from a few places and often, the money goes to the same select few who run the world.
you really have no say in government and its essentially the same, now, with business.
you want internet and there's only 1 cable c
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Glad to see fellow libertarians on /. :) I'm out of mod points so I'm showing support with a comment instead.
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Consider that when I get a prescription filled for, oh, let's say, Lipitor. What's to stop the pharmacy from selling that information to health and life insurance companies
So you lied to your insurance company about your pre-existing health conditions, and now you are upset because they found out the truth? So your worst-case-scenario is that consumers can not longer commit fraud?
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So you like setting up straw men and then setting them on fire? Which insurance company do you work for?
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While I'm sure ShanghaiBill could have put a little more thought into the post(who couldn't?), it meets the standards of an internet forum.
What I think about is the fact that most people filling a Lipitor prescriptions are going to be doing so using their heath insurance, after being prescribed the drug by a doctor that's paid for by the insurance company(conflict of interest if you expect him to hide anything from the company paying him). If the company doesn't already know that he's taking lipitor and ne
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Governments can send men with guns to kick in my front door
You miss the corollary of this, which is that governments are the reason why corporations can't send men with guns to kick in your front door...
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In a marketplace, competition will, generally, drive the bad actors to fail and reward the good actors.
The problem with this is that "good" and "bad" are determined in the terms of the market and not in terms of the individual. You as a person are not a market. There is no guarantee that you get to become an actor in the market. There is nothing per se that causes the definition of good in the market to somehow correlate to the definition of good for you. The only way get some correlation is by the individuals to bound together and change the market rules until there is some fit.
People usually call this "h
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The individual may be easily trampled by either, though only government can legally take all your stuff, tell you how to live, or even kill you.
Not really. Take a look at things today: big business has little to no trouble co-opting said government to do just that at its whim.
And the simple fact is that "Free markets" are a myth, an ideal abstraction, not unlike total vacuum, absolute zero, and a perfectly spherical cow.
In practice, if there are no controls on business, the ones that get there first will put them into place to keep competition from forming. We've seen it happen before, which is why we started getting the government involved
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The simple fact is that "free markets" are not self-sustaining. That is why they do not exist.
To be self-sustaining, you need negative feedback to ensure that perturbations will return the system to a stable point.
Markets are based on positive feedback - "Nothing succeeds like success". You start a business, you become profitable, you leverage to get lower rates from suppliers, which gives you more profitability so that you can then afford to buy less-profitable competitors (or see them go under), you conti
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The governments already know anything important about you.
Non-phone utilities provide necessary basic services, and have an undeserved reputation of trailing tech by decades. They are heavily regulated.
What do you get in exchange for giving all your life details for FB and Google to package and resell? Convenience
Guess which ones I'd rather hand confidential details to.
Meanwhile in the U.S. (Score:3)
Even the newsclowns admit it.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-most-americans-dont-trust-government/ [cbsnews.com]
Pew figured out 80% have no faith.
Im guessing there is a higher number out there, uninfected with cranial rectumitis. Maybe so , maybe not. Either way, Im not surprised.
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I share my most important personal information (my financial information) with my banks. And I wish I didn't have to.
I get more junk mail from them then everything else combined. Wish there was a way to tell them all I'm not interested in any more credit cards, or refinancing my home, or car loans, or balance transfers, etc.
What's the difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
The private companies are collecting the data for the government.
There's a big difference (Score:4, Interesting)
Private companies are collecting the data for PROFIT. It just turns out that governments are clients (even forced disclosures are generally compensated...some very, very well). Government has a much more limited scope. 99.99999% of the time they're just looking for "bad guys," and the other 0.00001%* of the time some corrupt official is trying to profit off of it or you accidentally look like a "bad guy". The odds are still in your favor if the government is the one doing the collecting.
*note: this is a guess, but it's based on a random supposition that - in the last year - the governments we are discussing (US, UK, EU) have targeted less than 700 completely innocent people in any given year using the NSAs (or UK or EU equiv.) surveillance dragnets. If you have a list longer than that, then the percentage may be higher. Note that, in a typical year, the odds of winning $1,000,000 or more in the Powerball lottery with a single ticket purchased in each drawing is 0.0002%, so even if I'm off in my estimate by an order of magnitude, you still have a much better chance of becoming a Powerball millionaire than being accidentally (or intentionally, but falsely) targetted by the government. I can guarantee that Google, Verizon, and Facebook will sell any data you give them, 100% chance.
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Are you out of your mind? In the last year these governments have targeted us all. Oh wait, you like to make a distinction between stalking everybody in general, and "targeting" specific individuals
Well trained (Score:3, Insightful)
Decades of filling minds with hate for everything not Government working as intended. Half the nation cashes Government benny checks at least monthly and the other half have a whole spectrum of bennies factored into their future.
The Powers That Be are patiently waiting for their subjects to get used to the on-going reality of NSA scrutiny. They know that as long as they keep those EBT cards refilled their dependents aren't going to stay angry.
So don't expect much from the "people." They're bought and paid for.
It's not about Thrust. (Score:2)
It's about money.
These guys are making money with all that "Surveillance" paranoia.
Simple like that.
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For me, baby, it's all about the Thrust... oooooh
Nonono, you're thinking of a *fig* Newton!
Strat
That actually (sort of) makes sense. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ostensibly government exists to provide services. It's reasonable that one would have to provide information in the course of receiving these services. But, if a for-profit corporation is asking for personal information, it's almost assured to be part of a scheme to extract money from me.
Or to put it another way, there's only a very small chance government thugs will use my address to knock down my door, but a very large chance a company will use my address to send me spam. So I don't see why the result of the study is surprising.
Before you all flame me, I'm not American, and neither is this study.
Make a lot of sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
For as bad as the NSA and GCHQ programs are/were, there is at least some reasonable way to restrict them from damage.
For corporations, there's effectively no limit to the amount of damage they can do.
Yes, government-level info gathering can result in some pretty awful things - prison, in the least, for a limited number of people. A breakdown in trust of government as a whole, however, is probably the worst thing such pervasive intrusion can cause. BUT, we have relatively fast control over this kind of behavior. We (citizens) simply pitch a fit to our representatives, and a loud enough fit (aided hopefully by expose from people like Edward Snowden) gets results rather quickly (weeks or months). The NSA policies and practices are changing, as we speak. In the end, government is responsible to the people, and if enough of society says to change the policy, it gets changed.
Compare that to information gathering and use by a company. It's regulated by? Well, if you're lucky, the government. If not, then by nobody. And there's no oversight at all. They pretty much can do whatever they want with it, and there's virtually nothing the average citizen can do about it, even in large numbers. The company's management controls the data, and they're pretty much completely insulated from outside influence. Not even stockholders have much say here. And there's virtually no penalty for them misusing it. Take the Target debit card leak. It's a very temporary, minor PR problem. They're not on the hook for any damage they cause those people by mishandling their info. And that's a minor case - think of all the places where corporations buy and sell info for no benefit of the individual, profit from it, and usually to the detriment of the individual.
I'm in no way saying that government info gathering is good - we need to keep a close eye on it at all times. However, corporate information gathering and trading is infinitely more damaging to society, especially in unregulated places such as the USA. At least we have a reasonably ability to correct government oversteps - when was the last time you saw a company penalized (or heck, even substantially change its policies) due to mishandling of individual data?
Thanks, but I'll trust a representative government long before I'll trust a private, for-profit entity.
-Erik
Re trust a representative government (Score:3)
Undercover police had children with activists
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jan/20/undercover-police-children-activists [theguardian.com]
"Derry interrogation centre hidden from torture inquiry"
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/derry-interrogation-centre-hidden-from-torture-inquiry-1.1486059 [irishtimes.com]
The results of UK public, private, police, military, signals intelligence work can make for interesting reading over
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Ostensibly government exists to provide services.
I'm not sure I see it that way. Alternately, the government exists to perform our collective will. If we want to get together and make roads, then the government is a convenient way for us to do it. If we want to get together and give poor people health insurance, government is a way for us to do it.
But it's not there to provide free services, they aren't free, we're paying for them.
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Companies make profits by pleasing you. If they don't, you can and should stop paying for their products and services. It's not profitable to SPAM when no one is buying. You can't just stop pay the government though, no matter how shitty their services are. They'll knock your door down and put you in jail at gun point.
Gov personal information vs spy drag net? (Score:2, Redundant)
People are happy too or have to interact with "central government organisations, such as HM Revenue & Customs and the NHS"
Kind of hard not to pay your tax, collect a pension, apply for benefits (e.g. help with heating bills), enjoy the benefits of the National Health Service.
Energy provider - again kind of hard not to pay your bill, seek a better rate.
Supermarkets - people do enjoy their rewards, discounts.
Because the govt is not a whore. (Score:3)
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In this analogy the corporations at least buy them dinner first.
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There is not much I deliberately submit to the government that they can really use against me. I of course worry about all the stuff they are collecting without my consent but not about the stuff I a submitting to them. So if the survey is asking about that I might answer in the same way. Big corporations are going to use my data to annoy me, and fringe sites might sell it to every spammer in the world, but the government won't do either. Of course the other question is how competent is the IT/security depa
The government exists to serve private firms (Score:2)
It is there to protect them from us slaves. In effect, it is a private security company. Why would anybody trust that?
It's not about fighting terrorism (Score:2)
Reasonable people don't believe that Angela Merkel is a terrorist. Instead talking about terrorism, it's more important to talk about how the NSA spying benifits us during trade negotiations.
Technically, I suppose it doesn't benifit all of "us"... Oh well. Sucks to be you I guess.
Not suprising (Score:2)
This is hardly surprising. Government is supposed (please note the "supposed") to act for the general interest, which should (please note the "should") be aligned with citizen interest. Private companies work for their owner's interests, which are much less likely to align with the user's interests.
The issues here are "supposed" and "should". Obviously people do not consider yet their government as oppressive. The question is what can we do if a government turns oppressive, once we let it have those great
Cut out the middleman (Score:2)
When the government can force a company to release data or just steal it clandestinely, cut out the middle man and just hand it over to them.
Makes sense ... (Score:3, Insightful)
While governments have more power, they also have many more constraints on how they use those powers. Which is ironic, since the government writes the rules for themselves while corporations do not.
(Note: I'm talking about governments in nations that respect civil liberties, which includes the UK and the US in spite of recent revelations. While the type of spying going on is certainly disturbing, it is nothing compared to governments that routinely intimidate, imprison, or even execute their opposition.
that blows my mind (Score:2)
Governments around the world have killed millions of their own people, not to mention those of other countries. US government puts more people in cages than any country, ever. Most are in for doing something with no victim, except perhaps themselves. They are not guilty of force or fraud or any direct harm to anyone. The US government runs GITMO, and tries to say torture is ok. There are Executive Orders from the president that enable detaining anyone, in principle, without due process of any kind and
NSA can't even catch the knuckleheads! (Score:3)
But such supreme knuckle-heads are surely likely to make so many mistakes — like advertising on Facebook or searching there or in chatrooms for co-conspirators — that sophisticated and costly communications data banks are scarcely needed to track them down
The Boston Marathon duo were supreme knuckle-heads and the NSA still did not discover them. So even the knuckleheads aren't found with their surveillance.
Like most stupid surveys (Score:3)
This one lacks specificity.
Re:We could trust private firms also... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yea, the government is supposed to work for the people. Sometimes it does that, sometimes it doesn't. Even the spying is supposed to be "for the greater good" as in preventing terrorism etc.
OTOH, private companies work for their shareholders and try to earn as much profit as possible.
NSA kept the spying secret and the information it collected was secret too. OTOH, if a private company was able to do the same spying as NSA did, it would turn right around and sell the information to the highest bidder. And probably would not act on any information about impending terrorist attacks, unless those attacks were aimed at the company.
Also, the government was elected by the people.
So, in the best case, the government is better than a private company (looking after the people). In the worst case, it is exactly like a private company (looking after its pockets).
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So, in the best case, the government is better than a private company (looking after the people). In the worst case, it is exactly like a private company (looking after its pockets).
You're wrong. The NSA has used its secret information to decide to kill American citizens, to kidnap them and torture them, to destroy people's lives.
A private corporation will do what, annoy you with a targeted ad? Hardly the same thing at all.
Re:We could trust private firms also... (Score:4, Interesting)
Currently there are laws against a private company killing someone. If such laws didn't exist, you would see private companies killing people more often than the USSR government under Stalin did.
Hell, there are illegitimate private companies that could be hired to dispatch someone...
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Re:We could trust private firms also... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the worst case, it is exactly like a private company (looking after its pockets).
No. That is not the worst case. The worst case for government is when they murder millions of their own citizens. Like this [wikipedia.org], this [wikipedia.org], this [wikipedia.org], this [wikipedia.org], or this [wikipedia.org].
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In the worst case, it is exactly like a private company (looking after its pockets).
No. That is not the worst case. The worst case for government is when they murder millions of their own citizens. Like this [wikipedia.org], this [wikipedia.org], this [wikipedia.org], this [wikipedia.org], or this [wikipedia.org].
You don't think a private company would kill as well for their own ends?
The scale might be different, but in that case, what's stopping them is fear of the law. If not, what are the chances you think a corporation would poison the water supply or food supply of millions for their own short sighted ends?
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In the worst case, it is exactly like a private company (looking after its pockets).
No. That is not the worst case. The worst case for government is when they murder millions of their own citizens. Like this [wikipedia.org], this [wikipedia.org], this [wikipedia.org], this [wikipedia.org], or this [wikipedia.org].
You don't think a private company would kill as well for their own ends?
The scale might be different, but in that case, what's stopping them is fear of the law. If not, what are the chances you think a corporation would poison the water supply or food supply of millions for their own short sighted ends?
And as evidence, I submit this one case:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
You could make the argument that slavery was allowed by the us government, but it was also the institution of government that allowed it, and it was private companies making use of slavery.
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Any corporation that would try to arm themselves with tanks and missiles would go bankrupt very quickly. It's just not profitable. Profit comes from pleasing your fellow man, not killing him.
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Spread the word ShanghaiBill, spread the word!
The government *is* a corporation (Score:2)
I've found that the world makes a lot more sense when you stop thinking about governments as being "special", instead treating them as just another "corporation" (for lack of a better word).
Now, they are unusual corporations - usually not-for-profit, governed by the shareholders (citizens) with no publicly traded shares, and having secured a monopoly in a given region for many business sectors. Oh, and they aren't bound by normal business rules, but by different international laws. But in all respects, it a
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The best way to make a profit is by pleasing your fellow man unless you're the government and in that case you just need to make promises to please your fellow man, get elected and then do what ever the f*** you want for 4 years.
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The best way to make a profit is by pleasing your fellow man [...]
That's why corporations have sued their customers, knowingly sold lethally dangerous products, knowingly polluted the environment and spent millions lobbying to minimise workers rights and minimise their salaries.
The best way to make a profit is to be a monopolist and/or rentier. Which is why all capitalists strive for those outcomes.
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That's why corporations have sued their customers
Unsustainable. Great way to reduce the number of customers. It'll never work. In addition, this is usually done with the help of government by using the government police and government jail.
knowingly sold lethally dangerous products
Unsustainable. How long do you think that will last. When people get bad service, they tell up to 100 people.
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Unless participating in terrorism resulted in higher profits.
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We would trust private firms also if we could vote them out of business.
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We would trust private firms also if we could vote them out of business.
You can. Stop buying their products.
Now, try voting the NSA out of business. They are going to still be there regardless of who wins the next election.
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Alright, how do I, for example, vote Cisco out of business?
Or take Facebook. Even if I don't use it, other people do, and they don't like Facebook's privacy policies they see Facebook as an essential service.
That points the way to a better analogy. Most of us would allow that the NSA does certain essential services, we don't like the way Obama is running it. But we have a mechanism by which we can vote the NSA a new boss who would make it run differently.
So what we'd need to trust private industry more is a
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Alright, how do I, for example, vote Cisco out of business?
Stop buying their products, and convince others to do the same. If enough people agree with you, Cisco will either go out of business, or more likely, change their behavior.
But we have a mechanism by which we can vote the NSA a new boss who would make it run differently.
No we don't. Do you think that Romney would have done a better job at reining them in? Do you seriously believe that any plausible candidate in 2016 will be any better?
Four years from now, I think Cisco's behavior will have improved a lot more than the NSA's.
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If I don't like the present Administration, and I voted against it, does it go away? No - more people voted for it than against it. Much like your Facebook analogy. Your individual desire does not make or break any single institution.
But that's not the point; the point is - like you - we can choose to NOT interact with Facebook. No page, no e-mails, nothing (for the record, I never signed up for Facebook and have zero interaction with that company). Now try to not interact with a Government you do not
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Now try to not interact with a Government you do not agree with.
It's called emigration.
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Maybe the NSA isn't focused on capturing terrorists, but instead; manipulating elected officials.
A certain amount of that is very likely true: NSA/GCHQ officials will do what is needed to keep their funding. Since they deal in uncertain maybes (maybe if we do this we will catch another terrorist/paedophile) they just produce the documents to worry those who control the purse strings. Which elected official would want to be named as the one who cut the funding that let in a bomber/... ?
Re:Loaded Questions? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, looking at the length of all of those TOS boilerplate pages, if you actually did read them, you'd probably do nothing but reading them. Since everyone pretty much just skips to the end, and it is well known and common practice not to read them, I doubt most of the terms are enforceable.
Further, many of them are for updates to products you've already purchased, placed in a click-through that holds the functionality you purchased for ransom. Those are almost certainly completely unenforceable, other t
Re:in other news... (Score:5, Informative)
over 50% of them (is the US) pay nothing into the system yet reap untold benefits.
1. The survey was in the UK so your US-based views don't apply.
2. That claim is based on the fact 50% pay no income tax, but it is false to extend that to "paying nothing into the system": In many cases, that means they pay every other kind of tax, including payroll, sales (gasoline, cigarettes, etc), state and municipal income taxes, and sometimes property taxes. They also pay in fees for various government services, such as driver's licensing.
3. Most of those that actually pay no taxes at all do so because they have the audacity to be children under the age of 16, or retirees who don't have any income besides Social Security.
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it's far from surprising people "trust" their governments...over 50% of them (is the US) pay nothing into the system yet reap untold benefits.
The only people who "pay nothing into the system yet reap untold benefits" are corporations and the rich hiding in tax shelters.
No-one living on welfare is "reaping untold benefits". They're "reaping" survival.
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Most companies have several paid lawyers ready to go to bat for them. Most people have no chance of standing against that, unless they are very rich. How is this any different? Unless there is a class action lawsuit (which requires enough people to be pissed off enough and feel wronged to join), there is no recourse against a big corporation. Small shops, perhaps. Big corps are basically untouchable.
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