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The Wiretap Rooms: The NSA's Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities
The secrets are hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering, windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world's largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.
Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.
The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company's "extreme willingness to help." It is a collaboration that dates back decades.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @12:12PM (7 children)
A corporation is just a group of people who pay the governmemt for access to a special legal system. I dont see a difference between "blaming" one vs the other.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 26 2018, @12:47PM (6 children)
Well, you would like to correctly blame the groups actually causing the problems, right?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday June 26 2018, @01:27PM (5 children)
So government, for allowing corporations to exist?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 26 2018, @01:37PM (4 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday June 26 2018, @02:31PM (3 children)
Of course they're useful - a wonderful tool to pursue personal profit without risk of personal responsibility. It's less clear that their benefit outweighs the inevitable damages. And it's not at ALL clear that they should have any rights at all beyond seeking redress for crimes contract breaches committed against them. They are after all NOT citizens, or even people. They are legal tools designed specifically to concentrate power far beyond what would be feasible to individual citizens, while eliminating virtually all consequences for the personal abuse of that power.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 26 2018, @02:40PM (2 children)
And yet all the nice societies have them.
I don't agree. Freedom of speech and the various legal protections like due process and protection from arbitrary seizure of assets still apply because corporations present the interests of protected citizens. Your freedom of speech is violated, if it is illegal for you to speak on behalf of a corporation, for example.
Again, I don't agree. You've already stated that corporations aren't people and thus, "personal abuse" is impossible. As to actual breaking of law, someone performed the actions that broke the law. That's someone you can charge for the crime. Corporations can also be fined and their assets seized through lawful processes. Governments OTOH have various sorts of powerful legal protections (sovereign immunity, legal exclusions, etc) that strongly protect abuses of power from receiving justice.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday June 26 2018, @02:55PM (1 child)
>And yet all the nice societies have them.
Hmm, and that couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that, once they exist they rapidly become immensely powerful entities that can influence policy in other countries as well?
>Your freedom of speech is violated, if it is illegal for you to speak on behalf of a corporation, for example.
Exactly - *your* rights already do the protecting - the corporation needs no such rights of its own, except to be able to air paid commercials (or, more relevantly) donate to political organizations, since money is now considered speech. Every individual in that corporation already has rights, and are free to exercise them. The only reason to give the corporation those rights as well, is so that it can subvert democracy by wielding grossly outsized power in the public forum.
And of course personal abuse is possible - a corporation is just a legal fiction, it has no volition of its own. *Every* "corporate action" is in truth the action of a specific person or group of people, who are just as capable of abusing the power of the corporation as they are of abusing their personal power.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Tuesday June 26 2018, @03:12PM
No, because that wouldn't explain why the nice societies are nice. Nor why effect precedes cause. Virtually all countries do much better now than they were 50 years ago, despite, the widespread presence of powerful corporations.
Indeed, I didn't say otherwise. The legal constructions and rules in question happen because people don't automatically respect these freedoms (for more such examples, look at the rules on making arrests, court trials, and imprisonment - people already have rights so why the need for something like the US's Miranda statement?). Corporate personhood came about because there needed to be explicit rules to prevent people from trampling the rights of the people who make up the corporation.
I recall saying that. But still because a corporation isn't actually a person, such abuse isn't personal, particularly when done by a group.
Here, you make a similar distinction as well between the personal and the corporate.