Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Is The NSA Facing Blowback From America's 'Tech Giants'


Latest NSA Overreach Awakens Tech Giants in Washington -- Dustin Volz, National Journal

The most recent round of National Security Agency revelations have prompted major tech firms to publicly take a stronger stance against government surveillance activities, an escalation that could portend a shift in the way Silicon Valley does business in Washington.

A group of six tech behemoths—Google, Yahoo, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and America Online—sent a letter to lawmakers last week calling for legislation to curtail the NSA's authority. The companies specifically championed the Freedom Act, introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and former House Judiciary Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., with support from more than 80 cosponsors, for "making an important contribution to this discussion."

Read more ....

My Comment: I do not see this growing groundswell in Silicon valley to curtail the NSA. They still give millions in campaign contributions to the politicians who are legislating and giving the NSA the official mandate to conduct surveillance operations. Stop giving political donations to these politicians and/or start supporting politicians who want to limit the NSA .... that is when I know that America's "tech giants" are becoming serious.

2 comments:

Keeping Able said...

We're serious now. This country is based upon rules of law grounded in the Constitution. Violators, be they Al Quaeda, FBI, or NSA, are its enemies.

Intelligence.Architecture.Infrastructure said...

i like your comment. Please do go a step further.

Why are the Tech Giants ENTITLED to the use and abuse of private and privacy information, with or without or unwitting consent of the public but the very second the very same data from the Tech Giants are siphoned off by the public sector as NSA or FBI everyone screams 'R-E-D-R-U-M!'?

NSA has NOT collected a single bit or byte of data that is NOT already collected, collated, analyzed, warehoused, mined and ABUSED by the Tech Giants.

Not to mention the fact that Senate Intelligence is already in the pocket of Silicon Valley Tech Giants.

I think Silicon Valley and Wall Street got entrapped in their own game and are trying to make it a WashingtonDC problem.

As Google Eric Schmidt said, " If [Tech Giant] people have nothing to hide then what are they afraid of?" and "if they do not want anyone to know what they are doing then they should not do it on the internet." :-)