Why the extra "p"?

directly or indirectly -- on our system of information networks. They are increasingly the backbone of our economy and our infrastructure; our national security and our personal well-being."

And despite it all, he is totally unwilling to tell us we have the right to access. Just more bla bla bla..

Well golly gee! In "my" experience, idiots who resist rape and assault always seem shocked when they're met with force. Imagine that. I guess it's alright when the criminal is a cop.

...a decent fraction succeed...

Ah yes.. That makes it all okay. Tell me, what's a "decent" fraction? You know all that crap about "zero tolerance"? Well, on the authorities is the perfect, if not the only place to apply it. And who's going to court for the guy in a bad shooting? Has a single cop received the death penalty for it? Being an apologist for the cops makes you an ass.

Feather and bedding.

Nobody's gonna kill this cash cow, now, or any other spaceless time.

Yes, you're right it's all about trust. And you shouldn't trust them any more than anybody else.. because of the public record you just mentioned. And you still don't know what else they haven't revealed. And unless they tell you, you never will, no matter what press release you see from them. As for their business model, it is an advertising platform, nothing else. All the other crap is a means to that end. They don't need our trust. They need the advertisers. So keep the faith. I'll be blocking their analytics and other data mining operations the best I can. I feel no obligation to prove anything. They have to prove their innocence, just like any other authority.

As for your assertions, they're naive at best.

Google refused.

Translation: Google put on a believable show. They're in no position to fight anybody. Only to pay them off.

So one company has shown they will fight to protect your privacy until they are absolutely forced (Google didn't even hand information over to Brazil when a judge ordered them to do so initially), and they anonymize their logs sooner.

Yeah, and my unicorn shits gold ingots.

It is impossible to verify what they keep on some servers down in the basement. A "privacy policy" is completely religious in nature. It works on pure faith on our part.

The only joke that could be considered any worse is "Homeland Security". You have to be quite the fool to fall for any of it.

And I thought they smelled bad on the outside..

BTW, the comment link came up blank...

What has become prolific is the amount of useless (read advertising) information consumed each day. And, ironically, we consume more paper (in our paperless society) than ever to print all this crap out. The bean counting business has never been better. Just another day in a bureaucrat's paradise...

Remember the Alamo!!

Getting old sucks.

Consider the alternative..

Yeah. Forget about it. It's impossible to verify. That doesn't make impossible to sell to the nearest sucker though.

For example:
Google "ASUS VIA VT8237 SATA RAID Device driver" with the quotes. I got 8 (count 'em.. 8!) results, and not a single one led straight to the driver. They all want me to download some crapware called "driver detective". Uh uh. Homey don't do that. Lucky for me the VIA site still had the driver. Must not be that old. I'm firmly convinced that Google doesn't bother to index sites that don't have some kind of advertising kickback scheme going on anymore. They just don't need to. Their claws are buried deep. I suspect a big drive is on to eliminate all non commercial/business activity on the net. I'm desperately looking for an alternative... to google.