Top US Senator to Apple, Google: 'Curb your spy planes'

Originally posted by tothetenthpower
I'm more worried about the gov spying on me honestly.

Google doesn't have swap teams and people with large guns that can kick down my door and steal my property and harm my family.

So their spying is a bit inconsequential, even though it's somewhat wrong, but that's the price you pay for technology these days I suppose.

How much freedom are YOU willing to give up for great maps service on your phone?

~Tenth

Given that Google's own recent bi-annual transparency report showed that they fulfilled 93% of the US Gov's censorship requests, I am more concerned about the possibility of Google/Apple being used as a proxy by the government. I can imagine several situations where it might be considered "advantageous" to have access to non-governmental 3rd party surveillance data.

Originally posted by Mapkar
reply to post by SuperFrog

 

Actually, yes. Our government should be held accountable to the same laws and regulations as our private corporations in a domestic situation. If I can send a remote controlled plane to take pictures of something, then the government shouldn't have the right to do it either. The government needs to understand that we're not ants under the magnifying glass, they live among us and with enough provocation people will eventually bite back.

Oh, don't get me wrong... I am against any totalitarian regime (I grow up under one like that) and I think that governments should be sanctioned to what they can do regarding their own people. In our history as spicies, it never ended good when someone has huge amount of power at their disposal, and just recently we can see how bad that can turn in Syria.

But the problem is that there is that thing called national security, and that some of those purposes of government drones might be to prevent future terror attacks, or stop drug/human trafficking in time we try to trim our military spending. How far we willing to give our freedom in the order to stay protected, well, that is very debatable.

Now, all that power in hands of corporation - scare thing. Just like privatization of space exploration....

reply to post by SuperFrog


Unfortunately the corporations do have lots of power. That comes from the masses of wealth they accumulate through constant expansion and take over of the markets.

Space exploration will either be done by private companies (which may include large corporations) or by the government. I don't see us getting to the point where we can easily send up a personal spacecraft.

There are things that companies like Google and Apple can do that we can't do as private individuals. But, that's how things are right now.

Originally posted by SuperFrog
reply to post by Mapkar

 

So you say because government is doing it, private sector should be able to do it as well?!

Yes.

reply to post by HunkaHunka


So you are not worried about motives...

Reasonable explanation of government doing it is for our own protection, but what about corporations? Let's not go into abusive power withing government.