On 09/20/2013 10:53 PM, Jim Bell wrote:
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 9:48 PM, coderman <coderman@gmail.com <mailto:coderman@gmail.com>> wrote:
Evidently he has made what he considers a step in this direction ;)
I propose that the public force such companies to sign what I'd call "Disloyalty oaths", promises to be disloyal to any and every government. This would include a promise that if subjected to any sort of court order (even and especially those requiring that the company keep silent as to the existence of said order) that the order would be 'leaked' shortly, say less than a week, to an organization (Cryptome; Wikileaks) that would publicize it. Primary methods as crude as leaving a few hundred copies of the order at the company water-cooler, or in the cafeteria, or by the copier, would probably induce volunteer leakers to mail copies to the leak-publication organizations. Governments and courts have little reason to issue such orders if their existence will be leaked, particularly if they are going to be very quickly leaked. Leaks, obviously, are very easy to do these days and the identity of the leaker would be very hard to know, and even harder to prove. Chances are good that such court-orders simply will cease.
I completely support the idea of disloyalty oaths. The only problem I see is that they simply wouldn't work. What we'd see is the government putting increased threat of criminal prosecution on the corporate chain and not enough corporate officers willing to risk going to jail in order to do the right thing. Marissa Mayer from Yahoo said as much in her Techcrunch interview last week. The only option I see is that the public simply refuse to do business with the offending companies and do business with their foreign counterparts; take the money out of the US and do real harm to the US economy in the process. When major companies start failing and everyone knows it's because they betrayed their customers, the government will have to respond. It's already starting to a degree. Microsoft and Google have already said they're experiencing real financial loss because of the NSA revelations. We need to vote with our money. And we need to be willing to accept 'less viable' solutions for a time while other companies ramp up their services. Are Americans willing to go that far? I'm not too sure. We want comfort and convenience. Often, principles take a back seat to those. CypherPunk