[gwgarry]

So Google can eavesdrop on everyone's communication globally and relay that to the US government. If I were a foreign government I would tell them to fuck off. There is no point in having a spy network of a corporation that belongs to another nation in your airspace. If they want to build such a network, open source the technology and let nations' own organizations that are under the democratic control of those nations build that technology.

[magicalist]

Uh, vs any other possible ISP that would provide internet access? Or is it better just to not provide access at all?

Luckily strong encryption tools are built into every browser out there by default that prevents the ISP from seeing what you're doing on the web beyond the domain you are connecting to, and there are tools like Tor that can protect you even from logging of that.

Meanwhile, how will a nation build an internet providing balloon only for itself when the wind carries those balloons around the entire planet? And the very point of the project is to provide internet where there is currently none, meaning "organizations that are under the democratic control of those nations" (making the huge assumption that any particular country we're talking about is a democracy) haven't found it economically feasible and/or desirable to provide internet in these places.

What a golden example of a "middlebrow" dismissal.

[klibertp]

IIRC those balloons stay in place, thanks to being able to change altitudes. When the wind start to blow in an undesirable direction or is too strong, the balloon can just get to the lower or higher place, where the wind is just right. That's exactly what normal balloons do and it seems to work.

Because of that I think that giving the balloons to the countries is perfectly possible - just hand them the remote for the ones above their heads.

[magicalist]

That's what I thought at first as well (the animation shows going in one direction and then rising and moving in the opposite, after all), though it seemed really optimistic that you could have enough control from different layers of wind to stay around one spot. Layers of wind move in different directions, but not often diametrically opposed (at least not near to each other vertically), and overall winds in the stratosphere move largely west to east. It seems more likely that you could do some steering with the different layers, but not anything approaching staying still. More like change your latitude very slowly. IANAMeteorologist, though.

Check out the "how loon works" video, it seems to back that up (the source article quotes it as well): http://www.google.com/loon/how/ at around 2:55

from the transcript:

> "Now we have some ability to steer in general, however, in the stratosphere, most of the time the winds actually flow from west to east. Because the winds generally circulate this way, we typically will have bands of our balloons that will be around the world at different latitudes. So if the balloons are circling around the bottom half of the world, eventually the balloon that's over South Africa will pass over South America."

[leoc]

The sad fact remains that many, maybe most people around the world are better off (sometimes a lot better off) having their Internet spied on by the US than having it spied on by their home government, or than not having Internet at all. The extra problem with having national Loon-a-like networks is that (as the OP says) apparently it goes against the grain of those stratospheric winds.

[pavs]

Enough with the "holier than thou" selective morality.

[leoc]

I'm not an American, you know. What do you consider untrue or unreasonable about my comment above?

[pavs]

You don't have to be an american to have selective bias. The idea that Americans (or any first world country) are less likely to do more harm by spying on their people comes from a belief that American government are morally superior. A dangerous type of thinking which leds to them going to a war under false pretense and killing 100s of thousands of people without and repercussions and very little legal or public scrutiny.

Can you imagine what would happen if China was involved in a "preemptive" war against any other nation and killed ~300,000 people?

But when "First world" government does it, "oh they had good intentions...", "they were less likely to do any harm.."

[klibertp]

"comes from a belief that American government are morally superior"

Not necessarily. It may as well come from a belief that "first world" governments are better supervised by people, journalists and politicians, that legislative, judiciary and executive branches of government are actually independent, or that said country is far away and probably not interested as much in someone as his own government.

How unfounded and idealistic those beliefs are is a matter of discussion, but there are many possible reasons for preferring "first world" country as an entity controlling the flow of data. Compared to the alternatives, where corruption and nepotism are much more rampant, where the opposition is routinely persecuted by the government, where journalists are killed by special agents, where you can land in a prison for long years because you jokingly said something to your friend...

[tripzilch]

The part where you say that 3rd world countries would be "better off" being spied upon by the US, in return for obtaining free WiFi! And it's not even a free choice to make.

[yohui]

> And it's not even a free choice to make.

The citizens are free to remain unconnected. The countries are free to build their own infrastructure.

Perhaps the choice isn't "free" because the incentives are too compelling, but that says something in itself about the benefits (even if we just assume the hypothetical risk of spying is real, as you did).

[tripzilch]

I was referring to the fact they can't choose not to have the balloons float above their territories.

I do think the concept of Project Loon is amazing, though.

[packetslave]

Why would Google want to "eavesdrop on everyone's communication globally and relay that to the US government"? What possible business benefit could that have?

[fiatjaf]

Google does not belong to the US government.

[shiven]

Yes, you're right. But actually, in practice, it and other US companies are the US government's bitches. All to be ridden via proxies known as FISA/FBI/CIA/NSA/PRISM or other acronyms we don't even know yet.

[frozenport]

There is some truth to that, but Google is a bitch in every country it operates. For example Canada, UK, Russia and China. In HK (nation that Snowden praised) you actually get censored Google.

[etherael]

If they can compel them to do anything they like, does the technicality of ownership really matter?

I used to trust Google but I don't trust any government, sure as hell not the most megalomaniacal and power hungry one on the entire planet. By extension the rational perspective to take in light of recent revelations is to treat all entities subject to US law as if they were the US government proper. A people who are not permitted to dissent from their government are effectively indistinguishable from it.

Concerning stuff.

[cinquemb]

Google is a legal entity that is effectively recognized as a person under the USG, not the other way around. Many cities are also incorperated. Are those cities not legally apart and under the influence of the USG since they are incorperated?

[frozenport]

I am shocked people are down-voting a matter of fact statement. Sorry about that.

[MostAwesomeDude]

Loons aren't eavesdroppers. They only operate on very specific spectra in order to ensure high bandwidth.

[ge0rg]

They transmit on very specific frequencies, but they could have wide-band receivers on board, listening to whatever is interesting to the operators (filtering has to be applied because the downlink is limited).