Each of us, as users of the internet, ought to be up in arms and protest, loud and long, on this outrage - and the duplicitous position taken by the likes of Apple and Microsoft to facilitate spying by government on sharing private data with government authorities. CommonDreams reports in "Tech CEOs Branded Privacy Traitors For Their Quiet Push to Pass CISA"....
"Internet users are calling out a dozen tech giants for their sudden turnaround on a controversial privacy bill, launching an email campaign this week with the plain message, "You betrayed us."
The chief executive officers of Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Symantec, and other companies, along with Salesforce web hosting service, quietly sent a letter (pdf) to U.S. Congress earlier this month endorsing the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), a bill that would allow tech companies to share user information with the government in cases of "cybersecurity threats"—which privacy advocates say only serves to broaden government spying powers and reduce consumer protections.
Online activists say the reason the companies changed their stance on CISA—also known as the Cyber Threat Information Sharing Legislation, as it is referred to in the letter—is because the bill would grant them "total immunity" from prosecution for sharing private user data with the government.
"[T]hese companies know that their customers hate CISA, and so they're jumping into the water together, hoping there's safety in numbers," the new campaign states at its website, YouBetrayedUs.org. "After all, you can't blame Microsoft if Apple is doing the same thing, right?"
"Internet users are calling out a dozen tech giants for their sudden turnaround on a controversial privacy bill, launching an email campaign this week with the plain message, "You betrayed us."
The chief executive officers of Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Symantec, and other companies, along with Salesforce web hosting service, quietly sent a letter (pdf) to U.S. Congress earlier this month endorsing the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), a bill that would allow tech companies to share user information with the government in cases of "cybersecurity threats"—which privacy advocates say only serves to broaden government spying powers and reduce consumer protections.
Online activists say the reason the companies changed their stance on CISA—also known as the Cyber Threat Information Sharing Legislation, as it is referred to in the letter—is because the bill would grant them "total immunity" from prosecution for sharing private user data with the government.
"[T]hese companies know that their customers hate CISA, and so they're jumping into the water together, hoping there's safety in numbers," the new campaign states at its website, YouBetrayedUs.org. "After all, you can't blame Microsoft if Apple is doing the same thing, right?"
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