Re: Spies
"Given that Google is the public-facing arm of the NSA..." If find that sort of statement utterly baffling. Yes, surveillance, broadly defined, is a business model for Google (and many, many others); we know this. And yes, this results in aligned goals between some private-sector players (although certainly not just Google) and public-sector espionage and law-enforcement agencies.
But to say that Google is "the public-facing arm of the NSA" is such an oversimplification of an extraordinarily complex set of circumstances. I guess I find it annoying (and completely unhelpful) that people think about these issues in such simplistic terms.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
