The thought of Google and Microsoft teaming up certainly is an odd one, given all the trouble and past legal battles Microsoft has aimed at Google’s Android, but it’s for the greater good. This week we’ve learned that Google and Microsoft teamed up and have sued the US government. Taking on the feds directly in an attempt to have more freedom and transparency.
Both companies are hoping to be able to speak freely, be open and transparent, and share additional details regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA.) Which has obviously been in the news a lot lately with the NSA and the PRISM scandal.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel and executive vice president of legal and corporate affairs had a few comments to share today. Saying, “We believe we have a clear right under the U.S. Constitution to share more information with the public” followed by “today our two companies stand together.” Referring to Google and Microsoft’s stance on the matter.
Smith goes on to talk about a few new policies in place where the government will be sharing more details than ever before, but only once a year. These are a few small first steps, but progress needs to move a lot faster. In the end after tons of negotiations that failed, both companies have teamed up and will proceed with the lawsuit and litigation in hopes to create change.
After all the NSA and PRISM news earlier this year we saw similar lawsuits by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and this is just the latest few, and surely more will be coming. Some reports state the NSA has access to nearly 75% of internet traffic, which is scary, and hopefully in the future big companies like Google can be more transparent with everything moving forward.
VIA: SlashGear
See this is how tech companies relationships should be. I pat your back you pat mine not you stab me I try and incinerate you…. Fight together for the consumer.
RIGHT…. Jeez
Yeah, sounds legit.
We’re supposed to believe this sudden finding Jesus moment from the company that not only took millions of dollars in from the government to spy on their customers, it designed at least one of their products around NSA specifications to facilitate better spying on customers? Riiight. The only thing prompting this is the bad PR these companies have received over this debacle. Notice how they’re not suing to STOP the government from wholesale spying on Americans without justification, they’re just suing to make public the wholesale spying on Americans without justification.
I’m sure they are trying to look good and save face, but who cares? Every country does this. If you ran the government you would do away with this type of spying? You’ve got extreme people out there who’s every thought is destruction mayhem. So my email gets read. My conversation is checked for key words. So what? They don’t care about my emails etc unless I’m selling top secrets, trying to undermine the government, and making bombs. The NSA is a necessary evil. Who knows how many times they’ve saved us from who knows what? Others may not think this or like it, but I personally think Snowden is a traitor. This is going to make those who wish to do us harm more equipped. I think he opened a can of worms that will lead to the destruction of the US in the long run. We all knew this happening. We just chose to ignore it. Now it’s different because we actually know what we already knew.
Trancparency is fine, but in the end what we need to do is to stop the spying. There is no good reason to collect information that you will not need unless you are using in in clear violation of the constitution. No government should be spying on its own people. It makws them as bad as those they are supposedly rying to protect us against. The patriot act was an ill conceived knee jerk reaction that should be repealed.