They aren't really focusing on governments plural, just government singular: the US government. To comply with US law these American companies must provide information about non-US users to the US government, without any warrants. The 'warrant for content' star is meaningless to non-US citizens.
>opting out of giving info to businesses is much more realistic
This EFF report is only talking about government surveillance through corporations. If you opt out of using Google (note: this isn't possible if you use the web) then it doesn't matter if governments are requesting your data from Google because Google has nothing to tell them.
Solving corporate surveillance would solve all of the of government surveillance that this EFF report is concerned with.
The text on the page is pretty misleading as well. It starts off ok:
>We entrust our most sensitive, private, and important information to technology companies like Google, Facebook, and Verizon. Collectively, these companies are privy to the conversations, photos, social connections, and location data of almost everyone online.
But then they ignore what they just said and focus only on government data requests, instead of asking the most relevant question which is what do the companies do with that data that might impact users privacy. Is the company selling a profile about me to health insurers? This page won't tell me, yet the page is giving these companies an EFF badge of approval for 'privacy'.
Further on they say:
>In the face of unbounded surveillance, users of technology need to know which companies are willing to take a stand for the privacy of their users.
Again this is misleading. Standing up to government data requests is not the same as 'taking a stand for the privacy of their users', since the company may also be selling the information to anybody willing to pay for it. Standing up to one type of request (that has no economic benefit to the company) doesn't tell us how the companies act when it comes to protecting the data in other ways (where they have a direct economic incentive to mine the data and to sell the data). The text continues on in a similar way, constantly implying that government data requests are the only thing that could possibly violate privacy.
I can only agree with the other commentators that are calling this report a corporate propaganda exercise. Some people have implied that it's just because these companies are funders of the EFF. I'm not sure it's a simple as that. The EFF has always involved some people with pretty extreme political views that are very pro-corporate. The 'Freedom' in their name has always been as much about freedom for corporations as it was about freedom for individuals. That is probably why this page acts like corporate surveillance can't exist; by definition (according to their politics) only the government can spy on you. Everything else is just 'the market'. I doubt many people reading the page will be aware of the extreme political view behind the design of this report, which is of course the sign of well executed propaganda.
They aren't really focusing on governments plural, just government singular: the US government. To comply with US law these American companies must provide information about non-US users to the US government, without any warrants. The 'warrant for content' star is meaningless to non-US citizens.
>opting out of giving info to businesses is much more realistic
This EFF report is only talking about government surveillance through corporations. If you opt out of using Google (note: this isn't possible if you use the web) then it doesn't matter if governments are requesting your data from Google because Google has nothing to tell them.
Solving corporate surveillance would solve all of the of government surveillance that this EFF report is concerned with.
The text on the page is pretty misleading as well. It starts off ok:
>We entrust our most sensitive, private, and important information to technology companies like Google, Facebook, and Verizon. Collectively, these companies are privy to the conversations, photos, social connections, and location data of almost everyone online.
But then they ignore what they just said and focus only on government data requests, instead of asking the most relevant question which is what do the companies do with that data that might impact users privacy. Is the company selling a profile about me to health insurers? This page won't tell me, yet the page is giving these companies an EFF badge of approval for 'privacy'.
Further on they say:
>In the face of unbounded surveillance, users of technology need to know which companies are willing to take a stand for the privacy of their users.
Again this is misleading. Standing up to government data requests is not the same as 'taking a stand for the privacy of their users', since the company may also be selling the information to anybody willing to pay for it. Standing up to one type of request (that has no economic benefit to the company) doesn't tell us how the companies act when it comes to protecting the data in other ways (where they have a direct economic incentive to mine the data and to sell the data). The text continues on in a similar way, constantly implying that government data requests are the only thing that could possibly violate privacy.
I can only agree with the other commentators that are calling this report a corporate propaganda exercise. Some people have implied that it's just because these companies are funders of the EFF. I'm not sure it's a simple as that. The EFF has always involved some people with pretty extreme political views that are very pro-corporate. The 'Freedom' in their name has always been as much about freedom for corporations as it was about freedom for individuals. That is probably why this page acts like corporate surveillance can't exist; by definition (according to their politics) only the government can spy on you. Everything else is just 'the market'. I doubt many people reading the page will be aware of the extreme political view behind the design of this report, which is of course the sign of well executed propaganda.