Dear Google: Do no evil, or comply with the Patriot Act? | Hacker News Reader

Dear Google: Do no evil, or comply with the Patriot Act?

sneak.datavibe.net

47 pointssneak41 comments

I don't think even Google has the power to fight the Patriot Act. This is one instance where you can't blame it on them, unless you're saying that they should pull out of the U.S. (which the author did).

But Google is an american company. They've got huge investments in their U.S. facilities. Many of their developers live in the U.S. Many of their data-centers are in the U.S. Pulling out of the U.S. would come with a huge price for them and it isn't really feasible.

So instead of blaming Google, why not blame the government for extending / prolonging the Patriot Act? Heck, why not blame it on Obama, since all his preellection talks about civil liberties were clearly bullshit?

This reminds me of that South Park episode: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douche_and_Turd

I'm not saying we shouldn't blame the government - but I'm somewhat tired of hearing the "we're just complying with Federal Law" line from US-based service providers. Godwin aside, it's the same dodge as "I was just following orders".

I'm the OP and author, and I personally pulled out of the US for this very reason.

EDIT: I feel I might also add that I had the same attitude toward the situation... for the first decade. After 10 solid years of PATRIOT Act abuses, I've become convinced that the American people and the government simply aren't going to do anything about it, and it's up to individuals and other organizations (e.g. corporations such as Google and startups such as those found on HN) to do something about it themselves.

Can you share your experience with pulling out of US?

I miss my friends and family a lot - all the time. It's not something to be undertaken lightly.

I frequently worry about my annual visa renewal, knowing that I'm not a citizen in the place that I live and keep all my stuff. Should they ever decide to say no, I have to pick up and leave.

I live in a rather wonderful place (Berlin), but I frequently miss my home and native culture. I wish I could go back, but I have a general personal policy now of not visiting countries that keep political prisoners. Being a hacker and relative weirdo, I've seen too many cases of harassment of those who make a point of themselves (within the confines of the law). Examples include everyone from Sklyarov to Appelbaum.

I'm writing a rather lengthy paper about my reasons for leaving. It covers the data points that spell out, in my opinion, why it's now lunacy for reasonable people to continue living in the United States when they have the option of getting on a plane and going somewhere else. Unfortunately my current project workload means I probably won't have it edited down until at least winter, but stay tuned.

Just don't develop hacking tools while on German soil ...

Or for that matter sing the first sentences of the older version of german national anthem, or denying the holocaust or anything like that.

Although it would be silly to do so, it can get you in jail.

Germany sounds delightful, but I enjoy playing video games. Including violent ones.

Which, of course, goes to show the whole problem. Simply saying you're taking your ball and going somewhere else doesn't really deal with the problem that everywhere is pretty much under the same sort of absurd situations, in one form or another.

The problems with the USA are the cops coming and killing or imprisoning you, or harassing you or your employers, or stealing from you. The rule of law no longer exists.

The problems with Germany are readily avoided by using strong crypto and privacy software - it's a simple matter of "don't get caught". Free speech is easy. The rest is pretty straightforward in a civilized society.

Do you feel oppressed in Germany, given that you're not free to wave a Nazi flag in public and espouse certain political beliefs?

No? Why not? I don't really begrudge the Germans this law of theirs. I am not going to try to draw an analogy between Nazism and 9/11 as justifications for certain abridgements of people's liberties; what I am saying is that there is no perfectly "free" state. I don't know what such a state would look like, as there's an inevitable tension between our positive and negative freedoms — our freedoms to and our freedoms from, so to speak — and there is of course always the distance between a society's ideals and its implementation of those ideals.

Long before 9/11 the bitterly ironic "crime" of "driving while being black" existed. I would suggest that the injustice and indignity of being pulled over because of your skin color trumps these national security letters. (I'm a white adult guy these days, and I remember being pulled over in my early twenties for "driving while being a young white guy in a BMW" and it did nothing to reduce my resentment of authority, and I'm guessing that feeling was trivial compared to what it must be like to suffer the same thing, but more intensely, and chronically, for quite possibly your entire life.)

I hear Europe doesn't in general have the death penalty but that pedophiles and other sorts of offenders occasionally meet unpleasant ends e.g. jumping out barred windows that no person could fit through or hanging themselves in situations where they have have no access to the materials they hang themselves with. Is this a human rights tragedy? I don't know. I'll about that over a scotch tonight.

If there were no law (however unconstitutional) allowing the FBI to do the things they're doing, do you think they wouldn't happen? There was a fellow named J. Edgar Hoover, and he had a lot of information about a lot of people, much of it collected without approval of a judge.

Shit happens. Shit you don't want to think about happens. I am not defending it. But life can get ugly. I don't know if it's better to a) never do distasteful things b) have an official policy of doing distasteful things or c) have an official policy against doing distasteful things — but we go ahead and do them.

I am comfortable with the last option. I think that sometimes it's necessary to do things that violate our most sacred principles. And we should think about the fact that we are doing something wrong, something perhaps evil. But sometimes you must do evil.

I hope you will believe me that though I am a flawed, imperfect person, the people who know me best would be willing to say that despite what I just wrote, I am a good person. What makes life difficult is that sometimes there is no good or right thing to do, no thing to do that you can be proud of. Life hands us dilemmas, and we have to something about them.

So, I hope you don't take it too personally when I suggest that your decision to pack up and move out of the United States seems a bit like the act of a naive adolescent filled with idealism but lacking experience dealing with the difficult decisions that life throws about pretty much everyone sooner or later.

     sometimes you must do evil

Err, not when lots of people died fighting for those liberties, allowing you to prove someone wrong on the Internet from the comfort of your home.

Let's be honest here - 2000 people or so died in the 9/11 attacks. It's a great tragedy. But you know what's even a greater tragedy? That hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. die of heart disease each year and military spendings in your country is six times the health care budget.

When watching the news on Obama's death, seeing people dancing in the streets out of joy, I found myself thinking - look at those morons, they are happy that they've made a martyr out of an otherwise toothless old dog.

The 9/11 attacks did far more damage than those deaths.

I'm not sure what you think I mean. People fighting for liberty are fighting i.e. killing and and maiming, not things we normally consider good. Yet we — often rightfully, I think — justify such actions. My attitude is mostly one of practiced humility: I don't presume to know when doing wrong in the name of a larger good is justified. To be a moral — and not merely a moralizing — creature is to be acutely aware of such conflicts. There are different philosophical systems of assessing the morality of action because no single one is satisfactory.

I for one was not dancing in the street when Osama bin Laden, not Obama, was reported killed; I thought it a somber occasion, but I didn't think those who were celebrating morons. I don't presume to know the correct way to feel about the death of the person who planned the 9/11 attacks.

There is something they could do. Google doesn't have to quietly sit on its hands. It could lobby against the PATRIOT Act.

Of course, you could argue that Google has no financial incentive to lobby against it, and therefore it can't justify doing so as its primary responsibility is to make its shareholders richer.

This is a problem with all corporations that try to act in their financial best interests without consideration for what is best for society at large, and also without being accountable to society at large.

Does that make them evil? Not necessarily, except maybe in a "banality of evil" sort of way (see IBM's willing participation in the Holocaust for an example). More usually, it makes them amoral.

Amorality and great power could be a dangerous combination.

Since corporations are considered private citizens, it's a shame that they don't take on the same responsibilities as private citizens. You know, lobby for civil liberties and privacy, because it's the right thing for a citizen to do and all.

Agreed, this fight is best left to Google users (and everyone else, collectively).

Well, after 10 years, isn't it clear that Google users will not and cannot have any effect in it? Why is it always best left to those who can't or wont do anything about it?

Personal apathy is exactly the problem.

...anyway, I'm working on it. so should you.

They already fight this.. its called their 5% corp tax rate..:)

And I am very sure that the current negotiations to bring rest of that parked income in Europe home to the USA..its now 36Billion involves getting this act de-toothed

"Dear Google: If you want us to trust you to not be evil, why do you position your company and our personal data in a place (the USA) where the ruling regime can freely do all the evil they want, regardless of your organization’s basic philosophy?"

Oh, I can answer that: Because they have to exist somewhere, and they haven't yet started their own country.

When mankide moves into space and Google can claim an asteroid or planet all of their own, they can make the rules and won't be subject to someone else's. But on Earth, there is nowhere that fits that description.

Today's Utopia of freedom is tomorrow's den of villainy. I mean, prior to the Patriot Act, the US -was- that place. If the US can't stop from going down that route, why believe anyone else can?

"When mankide moves into space and Google can claim an asteroid or planet all of their own, they can make the rules and won't be subject to someone else's."

This wouldn't necessarily be a good thing either. Not being subject to any laws but their own could very well make them more "evil" than ever.

I don't really blame Google here, though I could see how they could (should?) take a similar stance to the one in China.

But let's not forget who is truly to blame here. It's the US Government who keeps pushing for policies like these, and who is disregarding due process whenever they think they can get away with it.

And finally, it's the US people who are at blame for being content living under such policies, and not speaking out enough against them and trying to stop them from materializing or trying to get them cancelled - allowing the Patriot Act to continue, allowing the TSA to not only exist, but also expand outside the airports, not speaking out against the Protect IP, and so on.

>And finally, it's the US people who are at blame

So you've just come full circle. The government will continue to do what they're doing and the people will continue to not care. What good does it do us to put responsibility on those who have proven they will do nothing?

If new startups in tech, businesses in general, google, and other large data providers did decide one day to make a point, and move operations to a country that was more free, and more aligned with the public's interest, what would be the best current country?

Specifically, where issues like The Patriot ACT, DMCA, overbearing authority, open and known corruption etc are the least problematic in comparison to the USA.

So far, I am thinking that wherever The Pirate Bay is hosted would not be a bad place. Perhaps Russia, as they seem to have allowed sites like allofmp3 to exist a while back. I understand there will be no ideal place, but there are degrees of idealism that could be located.

If companies the size of google even hinted at it, perhaps that would enact change in the USA, and they would not end up needing to move. Twitter has been largely dictating many conveniences in order for the city of SF to keep them local, I seem to recall Netflix gets pretty nice deductions for propping up the USPS in general, and specifically for keeping the local San Jose economy in better shape.

I believe all these companies could enact change if they looked into moving operations. Follow the money is often said, and that is what the US would do. We can't afford to lose the one thing that is protecting out economic future.

I can't even begin to think how Google could pull out of the US. I can't begin to imagine how the economy and markets would respond to that. Moreover, I doubt anyone at Google even has the authority to make such a move. I believe there's a clause somewhere that redistributes decision-making power, if the head has gone insane. Pulling out of the US, I would imagine, would constitute insanity to most shareholders.

On a second point, I don't even believe Google should have pulled out of China. This is clearly a moral judgment on my part. Baidu has replaced Google in China, and their censorship is just as bad, if not worse, than what Google would've been subjected to. I've been told that not doing anything, is just as bad as doing something bad - and I believe it. By pulling out, Google may have absolved itself from immediate guilt, but what's the end result? If they had stayed in, they could have at least had half a say in what was going on.

Lastly, there's a clear bias in sentiment towards the Patriot Act here, and in the highly intellectual community. I need to remind everyone that while sometimes it seems like we're the majority of the world, universities, start ups, and high-end jobs account for a small percentage of the world we're living in. Add to this, the fact that people remember disaster a thousand times longer and intensely than peace and prosperity, and I think the reasons for this act's existence comes into place. I don't particularly agree with the Patriot Act either, but I doubt it's something that will go away any time soon. Thus is the problem with short-term election democracy. Everyone's wondering how they can be re-elected in the short term, and stop caring about the long term.

  Baidu has replaced Google in China, and their censorship is just as bad, if not worse

I disagree with you on that point, that's not far off from the sort of logic that it's not immoral to be a contract killer because if you weren't doing it, someone else would be hired and the target would die either way. Your logic isn't quite as basic, but you could extend to "if I let someone else be hired for this murder they might do it in a less humane way".

And, obviously, don't think I'm comparing web censorship with murder on the moral scale, just comparing the justification for being a part of something you disagree with.

That's a moral-judgment argument that's landing on the side of a slippery slope. I suppose, the best way to think about this is to address it by adding to it: If the market only has room for one contract killer, and you decide to only take on 75% of the clients who come to you, would it be better for you to stay in the business or let someone else take your place?

Obviously, you face a moral dilemma either way. You don't want to kill, but you can stop 25% of the people from dying, by continuing to kill. I see this as more the situation that Google was in, rather than a flat out replacement logic. Ultimately, I think which way we answer depends on how we see the world, and what moral principles we use to govern our own lives; I doubt everyone will agree on this.

True. Also worth remembering, however, is that you can't definitively say that their replacement is doing more/worse than Google would have done - after all, if Google weren't willing to walk away, that could ultimately mean complying with the Chinese government just as much as any other company - we just didn't see it get that bad because they did pull out before then.

The more important question is: What kind of political pressure is Google providing to fight against complying the PATRIOT act?

If none... how is that do no evil?

Doing everything in one's power to speak out and draw attention to these abuses is certainly a legitimate first step before giving up and running away, and Google certainly has a bunch of resources in that regard - they've a former VP (Al Gore) on their advisory board.

It seems to me that they're rather quiet on this topic.

Personally speaking, I'm not a fan of the Patriot Act. I've expressed my opinion, e.g. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-and-privacy/#comment-10... and https://profiles.google.com/109412257237874861202/posts/GXPr... before.

If you haven't seen it, we released an update to our government transparency report today: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20074661-93/google-gets-mos...

The report tells which governments send us the most requests. Personally, I'd like it if Google took a more visible stand against the Patriot Act, but the government transparency report is still a bigger step than most other major companies I can think of offhand.

With regards to the idea of them pulling out, where would they go? I'd say that the UK doesn't have such smothering laws, but then again I wasn't aware the USA did until 3 minutes ago.

Is there anywhere that it would be possible for them to go to? And if so, what (in)practicalities would be involved?

The UK is even worse.

How so? Do I have to get even more cynical about where I live?

Nit pick for the title: It's "Don't be evil", not "Do no evil". Very different meaning.

This is one of the reasons why I'm moving away from Gmail and starting to use a European email provider.

Of course, 'evil' is subjective and therefore meaningless. Who's to say the Patriot Act is evil or not?

"Patriot Act" lol, what a joke.

People always talk about Google's "Do no evil" policy as being more fundamental than their other business concerns, but they've demonstrated in the past that it comes secondary.

http://wonko.com/post/jsmin-isnt-welcome-on-google-code

The "Do no evil" policy has no use if they can't accept it into their legalese.

The JSMin license issue is not a case of "do no evil" coming secondary to "business concerns". Google's action there was motivated entirely by a desire to do no evil.

Crockford thought it would be hilarious to put a joke line in a license. The joke line, lawyers apparently agree (at least IBM's and RedHat's), means that the so-licensed code has unclear usage restrictions that make it non-free. (IANAL, TINLA) JSMin-PHP inherited that license, even though the JSMin-PHP author doesn't particularly like the joke line (but he believes he's legally obliged to keep it).

Google's original policy when setting up google code was that it would only allow free-licensed code. This policy was chosen in part in an effort to avoid evil, INCLUDING the small-but-real evil of confusing license proliferation and too many ways for two pieces of code to be legally incompatible. Crockford's code, and derivative code, falls afoul of this reasonable policy.

You might disagree about the goodness/evilness of their approach, but saying that this one was business over ethics is total bullshit. Business took a backseat here.

When I learnt about the wireless sniffing, I started to have doubts about them. When I found out about how they avoid paying taxes in Europe, I had no more doubts.

Avoiding taxes whenever possible is one of the best steps individuals or corporations can take to ensure the greatest amount of liberty for the greatest number of people.

Starve the beast when and where you can.

It's quite the opposite actually. Taxes are crucial to fund health care, education, law, police, army, etc. all things that make people's liberty. As unexciting as it might sound, taxes are fundamental to any organized society which provides the infrastructure for contractual business.

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