RELATED: Obama Administration Defends Its Right to Take All Your Phone Records
That's just one of the many ways the U.S. government and tech companies work together in fiendish ways to more easily allow for complex surveillance, according to Bloomberg's in-depth report:
- In addition to handing over all U.S. phone-call metadata, telecoms give intelligence agencies access to facilities and data "offshore" so that they don't have to go through a judge to get permission.
- McAfee "regularly cooperates" with the U.S. government, handing over all the information on hackers that its firewalls collect. The company, of course, insists that none of its data collection is personal: "We do not share any type of personal information with our government agency partners," McAfee said in a statement.
- "U.S telecommunications, Internet, power companies and others" — so, like, everyone — detail how they systems work to U.S. intelligence officials so they can analyze potential vulnerabilities, both for safety and to use against foreign governments.
- Technically, none of this Silicon Valley-aided espionage takes place with "direct access" so much as through what Bloomberg describes as a "committing officer" who has immunity from lawsuits.
If it hasn't become extremely clear over the last week, the U.S. government is buddy-buddy with private technology companies. Not only do you have to give up your right to privacy; turns out, we don't even have the right to quick bug fixes.
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