Dont be evil?

"A 41-slide PowerPoint presentation leaked from the US National Security Agency, famously the most secretive agency in the US intelligence community, details how a previously undisclosed programme – PRISM – has for the last five years allowed intelligence agencies to access a broad swathe of digital information, from Google chat to Skype calls, held by the web giants.

 The real and sensational revelation is that this transfer of data was allegedly on the basis of willing, cooperation from the internet giants - Google, Facebook, Hotmail, Yahoo, Apple - as voluntary ‘Special Sources’ for the NSA. These same internet companies have, both in public and in private championed the privacy of their users’ data and long and noisily championed a vision of a free internet altogether hostile to government involvement in the internet. They have consistently opposed a British attempt – the Communications Data Bill - to create a legal basis to be able to conduct information collections ironically similar to those revealed in the slides. Google, for instance, publishes regular transparency reports on attempts by public authorities across the world to remove content from its search index. 

 The fact that these very same companies were willing, if secret, partners in this endeavour, whilst mounting a vocal opposition to it, would be a gruesome hypocrisy"

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