By Victor Luckerson – Tucked away in those long paragraphs of legalese on pretty much every major Internet website (including Time.com) is a clause about how a business will handle your private data when the feds come knocking. In general, these companies grant themselves wide latitude. Yahoo says it might hand out your data to investigate or prevent “situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person.” Facebook will respond to a court order, search warrant or other legal request “if we have a good faith belief that the law requires us to do so.” Apple provides user data to government agencies if “for purposes of national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance, disclosure is necessary or appropriate.”
Whatever the case, the now-acknowledged program takes data collection to a scope beyond what many users likely expected and possibly beyond what some companies’ terms of service allow. more> http://tinyurl.com/kl56mmw
Related>
- Updates from Senator Rand Paul ↓
- Buying into Big Brother ←
- European Internet Dialogue: how to serve the public interest? Gutenberg, neurope.eu
- U.S. surveillance architecture includes collection of revealing Internet, phone metadata, Barton Gellman, Washington Post
- After Profits, Defense Contractor Faces the Pitfalls of Cybersecurity, David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, NYTimes.com
- Potential Blind Spots in Clearance Process that Gave Snowden Top-Secret Access, Andrew Katz, TIME
- NSA leaks threaten Obama’s G8 agenda, Julian Pecquet, Hill
- NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls, Declan McCullagh, CNET News
- NSA spying just pushes envelope, Charles Krauthammer, Boston Herald
- Obama doesn’t think NSA programs violated Americans’ privacy, WH says, Lindsey Boerma, CBS News
Related articles
- NSA programs may be legal, but are they ethical? (cbsnews.com)
By Nicholas Wapshott – Some, like Google and Facebook, pose primarily as software companies when their main revenue source, and their main business, is to mine data and sell advertisers access to customers. We knew this already, of course, though it seems many of us would prefer to forget the true nature of the technology firms that have boomed in the last decade. Seduced by their dazzling baubles, we have bought in to Big Brother without truly understanding the true price we are paying and will continue to pay for access to their brave new world.
By Jeffrey Rosen – Though initially supported by Congress, the courts and the press, the 
