[exelius]

No; his point was that companies like Google and Facebook will never be truly secure because true security is at odds with their business model. They're advertising companies, so they need to look at your communications to serve you ads. On a private level, that's fine, because you implicitly choose to submit to this surveillance in exchange for the service, and if Google oversteps their bounds, there is legal recourse.

What he was asking for was for the next Google or Facebook, which will likely not be based on an advertising-centric business model, to take privacy seriously and do things in such a way that it can't be turned over to the government en masse. He didn't seem against surveillance as a concept; there is a place for targeted surveillance and he wants to use the technology to force individual surveillance to be the only viable option.

[cinquemb]

Sure, if one thinks the Facebook's and the Google's (and future ones) only misalignment is with their business model. I think it's more fundamental than that.

[exelius]

I don't know it gets more fundamental than the business model. Everything about a company supports its business model; not the other way around.

[cinquemb]

What about the formation of any corporation? To whom does the potential corporation submit itself to? And what benefits does it receive upon incorporation even well before any business model can be in sight or capital gained?

[exelius]

Corporations submit to the shareholders. Those shareholders submit to the government, because let's face it: governments have real power in the form of men with guns. Different governments have different rules about how and when those men with guns do things, and yes, that is a conversation that needs to happen in the US.

This was a talk targeted at technologists. All technologists can do is try to make it harder for governments to collect data on the entire population at once by using secure crypto schemes. If they want YOU, they can still get you, because one man vs. a government is never going to end in the man's favor.

[cinquemb]

All technologists can do is try to make it harder for governments to collect data on the entire population at once by using secure crypto schemes.

I disagree with that statement, because it assumes all technologists pick the state as the enemy, or that they all think mass collection is a problem. I personally see the information asymmetry between who can have access to such information and those who do not as the problem, and one that I am personally working on solving.

And then there's this: look how many people you see advocating for "secure crypto schemes" and how many of them are actively developing them and have been for decades, and wonder about how effective they have been so far for the greater population or even to the population that is still advocating for it. Because I sure do wonder about that…