[chriswarbo]

> > Apple/Google/Microsoft/Yahoo/AOL/etc are after your money, they only protect your rights if it means "more money", not if it threatens to impact their profit. > > That's a wild generalization and baseless accusation.

Global surveillence is (part of) these companies' business models. They don't support privacy, they just disagree on who should be allowed to do the snooping.

> They are forbidden to be honest about NSA's demands and therefore this has hurt their image in the international market-place.

The problem is that these demands are possible to fulfil in the first place. Solving that problem would force these companies to find new cash cows.

[bad_user]

Surveillance is arguably part of these companies' business models. However we are talking about their own stuff, their own products, their own servers and I expect them to be upfront about it (e.g. hey, we are using your data for ads targeting) and to fix vulnerabilities that may allow third-parties to access my data ilegaly or to harm me.

With NSA we are talking about something different. If the NSA can engage in subverting encryption standards, there's no end to what they can do. If they ask Google to plant a backdoor in the Chrome binary, or Microsoft to plant a backdoor in Windows, or Apple to plant a backdoor in iOS/OS X, thus removing Google/Microsoft/Apple in the connection between me and them - I'll never find out about it and my software will be defective "by design" and as I've said, my personal fear is not the NSA, but rather organizations that are closer to home. For example, if backdoors in the software that I use exist, then they can be discovered by organized crime syndicates that say, are in the business of stealing credit cards, or whatever.

Can Google/Microsoft/Apple/Yahoo promise to do the right thing with such possible exploits? Can they promise to fix them, as they are discovered? Of course not. Hence, I cannot trust them anymore, because it is not in them that I have to trust.

> The problem is that these demands are possible to fulfil in the first place.

Well, shit happens all the time, mail accounts get hacked and so on. To me the real problem is that the software that I use may be defective by design and I cannot trust these providers to fix it or to tell me about it. Voting with my wallet also doesn't work anymore, as long as the alternative is still a US-based company and in this regard I now feel that all US-based companies are equal. Yahoo even tried fighting warrantless spying and failed and we found out about it only because of Snowden's leaks. So even if they want to do the right thing, they can't.