NSA doing it is a lot worse. There is no transparency on what they do. I get no benefits in return for sharing my data. They have license to do all kinds of nasty things to me, that Google would have to go through a court for. From blocking my flights to making me disappear at night.
No benefits? That’s bit like saying that security screenings at airports offer no benefit to anyone. While security screenings are inefficient and could be improved, that doesn’t mean they offer zero benefit.
Also what’s the likelihood of the NSA blocking your flight or making you disappear in the night? You probably should fear crossing the street more in terms of statistical likelihood of harm.
I get the privacy/freedom arguments however the hyperbole around this stuff is getting ridiculous as the fears are badly supported by actual data and statistical significance.
More people drowned in swimming pools last year than were “disappeared” by the NSA but there seems little hysteria around swimming pools. I pretty sure most of us don’t know a single person on a no-fly list.
Some high levels of paranoia around here it seems.
Corporations didn't murder a hundred million of their own customers in the last century alone. It takes a government to do that. Consequently, governments have to be held to higher standards, not lower ones.
Yes, they did. Probably just tobacco companies alone.
A response as silly as it was predictable. Show me a Gulag Archipelago written about the tobacco industry and we'll have some grounds for further discussion.
Since corporations are creatures of government, that's true by definition of everything corporations do.
At some point, you'll come to understand that not every debate can be reduced to an exercise in moral relativism and dismissed with a flourish of false equivalence.
That works well enough on HN, as seen in the moderation in this thread, but not in real life.
