On 20 Jan 2014, at 19:52 , rysiek <[email protected]> wrote: > Corp? Are you implying that corporations are on "our" side of this? That's > cute. > > Once corporations get 1. plausible deniability; 2. legal indemnification, > they'll be happy to provide any and all data to any government that asks. I > hope we're all clear on that.
That varies from corp to corp - pure ISPs (as opposed to companies which are also involved in other areas of the media business), for example, are generally quite strongly opposed to filtering, wiretap and data retention laws, because they are a significant cost to them which makes their core product no better for their customers (and will often make things worse), without any useful benefit to them. Sure, they are only really interested in their own advantage, but their advantage coincides with the desires of privacy advocates, so an alliance of convenience is suitable. OTOH, in the US many ISPs are also either content producers, TV companies, or POTS companies, and so have a strong interest in preventing their internet activities from harming those (often more profitable) areas of their business. Because they are themselves often beneficiaries of attempts to preserve traditional distribution channels and business methods, they are strong advocates for anti-privacy measures which they believe (rightly or wrongly) will help them while shifting any opposition onto the politicians. Also, some companies have the sense to realise that even if handing over customer data is no great burden now, the demands from governments only tend to grow, and so opposing a small amount of snooping can protect themselves against a larger imposition later. (For example, the telephone companies at first only had to turn over data they were keeping anyway, then they were ordered to keep it at their own expense for government use.)
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