| Protest. Lobby. Seek publicity. Take the government to court. Put up a fight. Note that when the EU data retention directive (which is often used here under the header "see, others are doing it to", even though it doesn't even come close to what the NSA does) was initiated, that's exactly what many telecom providers and ISP's did, before and after this came into affect. It didn't stop it, but it least it has brought it out into the open, making it an (still ongoing) public issue. The remarkable part of what's happening in the US is the utterly quiet and extremely forthcoming complicity of major companies who otherwise don't seem to have any problem throwing a lot of resources at manipulating governments foreign and domestic. And in the case of Microsoft, in it's monopolists heydays, even up to the point of structurally breaking the law. Also, it's not like they are only quiet about it because the law tells them so: they actively deny it, hell, they even advertise with pure lies about the privacy of their services. These companies aren't victims anymore. They are complicit. Lastly, it should be quiet obvious that with absolutely no restriction in the wiretapping of foreign nationals, they are breaking the law in every country they do business in. Those foreigners, like myself, have no voice in US legislation. From my perspective as a non-American, Microsoft is complicit in a full frontal attack on our civil liberties. We can't stop the US government, but we can certainly stop Microsoft e.a. from doing business here. |
I'll let you know how that goes from here in Sydney, Australia.
Yeah,I'm not a US citizen. None of the "with a valid court order" weasel-words apply to me.