I have to imagine some of the big time married executives at these major tech companies aren't too thrilled about government surveillance either. Sometimes men with a lot of money in their pocket and time on their hands can be drawn to locations and situations that they wouldn't want their wives to be privy to.
So I don't think we should all assume these companies are 100% "in" with the government on surveillance because I'm sure these executives would prefer not to be tracked as well.
There is something to be said for wealthy businessmen having the most to lose, when it comes to privacy concerns and
blackmail, but this is an issue that affects us all for a host of reasons beyond blackmail. When it comes to political suppression, the wealthy generally have the means to be unaffected by it in any real way, just as long as their interests don't directly oppose the government's.
I'm glad to see a warrant canary from Apple, that's a very good sign. The unfortunate thing is they can't release any information about national security requests. We all know that tyranny always comes in the form of national security demands, so we should be much more worried about how many of those there are, than how many missing persons cases local governments are getting data for.
Apple's report, as Ars Technica points out, makes no mention of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act, which is being used as justification for the NSA's PRISM program. Its lack of mention is worth noting. It's also important to think seriously about human intelligence. Does anyone think it's beyond a spy agency to simply recruit employees of a company to work for them, or have one of their agents get a job at a company they wish to get physical server access at? Apple's executives and lawyers may be entirely ignorant of what their employees are doing with their servers, at the behest of domestic or foreign agencies, or even criminal organizations. Then there's the matter of Apple's internet connection. Governments around the world, or criminals, may have direct access to the networks Apple's hardware is running on, just outside of any Apple buildings.
The only thing you can truly trust, is that Apple is not in the business of collecting user data, as they are happy to point out. Google and others are in the business of selling users to advertisers in neat little data packages. They maintain extensive networked databases to do just that. Apple has no business motivation to do the same, which means Apple is less likely to keep data that a government agency or criminals would later gain access to. If you assume nothing is secure, which is a pretty good assumption, then a lack of something needing security to begin with eliminates a lot of concerns.
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There was a point when I was all up in arms about this and than I thought about it, the Government has been doing this for YEARS. It's only now that we're finding out about it.
That and also the fact that if you're not doing anything wrong/illegal/suspect, what do you have to worry about? (I know I'm going to get ripped for this one but what-ever, bring it on)
Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have "Nothing to Hide"
In case you don't bother clicking the link, here's a few quick retorts:
•My response is "So do you have curtains?" or "Can I see your credit-card bills for the last year?"
•So my response to the "If you have nothing to hide ... " argument is simply, "I don't need to justify my position. You need to justify yours. Come back with a warrant."
•I don't have anything to hide. But I don't have anything I feel like showing you, either.
•If you have nothing to hide, then you don't have a life.
•Show me yours and I'll show you mine.
•It's not about having anything to hide, it's about things not being anyone else's business.
•Bottom line, Joe Stalin would [have] loved it. Why should anyone have to say more?
But that's just the beginning. Trying to justify privacy as solely a matter of hiding wrongdoing misses the point. Privacy is much more than that. It's the basis of every freedom we have, right down our freedom to think and feel what we want. How many times have you expressed thoughts and feelings that you wouldn't want overheard by people other than who you're talking to? If you thought that everyone in the entire world was listening to you always, or at least had the ability, would you find there was a chilling effect on your freedom of expression?
Then there's the matter of government incompetence, and government insecurity. If privacy-invasive measures don't actually work to keep us safe, or people like Snowden can take off to Russia with a whole host of top secret information, this all seems a bit pointless and dangerous. If PRISM didn't stop the Boston Marathon bombings, how do we justify the cost of the hardware and energy use, especially in a time of large budget deficits? If the government can't keep its most secret secrets secret, why should we trust the government to hold onto vast databases with our personal information on it? If not somebody like Snowden, or a foreign agent, it'll be criminal hackers who want to steal your identity or credit cards. The more data the government collects, the bigger a target it becomes, and the more damage can be done when it's inevitably stolen or leaked.
