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Comment by arange | Hacker News Reader

or all these companies are intentionally making similar press releases in hopes people will catch on that theyre being coerced into denying involvement. this way they're (assuming they have one) fulfilling their denial obligation with the NSA, yet still are protesting what they dont actually want to be doing

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The real issue, IMHO, isn't whether or not the companies are participating in PRISM or any similar program – yes, it'd be problematic if they are – but yes or no, the fact that we can so easily be suspicious of our government is much, much more telling about the state of democracy and society in the United States of America. We've seen enough to be unable to trust, regardless of ground truth in this case.

My guess is they all got the same template of what they're allowed to say. With something this sensitive the language is very important, especially for public company communications.

So imagine Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg comes out and admits it. Do you think they end up in federal prison?

Yes. There's no point in being a billionaire high-tech visionary if you're stuck behind bars on treason charges.

To us he'd be a hero, to the rest of America he's just helped out terrorists by coming clean.

I don't think it would happen. It would be a disaster and a scandal for any administration to pursue such charges against someone so high profile.

The law _should_ apply to everyone.

Whose to say they would pursue those charges? Why do they have to even disclose why they nabbed them? Under the PATRIOT act they can make anyone disappear without justification. Obviously if they're committing treason they could figure out any number of ways to make it happen.

Julian Assange is pretty high profile, considered a journalist by many, has run an organisation that exposed many legitimate scandals, etc. Celebrities also go to prison quite often.

dude, If someone at that level gets jailed, it wouldn't be treason. It'd be insider trading, or perhaps something less palatable.

If you want to see how it is really done, look at Russia - people that have money get charged with money things. You have tax audits, labor laws audits, financial compliance audits, whatever. With 2000-page laws and over 50 new federal crimes added to the statutes every year, I'm sure if you need it you can find it. I'm not saying Obama is there yet - I really hope not - but the technology is there. Nixon was impeached in part for using it, and Obama could use it too and there's some evidence it is being used here and there, even though no evidence yet it is used systematically by the highest branches of government. But it is there, and it works.

About whistleblowers, The Guardian[1] warned:

...the tactic of the US government has been to attack and demonize whistleblowers as a means of distracting attention from their own exposed wrongdoing and destroying the credibility of the messenger so that everyone tunes out the message.

According to the same article:

...Obama prosecutes whistlelblowers at double the number of all previous presidents COMBINED

The US government could easily and expertly discredit any whistleblower CEO with trumped-up tax evasion charges.

[1] http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/07/whistleblo...

Why make it above the table like that? The NSA has all the data they need to blackmail and intimidate these people at the very least.

I wonder what Sergey thinks of all this.

Yes. The uniformity of their responses is too similar to ignore or dismiss. It's chilling to read. It's a big fat hint to anyone not already drunk on the kool-aid that the NSA is coercing them to lie.

They couldn't say it louder if they used a bullhorn.

why the day-old account?

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