Both companies have argued that I.P. addresses alone cannot be used to unmask the identities of individuals with certainty.

I love that last word there.

Interestingly, Google has rejected demands by privacy groups for more stringent protections for I.P. address records, saying that in most cases the addresses cannot be used to identify users.

I love it. They're mostly safe! What more do you want?

I would tend to think that a system which sort of works to identify individuals but is prone to hilarious Brazil-style errors is just as dangerous, if not more so, then a really accurate way to identify computer users.

The telecoms didn't have a gun to their head - some companies approached for the same program refused and nothing was done to them.

You may point out that the companies that cooperated received government contracts while the companies that refused did not, but that isn't a gun to your head, that's a payment.

Obama was wrong to cave on FISA.

I am afraid I must disagree with this statement completely. It implies that Obama is doing something against his will. Obama is a member of the ruling class, he is seeking the most powerful office in the nation, Obama is a believer in authority especially the authority of the state therefore Obama did not cave in rather he supports such things. He plans to use the presidential powers that Bush has increased including surveillance.

It was Woodrow Wilson, a democrat, who laid the groundwork for a parliamentary style government. He also believed the constitution was out of date and irrelevant. Ever since his presidency many presidents have tried to increase the power held by that office decreasing the so-called balance of power between the branches. Generally speaking the more power presidents acquire the worst leaders they have become and Obama will be no exception. I believe that there is a very good chance that whoever is elected that they will actually be worse than Bush because not only will they inherit the precedents of power established by Clinton and Bush in particular but will add to them, surveillance just being one aspect of this process.

There's hardly any "movement:" consumer, political, social or economic. The water isn't close to boiling, yet. The American froggies ain't jumping for, against or about anything, 'cept maybe for the NFL.
Who's gonna "move" what where, and who's gonna take risks doing it? Who's gonna speak the words that might inspire some movement?

>> The telecoms didn't have a gun to their head

They did, in fact. Stockholders would have punished them dearly. When you're a company, having a gun to your head means the threat of losing money. What else did you think it could possibly mean?

Rob: You said "It implies that Obama is doing something against his will." No, it does not. It implies only that Obama contradicted himself for the sake of courting votes: he had promised a filibuster. He caved to pressure.
Now, whether he'll be happy to keep the privilege is an entirely different story. I happen to agree with you, but he would have caved the other way if that had been electorally favorable.

don: Nader started something huge. Detroit is killing you and I'm going to use the power of millions of consumers to teach them who's boss. But then the "Consumer Movement" degenerated into a Shopping Channel for the middle class.
I was in grad school when we boycotted Nestle for poisoning African babies with their crappy powdered milk. If any major boycott has happened since then, I've missed it.

In fact, boycotting business can be extremely effective, since many rise to the top by superior branding (not by the quality of their products). What's happened to that?

>> >> The telecoms didn't have a gun to their head

>> They did, in fact. Stockholders would have punished them dearly. When you're a company, having a gun to your head means the threat of losing money. What else did you think it could possibly mean?

Threatening the relevant corporate officers with prosecution, for example. But you've made quite the assertion here - that "Otherwise, we would've lost money!" is a legitimate excuse (but only if you're a corporation) just like (but possibly not as severe as) putting a gun to their head. Violently busting a union? "We had to, they were trying to make us pay more wages. That's like putting a gun to our heads! That means we acted in self-defense."

I agree with Prof Chazelle. Corporations do respond when they are hit where it hurts most, i.e. their pockets. So, after years of boycott, Nestle had to agree to WHO guidelines for distributing their bottled formula, with all the member nations of UN signing except of course the USA, Ronald Reagan being the president, an advocate of free market!!
As far as Google is concerned, THERE IS NO PRIVACY. Google freezes blogsites of bloggers, whose opinions it does not like or approve of, so the blogger can not upload his/her material!!!! Is that Robot so inefficient? In reality, the human eyes are watching!
And I heard an AT&T employee on C-SPAN telling a congressional committee, the company had been collecting emails--a BILLION bits ( does it sound right? I know nothing about computers ) PER SECOND---and for what? These were ordinary americans from whom they were collecting data.
Yes, there will be a consumer protest and a movement when finally someone says, "Enough is enough and I can not take it anymore". Past seven and a half years has been a very long time!

Bernard is in error and Rob is correct. Obama wants this. He did not cave. To say he caved would be inconsistant with his proven nature. It was the statements claiming that he did not want the FISA bill to pass that were lies.

And, um, didn't the telcom hijinks with China make it pretty clear that none of these industries have anything close to ethics. Violating privacy will be the least they do before they've had their run.

I question the efficacy of a boycott for many products nowadays. We have a system of oligarchies; boycotting would be difficult for many. I despise PCs, for good reason, and I think plenty of people on Earth would love to join in a boycott of Microsoft products, but they're nigh-impossible to escape.

But I'm younger than some here and I haven't ever experienced a successful boycott, so I may be making assumptions.

Bernard: Funny, though, to hear it from liberals who surrendered to Bush after no one ever put a gun to their heads.

What are you referring to here?

government contracts while the companies that refused did not, but that isn't a gun to your head, that's a payment.
Posted by 01d55 at July 6, 2008 05:59 PM

the qwest ceo DID go to jail on charges not unrelated, iirc...

agree with Prof Chazelle. Corporations do respond when they are hit where it hurts most, i.e. their pockets.

a decent marksman with knowledge of the schematics of a micro-wave xmitter could put one out of commission with one or two shots. fish in a barrel...

This post irritates me; it comes off as self-righteous and a cheap shot. "why the deafening silence"??

1 - The news broke all of three days ago. For most people, it comes out of the blue. Have you been following, much less posting about, the issues involved here, Bernard? Did you know about the existence of this case before Thursday?

2 - The news has been noted by a bunch of blogs. Newshoggers, Crooks and Liars, Firedoglake, Avedon Carol's Sideshow, a recommended diary at Daily Kos, and probably a good many others that I didn't see. Sure, there isn't an organized netroots campaign 72 hours later, on a holiday weekend, but I'd hardly call this "deafening silence". Among organizations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has been the first to respond, unsurprisingly.

3 - It's far from clear which company should be the target, and what tactics would be effective. Any suggestions? Or is coming up with a campaign and building a consumer movement the job of liberal bloggers only?

Those of you who seem to think that Obama caved because he wants that power when he is president are being seriously naive about how presidential elections work. You're confusing correlation with causality.

Nell: Kerry, Dodd, Harkin, Schumer, Biden, etc.

Nell: What's your point? That I should just hold tight and within a week there'll be a nationwide boycott of Viacom? No cause that doesn't fit neatly within electoral priorities finds any serious echo in the political blogosphere, anyway. Come on, you know that. Reading dailyKos is like following the Premiership (w/o Ronaldo). It's all about the horse race. But yes, no doubt EFF and slashdot and Wired will be on the case...

But the fate of that battle was not the point of my post. It was about American justice. That, invariably, it favors business interests. And that, invariably, the political class is fine with it.

The deafening silence referred to the campaign.

Actually Bernard to believe that Obama “caved” is naive. The surveillance is all part of the great big war on terror that Obama keeps reassuring the powers that be that he will continue and amplify if he ever makes it to the big oval office. Also your response somehow does not make sense because it seems that you are saying that Obama “caved” because the electorate wants the surveillance? Is that really what is happening here? What seems more likely to me is that Obama during the first part of his campaign was deliberately vague about his positions, hope, change, etc. then after feeling he has secured the nomination he fawns before AIPAC, back pedals on Iraq, and basically sticks a broom up all the liberal’s rear ends and you tell me I’m naïve? I’m not the one drinking the Obama kool-aid. What is naïve is to think that Obama is just putting on an act with his right wing rhetoric and then once and if elected he is suddenly going to become a liberal champion, now that’s naïve. Obama even has his Clinton cronies all lined up ready and raring to go which speaks volumes of what an Obama presidency will be all about.

If Obama “caved” he was very happy and enthusiastic to do it rather like threatening a junky that you will give him an ounce of top grade horse for free.

Thanks for the clarification, Bernard. It was hard to tell who you were chastising.

The post still seems pretty incoherent in that respect: In the first half the target is liberal politicians. Then at the end you're bemoaning the lack of a consumer movement, which is a failing of the people ourselves, particularly the activists/organizers among us; it's not as if anything of that kind would ever come from or be led by politicians.

But nor does it just spring out of unfocused grievance. Movements grow from points of existing organization, around specific battles.

My negative reaction to this and a number of your recent posts has to do with our very different outlooks, activist vs. intellectual (oversimplified; in some respects you're an activist, and I'm an intellectual). So to minimize pointless friction I should probably stay off your comment threads for a while.

PS: Google, by the way, is just like Viacom: only more evil and overrated.

I don't really agree with that. In my view The Google has done an awful lot to place information at ready availability of the users, as well as providing some monetary sustainment for the bloggers that challenge the corporate owned news outlets.

Are they perfect? Not by a long shot, but for now the results of the blogger uprising has been to my liking. It's been said that this election is really about the the dissatisfaction with consolidated media, and I agree with that. And The Google is a large, large part of that.

Because of The Google, information only available behind paywalls to a select population has now been made available to the general public. And more arrives daily because of our thirst for information (notably the outcry over the academic research paywalls on research funded by taxpayers.)

Viacom and The Google contrasted, and The Google is more evil? I don't see it.

NO HOPE with Obama, not a prayer with Mccain, that's why YOU dig out that third choice. SHE'S a little gold mine to be sure BUT ya gotta WORK the diggings. Don't let that gold just sit there in the ground where ya can't spend it.
VOTE DIGBY FOR PRESIDENT---VOTE THE INTERNET.

@Labiche: Google's potential for evil is pretty vast, given the scale of net user dependency on their products and the user- and IP-identifiable information that they're collecting.

Viacom's just realizing more of their potential for evil at the moment. In the long run, Google could well exert far more unpleasant influence on our lives.

@Labiche: Google's potential for evil is pretty vast, given the scale of net user dependency on their products and the user- and IP-identifiable information that they're collecting.

Viacom's just realizing more of their potential for evil at the moment. In the long run, Google could well exert far more unpleasant influence on our lives.

Sorry about the double post; got an error message the first time.

Rob: Maybe cave was not the right word. But what I am saying is that his change of position (he had promised a filibuster) is not causally related to his beliefs. Only to the fact that moving to the center is what you do when DLC types run your campaign.

Nell: Sorry to disappoint. But I still don't understand what you're saying. I do criticize everyone, yes: activists, politicians, the blogosphere. What exactly is wrong with that?

Nell: The Viacom decision and its implication is more serious than FISA immunity. No question about it.

Labiche: Google is evil in the sense that it's asking people to sell their soul and, of course, they're more than happy to do that.

It's overrated because it is only marginally better than several other search engines. But it's benefited from a Winners-Take-All economy. If Google didn't exist, the world would not be that worst off.

Labiche: Google is evil in the sense that it's asking people to sell their soul and, of course, they're more than happy to do that.

It's overrated because it is only marginally better than several other search engines. But it's benefited from a Winners-Take-All economy. If Google didn't exist, the world would not be that worst off.

Google is not only the search engine, but many other sub-applications built around the search engine. I use the mail, the googledocs, blogger, google reader, etc. Is it aggregating information about me? Yes it is but it is also honest enough to say that it is, unlike WalMart that collects my consumer data whenever I swipe my debit card.

I tend to think that the tradeoff is acceptable to me (for now). I am much more incensed about the clipper chip, or cell phone triangulation than about a company that's fairly transparent about the fact that they collect my information continuously.

But I also don't think that it's possible to anonymously function either on the web or socially, one to one. I am perfectly aware that my anonymity is at the grace of the government and their taps, the ISP provider, and people like you and Jon that have access to my IP. And I think that in most cases, simple professionalism and consideration keeps integrity in place for most of us in the way we deal with each other. I depend on others NOT to be dickish routinely and it seems to mostly work.

If Google didn't exist, the world would not be that worst off.

I don't have a point of reference there, but I think just by placing "blogspot" online and available to every ankle biter with a keyboard is a step in the positive direction. And YouTube is pretty cool -- I never felt that there was going to be a free lunch there -- eventually, IP (intellectual property) would be enforced to the benefit of corporatists because we are a partially a functional oligarchy, partially a plutocracy, and in lesser part, partially a representative republic. I'm not surprised that the rich get to employ rent-seeking strategies and are enabled to do so by the machinery.

Hey Mike,

I was with you when you were voting for yourself. Digby can jump off a high point, for all I care.

Voting for anybody in this (and other) elections means accepting or endorsing the system. A big and well-executed DO NOT VOTE campaign could be the best message sent. Let's reduce the number of eligible Americans voting to about 12 or 14 percent, or even fewer. If "the system" is made ridiculously tiny, no more bullshit about how "the system works." Maybe if enough Americans got to understand that our system exists to screw them, year after year, decade after decade, they might start to walk away.
DO NOT VOTE. Neither of our parties represents your interests. No Bush, no Senator Pork, no smug and phony bullshit to cherish and protect. A spell of emptiness, nothingness. Followed, if we're lucky and loud enough, by starting over.
Obama Oshmama. Let's tell 'em NONE OF THE ABOVE.

saurabh I'm STILL voting for Michael Meyer and am not ashamed to say so, I'm just STUMPING FOR DIGBY. Who from the NET WOULD YOU vote for?

A consumer movement??? Why, you must be a SOCIALIST or a NADERITE or something! Don't you know Obama is going to save us all? It's true! I bet you're trying to steal our votes from us and Obama! I bet you are!!!