This is pleasing news, but to be honest I am a little concerned about the fact the Amazon didn't attempt one of these lawsuit earlier. I am not sure how cooperative AWS is with the government but I would assume they are the largest target for these types of requests. In general I like Amazon as a company but this makes me question their respect for user privacy.
https://blogs.aws.amazon.com/security/blog/tag/Transparency+...
However only one report (covering a 6-month period) has was issued and posted in the initial blog post on June 2015. None have followed:
http://d0.awsstatic.com/certifications/Information_Request_R...
(more likely the people who decided that all have new jobs now)
2) I'm only pleased if it works. I suspect in this environment it is going to flop and is largely for PR.
I have no idea why you're bringing up Amazon since the article is about Microsoft.
That said, assuming you're asking the question about MSFT: Microsoft has always been a lapdog of the Feds, as evidenced by handing over hotmail data simply from a pleasant LEA request, to centralizing and backdooring skype, to removal of the elephant diffuser, to jumping at the chance to join PRISM, to any number of chunks of evidence.
But now that data security is a marketable good (per Apple's example), MSFT feels the fiduciary duty to pretend to fight the Feds for profit.
Whenever a fundamentally evil actor gives a show of doing good, always follow the money.
I have no idea why you're bringing up that you have no idea why he's bringing up Amazon since the article is about Microsoft since the article is about Microsoft and the comment is about Amazon.
(in seriousness - good luck)
And it goes without saying that the gag orders should only be given in very specific scenarios, not for all data requests, or anytime the government wants to give one.
Hint: there's a reason the ACLU believes Citizens United was the right decision.
Political parties are very interesting in the sense that they are not public; not really at all. (but they should be). That's an argument for stricter laws when specifically dealing with speech and campaigns.
Keep in mind, free speech has limits. Obscenity, classified material, threats of harm ... Free speech in the US, although more complete than many other nations, is still restricted.
If you want to skip logging in.
If served a lawful subpoena, ANY cloud service provider may be required to hand over your data if they have that power. If you've got something truly critical (e.g., evidence you're transsexual in NC and use the "illegal"/correct bathroom) you should encrypt it even on top of what your CSP does. Windows, OSX and Linux all offer methods for doing this effectively.
I've used OneDrive with encrypted VHDs. It works fine, so long as you don't access the VHD from multiple places at once. I do this more because my OneDrive syncs to a surfacebook than because I am concerned about subpoenas.
As for the telemetry collected, it's probably not of any use to them. It's the same sort of stuff every app on your phone sends up to mixpanel. I wouldn't worry about that, as it's not a substantially greater privacy violation than the natural telemetry collected by the cell network and local ISPs. The only way it might be used against you is in proving a certain access pattern to the device at a certain time.
"what's evil? this is so subjective and [insert complaint]"
suppose an organization is committed to tricking the public, ripping off the government, committing crimes, gaining power at the expense of any idea of the public good... don't you think at least some people would be confident in thus concluding "business X is evil"?
again, regardless of microsoft's motives for litigation (which i'm going to go out on a limb and suggest are probably more nuanced and confidential than can be explained in a single article), shouldn't "business X is fundamentally evil; ie they are united in the pursuit of a criminal or publicly hazardous goal," be available for discussion? all the more if the speaker has evidence?
neutrality is great if you want to be level headed and find facts... but it can't be true by stipulation. that's just crazy, and truly "dogmatic and not very conducive to discussion". yeah, "x is evil" statements require more evidence, and more explanation of what you mean (because rando on the internet stating "x is evil" conveys pretty much no information at all), but they have to be admissable.
...unless you think it's somehow impossible for organizations to come together to pursue evil (by most standards) goals?
(and, again, not asserting that microsoft is evil myself, but didn't the karma-bombed author cite reasons that s/he found microsoft taking legal action to protect its customers dubious? if someone provides argument for a conclusion, and you--without even handwaving at a reason to dismiss their argument/evidence--dismiss her conclusion out of hand, aren't you doing some serious violence to intelligent discussion? you're expressly taking a discussion that had progressed to the point of thesis-with-argument back to bald-statements/opinions/theses... that's nothing to endorse)
Apple's stance may have tweaked the business incentives back in line with the moral good.
Apple has always been big on the idea that best way to alter behavior is to alter incentives.
The exact same verbiage was used for a few other companies including Comcast who bent over backwards to lower their dragnet.
This statement by Bezos rings really true to me and they will keep my business.
Please no. At its core, a political party is a group of people with common goals banding together to contest elections. Congress and the elections are the public institutions. How people choose to form alliances and contest those elections is a private matter. The only way to make political parties public is to ban private political parties, which should throw up all sorts of red flags in your head.
As for Citizens United, people forget that it's not just about big for-profit companies spending money. Any non-profit group is a corporation. If you and I share a set of political ideas and want to advocate for them, we'd form a non-profit, print pamphlets, run ads, court donors, rinse and repeat. That's freedom at work. It's totally impractical to run such an operation as a single human being. It's totally irresponsible to set up such a group and then legally run it as a single human being. Incorporation is the legal means for people to embark on common projects.
It could be anything - from something insidiously evil or it could be something like they're a journalist.
As opposed to the information that the ISPs are already offering? Sorry, but your underlying networks are already in collusion with the feds.
Were they not, the telemetry might provide signals that wouldn't be more easily obtained elsewhere.
But it's also worth noting that the telemetry for 'apps installed' is just your license list from the store. We don't have a ton of evidence that MS is combing your computer for random executables and reporting that back on a signal, or passing up full untrimmed process lists.
Log information can be much more revealing if you are communicating only via encrypted protocols or Tor. We don't know for sure what exactly MS is transmitting in their logs but we do know quite well what traces we leave (or leave not) behind via our ISP. And that's definitely much less than what our machine can reveal via (encrypted) telemetry.
1. We really don't know the extent of telemetry collected via our ISPs, do we? Unless application authors go to the trouble of specific certificate or signatory cert pinning, it's not terribly challenging for certain classes of attackera to enter that connection.
2. Wouldn't substantial data in Tor logs be a bug with your Tor client anyways? I've never seen a Tor client ship in a logging debug mode. But I haven't taken Tor terribly seriously for years. Did they start doing it wrong?
3. The contents of the data that is being sent to Microsoft is entirely knowable. I'm waiting for a security researcher to just do it. I suspect most of what we see is something along the lines of standard app telemetry for core apps.
The amount of FUD that has been brought to bear against MS for this practice is pretty unsurprising given the scroogled campaigns, but it's funny to see a bunch of 3rd parties buy into it while posting from Macs that do the same thing.
Edits: clarity
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan
They just can't vote.
For example, while they can break the laws like people, corporations are not punished the same. When was the last time a corporation was "executed" (e.g. corporate charter revoked)?
Once you give the government a tool to restrict speech / spending, it will be used to cut both ways.
Although donations to the wrong political group can certainly get you in big trouble today (if you're willing to stretch the definition of 'political group'), so...hm.
[1] http://writersrelief.com/blog/2011/05/biannual-biennial-or-s...
If something is supposed to occur every other Friday? Write it just like that, or "every 14 days". Don't say, "Paychecks are distributed bi-weekly"
But, in all fairness, that's not their primary purpose, it's merely a side effect of their overall utility. Most people in most corporations are decidedly not criminal, and they don't behave as criminals.
Maybe typically 5 of them have had a job before in the area, 3 have had a job elsewhere and 2 have never had a job. Not all of them have the same level of education.
How many will misunderstand your sign? Might any of those misunderstandings about money cause problems for people?
Considering the comparitive cost of writing the sign as "every two weeks", and the reduction in potential confusion, it seems like a no-brainer to write it that way.
By assuming a high-education environment you might nudge down the number of misunderstandings. You'll nudge it further if you assume English is everyone's first language. [Note that these assumptions are probably discriminatory]
You'll nudge it further if you assume that nobody in your working environment is dylsexic, or has any other linguistic impairment. [This assumption is certainly discriminatory]
You'll nudge it further if you assume that everyone is operating at 100% all the time... which is just plain untrue, as nicely summed up by this slide from Microsoft's Inclusive Design reference: https://marcysutton.github.io/mobile-a11y/img/injury.png
While you might be insulted by language that insufficiently feeds your desire to feel good about your intelligence, your right to not be insulted is a lower priority than communicating important information clearly.
