this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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Trying to avoid antitrust suits, Google senior executives told employees to destroy internal messages (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by dwazou@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] tux0r@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'm not sure whether it could be worse.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 48 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It would be worse. They would use that access to target people.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Do you think anything is stopping them now? Why do you think these systems were built?

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I mean they were built to make money, the fact that you can send them a national security letter is just a happy accident that keeps the NSA from having to run more datacenters.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I respectfully disagree. They were built for power and control. Monestisation just paid for it and helped adoption.

[–] spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

I think you've got it backwards. Like the other person said, this shit was built to make money, the power and control came later. Said power and control also came partially from the money, since money is just power coupons, and they used that to buy up competitors and regulators alike to get to the state their in now.

Not everything is built with evil intentions. Quite frequently, evil corrupts otherwise benign institutions as they gain power to serve the ends of those already in power.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 1 points 1 hour ago

The encryption battles of the early 1990s focused primarily on two issues: restrictions on the export of encryption technologies and the National Security Agency’s (NSA) attempts to introduce a chipset called the Clipper chip to network technology. The first was the result of Cold War era laws designed to control the diffusion of sensitive technologies, including encryption software. This became an issue in the early 1990s when encryption software became commonplace in web browsers. In 1996, President Clinton signed an executive order that loosened restrictions after technology companies claimed that the export controls on encrypted products hurt their sales.

The National Security Agency (NSA) announced the Clipper chip in 1993. The chip was a piece of hardware designed for phones which would provide encryption on communications while also producing an encryption key and making it available to the NSA. After backlash from civil liberty groups, findings of technical vulnerabilities in the chip, and low adoption rates despite incentives, the program ended in 1996.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a-brief-history-of-u-s-encryption-policy/

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Profits. Dead people don't pay.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 2 points 21 hours ago

Dead people also have no claim on the present or future. You can own more, even when the pie is shrinking if you negate others claims.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org -4 points 1 day ago

My dear child... They are already doing this. Us and Israeli spooks already infiltrated all mega corps. Mega corps know and collaborate.

All of them are balls deep helping waffen IDF do a genocide...

They help ice gestapo to target people within the US...

These examples are merely what has been publicly documented.

[–] beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 1 day ago

Yes, it's a lot worse. The particular difference is that one of these organizations has the power to disappear you without consequence.

[–] vivendi@programming.dev 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I know people like to hate on google, but google is actually like 3 companies in a trench coat.

They do highly valuable open source / open ecosystem work (I will say the chance of you indirectly using a google tool without knowing is over 90% now) and if the American government, a capitalist fascist government no less, gets their hands on it, we're fucked

Not all of google is adsense or YouTube.

[–] tux0r@feddit.org 0 points 10 hours ago

I hope there’s no Google in my life.