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Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

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

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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

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