http://www.ibtimes.com/leading-tech-companies-announce-public-campaign-against-nsa-surveillance-open-letter-obama-congress
Whatever you may think of Snowden, you’ve got to appreciate what he’s done to surface this issue publicly. I have sooooo many ways I’d like to tackle this issue that I hardly know where to begin. Let’s go with my first reaction to this news item.
“Really? They’re lashing out at JUST the NSA? Seriously?” These companies get extorted for information from every level of government and government agencies CONSTANTLY and rarely publicly squeal about it! It’s good to see them finally standing up for themselves with respect to NSA surveillance but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve written about this subject previously but let’s just be clear about the scale on which this kind of thing takes place. There are all kinds of government agencies that regularly force technology companies to divulge information, some of the worst offenders are actually State Attorney Generals offices. The government plays a never ending game of GOTCHA with these guys constantly and they have very little recourse because they are blackmailed into silence with the threat of public humiliation and controversy if they publicly protest that they are getting shaken down. As I’ve written previously I worked for a struggling 60 million user social networking company and got subjected to these government enquiries constantly. Usually they were broad in nature and clearly intended to force players like Myspace and Facebook to cooperate but we’d get caught up in them as well. The information demand letters I saw took many forms but they generally operated on the same formula. Demand huge amounts of information on the pretense that they MIGHT be investigating you for violating some law or policy and that your cooperation MIGHT divert their interest from your business if you cooperate immediately without question. The implication was that non-cooperation MIGHT result in embarrassing, costly and public investigations and litigation. They always had a good cover story to ensure that it would not look good for your company to protest publicly because of course they were simply doing it in the public interest of <> children, privacy, security, etc. So if you protested then you might be positioned as being opposed to those things and of course public trust is essential to the success of any consumer technology company.
My point is that this information gets squeezed out of these companies all the time by various government agencies without any secret court orders involved. I’ve written previously that the most powerful issue that gets used to force these companies to wet themselves in terror and cooperate without question is ANY suggestion that they are not vigilant about protecting children online… but make no mistake, I have never seen one of these shake-downs that legitimately protected anybody. These companies just can’t protest publicly without getting smeared. What’s amazing about what has happened here with the NSA and Snowden revelations is that the public awareness of the issue has finally apparently made it safe for them to protest JUST this particular form of government information shake-down publicly. At the same time it’s very evident that they do not feel safe protesting ALL of it. Here’s a classic example of this kind of shake-down taking place before your eyes RECENTLY without anybody mentioning it as such.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/18/net-us-britain-internet-porn-idUSBRE9AH0HF20131118
“The world’s two largest search engine operators, in a rare display of unity”
Do you really believe that Microsoft and Google spontaneously decided to filter the same 100,000 keywords “associated with child pornography” searches because of a polite request by a government official at this summit? Oh, hell no! What happened here was that some politicians and government agencies wanted to get international news coverage for their “Internet Safety Summit” and new invasive intelligence program to”protect children from being murdered by pedophiles” so they sent a letter to Microsoft, Google and everybody else they thought might look good on their press release and told them that if they didn’t agree to do this, they MIGHT be publicly cited by the Prime Minister of England as examples of companies that were promoting pedophilia and child murder by not cooperating. Did Microsoft and Google sign an open letter opposing this kind of government shake-down and risk being accused of promoting pedophilia and child murder… or did they cooperate? Now it would be an interesting exercise to try to figure out what these 100,000 search terms are on Google and Bing but one now has to suspect that even asking that question online might bring an FBI battering ram to your door. That said, I tried this search term: “Pedophilia search terms” and got a link to this blog at the top.
http://www.chicagonow.com/high-gloss-and-sauce/2012/12/the-squeamish-search-terms-of-pedophiles-a-guide-for-parents/
*hmmm… If I add all of these terms to my blog it will get read by every government agency surfing for excuses to persecute Microsoft or Google! Okay just one… “Masturbating to Toddlers and Tiaras”. I’m sure that one will drive traffic through the roof… The next time I want to market an online game to 13 year old boys, I’ll know what keywords to buy as well. It’s really hard to resist making that this blogs title… but I’m going to restrain myself…
It all sounds fine and noble right? But nobody ever mentions that the a huge percentage of these searches, possibly the vast majority, are done by children themselves. A shocking amount of the content is also posted by children themselves. It’s also amazing how many adult men and women post child pictures of themselves and are ambiguous about their age specifically to attract certain kinds of attention to themselves. Why don’t we ever hear about a government crackdown on internet sites for not preventing CHILDREN from posting and consuming adult content? Oh because THAT would require them to violate the consumer privacy laws and concessions they were already forced to adopt. So children are extremely important to protect online second only to extorting information, money and concessions from internet companies… The Internet companies have been forced to pretend that they have no child users in order to comply with all of these laws and regulations.
We have no idea how much of this content is posted by and how many of the searches are performed by government organizations either… but we KNOW they are doing it. I recall a time at Hi5 when our security people were trying to track down and stamp out a spambot network that was automatically creating fake user profiles on our network and using them to build fake friend networks that would then be harnessed to spam our users with adult content ads. It was a very insidious type of attack because it did a good job of masquerading as an ordinary friend network until it got activated. While we had all of our people working long hours trying to crush this thing we got a shake-down notice from a state AG’s office accusing us of violating one of their phony child protection laws because we weren’t taking down inappropriate content THEY were posting on our site fast enough when THEY complained about it anonymously. Of course all of our resources were consumed dealing with an ACTUAL content emergency but that didn’t matter to these guys, we were busted and had to waste vast amounts of time and money responding to intrusive inquiries about our anti-child porn policies and security measures… as though anybody at these agencies had any value to add to our efforts to protect OUR audience… not to mention how we felt about THEM posting inappropriate content on our site when we were constantly battling the issue, not because of any laws or regulations, but because WE didn’t want that kind of content on our site or promoted to OUR audiences. These agencies love to pretend that not only are the champions of protecting (fill in the blank) children, privacy, security, etc. online but they are also the EXCLUSIVE owners of concern for these issues and that no business cares about them until they are bullied into pretending to do so publicly.
Having experienced this kind of government agency harassment first hand, it’s not hard to learn to spot it’s outcomes in the media like the fake joint Microsoft-Google announcement to link 100,000 search terms somebody has “associated” with pedophilia to warning messages. Now that I’ve explained how it works, let’s take a look at a few interesting news items about companies like Facebook to see if we can spot the tell-tale signs of information extortion.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/146474/article.html —> http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2010-06-e.htm —-> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/technology/personaltech/ftc-looking-into-facebook-privacy-policy.html?_r=0
“The OPC’s investigation and the changes it helped to instigate were generally widely praised.15 In the OPC’s view, the investigation is an example of how PIPEDA’s privacy protections are flexible enough to be easily applied to new technologies as they develop and to strike a reasonable balance between the privacy rights of social media users and the interests of business.16
However, the rollout of the revised privacy measures also attracted criticism, since it was accompanied by other changes to the Facebook site that may actually disseminate a user’s personal information more widely and publicly than would have been the case previously, unless that user takes advantage of the new tools to strengthen his or her default privacy settings.17 At least three Facebook user protest groups also appear to have been formed in reaction to the more detailed description of how personal information on Facebook is shared that is contained in the new privacy policy statements required under Canadian law.18 In fact, an American organization, the Electronic Privacy Information Center subsequently filed a complaint with the American regulator, the Federal Trade Commission,19 arguing that the changes to the Facebook site constitute an “unfair and deceptive practice” under American trade law.20 At the time of publication, it was not yet clear whether the improved privacy controls added to the site in response to the Canadian investigation would affect the outcome of the American investigation.
It also appears that the OPC has ongoing concerns about Facebook’s activities. On 18 January 2010, the OPC announced that it is initiating a public consultation process that will examine how personal information is being mined by social data sites. Facebook will be examined as part of the consultation, as well as other social media sites, including MySpace, a site similar to Facebook; LinkedIn, a career networking site; and foursquare, a site that allows people to share information about where they are and give tips about social happenings in their immediate surroundings. The OPC plans to hold public discussion panels on the topic in April and May 2010.21 This work will likely build on research already completed for the OPC in February 2009 that examined six social media sites, including Facebook, and compared their various privacy features.22”
Allow me to “translate” this sequence of events for you to illustrate how this works on a grand scale. A pseudo-private organization the CIPPIC decides Facebook is in violation of a Canadian consumer privacy law and fails initially to blackmail Facebook for a donation or consulting fees… I say pseudo-private because it’s obviously a Canadian government funded educational institution that is doing the “investigating” and “complaining”. Naturally now that the concern has been raised by somebody the Canadian government must respond by “investigating” Facebook which certainly involved demanding VAST amounts of information. The OPC acknowledges that it was successful at extorting information from Facebook and possibly at extracting fines or penalties as part of a “settlement”, they got good press about them doing it ( ie the media and public bought the line that it was done for their protection ), they kept the door open to go back to the well again in the future and are excited about the possibility that their investigation will provoke a US FTC investigation (which it did) which will give them an excuse to investigate and extort information and concessions from many more American Internet companies on the same pretext including LinkedIn, Twitter, and MySpace!
Obviously people who support this kind of endless investigating of companies justify it by imagining that all of this investigating and concession extortion benefits us somehow. Obviously it’s a worthy subject of debate, my key observation in this post is that whether or not it benefits us, it ABSOLUTELY gives these government organizations a free pass to extract any information they want from these companies without resistance, opposition or public awareness because resistance results in public humiliation and endless litigation as illustrated above. Microsoft, Google, AOL, Microsoft and Twitter are finally enjoying the moral high ground and are briefly in a position to fight back but it won’t last. There is a huge body of government institutions that are going to be working overtime to regain control by finding these guys guilty of some new imaginary infraction. While they have your attention, realize that if you believe all of this oversight is necessary to protect your children, privacy, security or whatever… then who is overseeing how the government handles this information once it has extorted it from these companies? The only reason this issue is public now is because a government contractor with access to this collected data publicized it and delivered it to the Soviet Union! Who is overseeing how the government handles this data? Is it worth it?
*The Saints other posts on related subjects:
http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/04/12/promoting-pedophilia/
http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2013/09/17/fbi-protecting-children-everywhere/
*Finally a little gem from The Saints oldies collection that beautifully illustrates The Saints mastery of all subjects discussed;
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/microsoft-vista-failing-70-million-online-gamers-and-developers-53810082.html
*Using public humiliation of Microsoft over child safety issues and security to get free press for WildTangent’s online game service… the first to support ESRB ratings for online games which The Saint got support from the ESRB for WITHOUT any government harassment simply because he loves his own kids and making great family products is GREAT BUSINESS without any need to be blackmailed into doing it! When I was much more naïve about this subject I also used to consult for some of these government agencies on issues of child safety and online games imagining that I was actually helping them to develop better policies, not giving them ideas about how to successfully extort software companies.
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