There should be a law that states that any computer ("PC", "laptop") needs to be fully configurable by the end user by default. Every aspect of it needs to be controllable by the end user, network settings, which applications can run, which operating system can be installed, which BIOS or EFIS can be flashed, etc. If that's not the case, then the company should be forced to put a huge red warning sticker on it that clearly states "NOT A GENERAL COMPUTING DEVICE".

How about Germany or Italy then? Would you mind if they give your data away with free technical aid and without court order to secret German and Italian data collection authorities? Where do you draw the line?

Maybe the position of Twitter and similar companies is that a company should not provide bulk data collection to intelligence agencies unless compelled to do so by law. That's consistent with thinking that the CIA is important for the US and maybe even should be supported, and even consistent with providing such bulk data links to other authorities (or advertisers, say). Bear in mind that automatic mass surveillance != publicly available data, as anybody can confirm who puts a robot.txt on his website with the hope that it will be respected. The fact that some data is publicly available does not necessarily justify that it should be used for mass data collection and heuristic evaluation.

No I didn't realize that. If this is an existing interface, then what on earth is the problem? Is the CIA too incompetent to use this existing interface and therefore has to rely on the FBI?

Do you also think that companies outside the US should provide data about their customers, including Americans, directly to non-US intelligence agencies, or do you think only US companies should do that for US intelligence agencies?

I'm asking because one reason to not have special "Orwellian" data links from private companies to intelligence agencies within the US would be that the US should lead by giving a good example, so e.g. US authorities can argue convincingly to other countries that they shouldn't collect massive data on US citizens but only on select targets under reasonable suspicion. I'm worried that by giving intelligence agencies too much leeway, the US could gamble away more of its moral authority than it already has for only moderate gains. (Of course, Russia has recently forced companies to install such links under a new law, but maybe they aren't giving a good example anyway and Russia is way further outside the sphere of US influence than other countries.)

If the data is already public, as you claim, then what's your concern?

If it was secure, I could control which outside servers the operating system contacts and what information it sends to them. An operating system for which you cannot even control where it connects to is insecure by definition.

It connects to more than a hundred outside servers Microsoft refuses to publish a complete list of these places and what data it exactly transmits, so it is also practically impossible for the end user to reliably distinguish Microsoft traffic from trojan horses and malware. It's ridiculous to call that secure.

I can't help but feel that a guy is going to be sentenced primarily because he didn't have the proper business background and maybe wasn't wearing a suit with ties, and that he would do just fine today if he had done the same for some major financial institution.

Apparently not all of you...

You can also just download them from literally anywhere by inputting a simple search engine query and clicking some links on the first page that pops up.

You've elected a steak salesman who can barely formulate two complete sentences in a row unless he reads from a teleprompter as your president. Idiocracy is alive and well. What else should he have replied?

Sure, but then the US will also be held responsible for the consequences by future generations in all countries. You can ignore reality for some time, but it will come back and bite you in the ass at some day. It's a bit like ignoring bills by not opening them. Nice short-term solution, but not good in the long run. (Just so you don't get me wrong, in saying that I'm assuming that more than 95% of climate scientists are currently not entirely wrong, of course. If they turn out to be wrong in 50 years from now, which is always a possibility, then the laugh is on you. If...)

And the good thing for Tesla is: They will soon be dead anyway.

No, Autopilot in German means exactly the same as in English and also has the same connotation.

But there is just no story here. A company tells their marketing department to conduct a statistically insignificant fake survey. Nothing new. The whole story is about as meaningful as when Coca Cola comes up with a study that shows that soft drinks don't make people fat or when tobacco companies showed that smoking doesn't cause cancer.

Wait, I take this hasty post back, it was way to flower-powery. Yes, browsers need built-in fact checkers, but to make sure they really check the facts correctly, the browser extension needs to be run by a government agency, e.g. some subdivision of the NSA, and to prevent against Russian hacker attacks this authority needs to be located at a secure and secluded location like Area 51.

Of course not.

Most halfway normal and educated people have no problems with discerning reality from imagination and propaganda, and the rest will not believe in extra 'checked' facts anyway. Yes, on the Internet conspiracy crackpots can easily find forums on which they reinforce their world views but they're not a new phenomenon. Most of them probably need a bit more sleep, the feeling of being needed and a bit less sorrows much more than facts.