[D66] Terms and Conditions May Apply

[Nord]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yzyafieRcWE

Three Documentaries of Note
Filed under: Film — louisproyect @ 10:25 pm
Opening at the Quad Cinema in N.Y. today (nationwide screening info: 
http://tacma.net/tacma.php), “Terms and Conditions May Apply” (TACMA, as 
it is known in the industry) marks the serendipitous arrival of a 
documentary that explains exactly why Edward Snowden risked a long 
prison term—or worse—to reveal how Obama and the NSA are laying the 
groundwork for a police state. The title of the film refers to those 
prolix, legalese documents that you are supposed to mark “agreed” if you 
want to use some nifty free software. Even if your assent is not 
required, they are available on the manufacturer’s website in order to 
provide the legal basis for turning over your private information to the 
snoops. Basically, buried within the contract is your acknowledgement 
that Facebook, Micro$oft, or Google can do whatever they want with the 
information that you put on the Internet.



Today’s N.Y. Times reveals how topical Cullen Hoback’s swiftly paced and 
highly informative film is:

Microsoft has collaborated with the National Security Agency more 
extensively than it previously acknowledged, providing the spy agency 
with up-to-date access to its customer data whenever the company changes 
its encryption and related software technology, according to a new 
report based on disclosures by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. 
Snowden.

Quoting classified internal N.S.A. newsletters obtained from Mr. 
Snowden, The Guardian newspaper reported that Microsoft had helped the 
security agency find ways to circumvent its encryption on its 
Outlook.com portal’s encrypted Web chat function, and that the agency 
was given what The Guardian described as “pre-encryption stage” access 
to e-mail on Outlook, including Hotmail e-mail.

Zeroing in on the corporations whose pretenses to respecting privacy are 
the greatest, the film digs up every TACMA that Google has ever issues 
and shows how the persistently intrusive provisions are a hallmark of 
the company’s way of doing business. All except the first TACMA document 
can be retrieved from the company’s website or in Internet archives like 
Wayback.com. All except one. That is very first one which stipulated 
that Google will not use your private information, specifically the 
websites you have visited (which can be as wide-ranging and compromising 
as kiddie-porn to al-Qaeda.) Now, of course, all that information is 
stored on the NSA databases. The film makes the intriguing point that 
such massive surveillance is only made possible by the drastic reduction 
of hardware costs. Today a $280 Dell laptop comes with a 32 gigabyte 
hard-drive (32 billion effectively). The million dollar IBM 360s that I 
began working on in 1970 came equipped with a 2314 disk array that 
typically held 70 million bytes or so.

The net result of this is an escalation of “Minority Report” type 
arrests in order to prevent a crime from happening based on what someone 
said on Facebook, the one company that has been eager to supply the NSA 
whatever it asks for (unlike Twitter). There are some telling scenes of 
George W. Bush cozying it up with the Facebook employees from the stage 
at some company bash. Thankfully, the film nails Obama for his broken 
promises about the need to protect privacy.

One of the more egregious cases of abuse involves a writer for the TV 
crime show “Cold Case”. After Googling “How to kill your wife” and 
entering other such incriminating searches for background on a script, a 
heavily armed Philadelphia Swat Team came to his house looking for a 
murderer.

By the same token, the huge online databases make it a lot easier for a 
Bradley Manning or a Edward Snowden to become whistle-blowers. When 
Daniel Ellsberg decided to reveal the Pentagon Papers to the world, he 
had to sneak out a batch of documents each night and Xerox them on Tony 
LaRussa’s girlfriend’s machine. That girlfriend, by the way, was Lynda 
Resnick the crooked brains along with her husband behind Fiji mineral 
water and Pom Wonderful juice. This was the last time she did anything 
honorable.

The film relies on a bevy of experts from Chris Anderson, the former 
editor of Wired who is very much committed to privacy, to Moby, the 
electronic rock musician who has added Internet privacy to his other 
causes—vegetarianism and animal rights. Although she is only on camera 
for less than a minute, I was pleased to see Zeynep Tukfeci discuss the 
issues of security and privacy. Long ago Zeynep was the one of the 
moderators of the mailing list that preceded Marxmail and I only knew 
her through email exchanges, as is the case with hundreds of others.

For me the most deeply satisfying scene was director Cullen Hoback 
showing up unannounced on the sidewalk in front of Mark Zuckerberg’s 
mansion while the boy genius was out for a morning constitutional. 
Zuckerberg was annoyed that he had been ambushed in “Sixty Minutes” 
style and asked Hoback to turn off his camera. Once he agreed to do 
that, he would answer his questions. Hoback replied that he was turning 
off the camera. After he did, a smile came across a more relaxed Zuck 
for the first time. Little did he suspect that Hoback would continue to 
film with a concealed camera. Hoback tells us that wouldn’t we all smile 
if we had assurances from the Zuckerberg’s of the world that they would 
stop violating our privacy?

The film includes a reference to Zuckerberg’s attitude toward privacy, 
one that makes it clear that Washington and Silicon Valley are 
co-conspirators in a scheme to replicate the Stasi in the United States. 
The following exchange took place between Zuckerberg and a friend 
shortly after Facebook was launched from his Harvard dorm room:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don’t know why.

Zuck: They “trust me”

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

http://louisproyect.org/2013/07/12/three-documentaries-of-note-3/