<story><title>Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence</title><url>http://news.trust.org/item/20161004170601-99f8c</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DubiousPusher</author><text>I think the attitude here that most tech companies are rolling over and just complying without a single ethical consideration is misplaced.&lt;p&gt;The government has been doing an excellent job of basically extorting these companies into compliance. They threaten the full weight of the US government&amp;#x27;s wraith and then tie every order up with classifications and gag orders.&lt;p&gt;You aren&amp;#x27;t legally allowed to talk to other companies in the same position. Most your legal team probably doesn&amp;#x27;t get to know what&amp;#x27;s going on. You can&amp;#x27;t take your case to the public without being held in contempt.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not giving these companies a complete pass for being complicit in the erosion of individual&amp;#x27;s civil liberties but treating this as if the decision is easy is vastly unfair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tw04</author><text>Well, they&amp;#x27;ve already &amp;quot;made an example&amp;quot; of the only company to truly stand in their way.  Look at Qwest - you talk to the average citizen and their takeaway was that justice was served | A corrupt CEO ran the company into the ground and went to prison.  Hurrah!&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t pay attention to the fact he denied installing what he considered unconstitutional wire taps for the NSA resulting in the government pulling almost a billion dollars worth of contracts from the company.  That example alone proved that the government can tell any narrative they want; they own the media, they&amp;#x27;ll own private companies too.</text></comment>
<story><title>Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence</title><url>http://news.trust.org/item/20161004170601-99f8c</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DubiousPusher</author><text>I think the attitude here that most tech companies are rolling over and just complying without a single ethical consideration is misplaced.&lt;p&gt;The government has been doing an excellent job of basically extorting these companies into compliance. They threaten the full weight of the US government&amp;#x27;s wraith and then tie every order up with classifications and gag orders.&lt;p&gt;You aren&amp;#x27;t legally allowed to talk to other companies in the same position. Most your legal team probably doesn&amp;#x27;t get to know what&amp;#x27;s going on. You can&amp;#x27;t take your case to the public without being held in contempt.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not giving these companies a complete pass for being complicit in the erosion of individual&amp;#x27;s civil liberties but treating this as if the decision is easy is vastly unfair.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rdl</author><text>I wonder what the actual personal consequences are for someone going public that there is an NSL requested.  I seriously doubt they&amp;#x27;d destroy a major public company with lots of employees&amp;#x2F;voters&amp;#x2F;users; fines, maybe, and going after execs, but the Government loses most of its power to threaten things once the act is done and everything is public.&lt;p&gt;I think you win in the court of public opinion if it&amp;#x27;s a broad program like this (and IMO clearly unconstitutional).  If it&amp;#x27;s an NSL about, say, an order to specifically target UBL, you probably hang in public opinion.  If it&amp;#x27;s an NSL about, say, finding Snowden, you might be ok.  This is an interesting check and balance vs. government overreach.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d be a lot more comfortable with someone going public in a live press conference in DC (maybe releasing a key to a file which is pre-distributed), than someone running off to Russia or doing it anonymously, though.</text></comment>