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Comment by nomilk | Hacker News Reader

How many companies can you name whose staff certainly cannot access your data?

I thought I could name one (GitHub), but after checking, they can (e.g. if requested by law enforcement etc).

Therefore, the total I can name is 0.

There is a gulf of difference between accessing your data to comply with the law and accessing your data (and giving it away to friends!) for no reason, while being so nefarious about it that you call people “dumb fucks” and mock them for even believing you’d treat the data properly and then spend years proving that you’re trustworthy, while at the same time showing complete understanding of the harm you’re causing by being yourself so private that you buy the houses next to yours and keep them empty.

At least the last three I worked or consulted at, though I'm in Europe.

It really goes a long way when the law stop saying "it's not nice if" and starts saying "if you can even if you don't then you're guilty".

I didn't think that your comment was about data access. I thought your comment was about the callous remarks by zuck. Most of the companies I work with treat customer data with extreme care and sensitivity and don't throw it around like silicon valley ad tech does.

How many can you name with something like 'They "trust me" Dumb fucks.'?

The question was not "could the do all shitty things if they were scummy assholes", but "are they all scummy assholes".

Totally fair to be annoyed/outraged by this. What I argue is that ~every company has that attitude (Zuck just said the quiet part out loud). Like, we're only kidding ourselves if we think most companies' employees can't peek at our data on whim, or that most companies don't share it with third parties, and probably also (possibly secretly) with government.

Your argument is predicated on condemning every company without any evidence, based on "I sound cool when I neg".

The argument is that most companies have staff who have read access to databases. That is not controversial. I'd estimate 99.5% of companies at least, probably closer to (or above) 99.9%, but I'm not an expert.

Note that this is truthful yet unpopular, which is the opposite of approval-seeking (or trying to "sound cool").

You incorrectly state:

> (the) argument is predicated on condemning every company

yet the argument is that almost every company has at least some staff with read access to databases: "every tech company ... with extremely rare exceptions", "~every" ('~' translates to 'approximately'), and "most companies".

I'm finding out in another parallel thread[1] that you might be right and I might just coincidentally have worked for the few companies that take data protection seriously. I don't think I've worked anywhere since 2009 where rank and file engineers could just go access prod customer data whenever they felt like it, so I started believing that that is outlier behavior done by a few companies with cultures of carelessness like Meta.

It just seems so implausible. As soon as a company is big enough to hire their first General Legal counsel, you'd think that kind of practice would be flagged as highly legally risky and stopped. I'm reminded of the gcreep[2] incident which happened over 15 years ago. What company wants to go in front of a judge and say their policies allowed something like this?

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50179136

2: https://www.gawkerarchives.com/5637234/gcreep-google-enginee...

It's not even about attitude, the regulatory and legal environment in the US essentially requires it, and where this facility is not openly available it is forced via National Security Letter.

The story of Joe Nacchio and Qwest is instructive. Though the current environment was borne out of the GWoT, the principle of extra-legal state access to all US telecommunications was established long ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001-2007_NSA_warrantless_surv...

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