[liberationtech] quid pro quo

[Lucas Gonze]

The "other pressure" you mention is just what I was thinking of.

On the one hand there is a threat. "Cooperate with NSA or DOD won't
consider your bids." On the other hand there is an offer. "Cooperate with
NSA and DOD will favor your bids."

About the cash payments, operational costs are a small part of business
logic. A company on the scale of Google doesn't enter cash businesses like
this. If the NSA offers to pay a hundred bucks for a few thousand items a
year, it's not meaningful in comparison to costs for lawyering, real
estate, management, etc.




On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Kyle Maxwell <kylem at xwell.org> wrote:

> In general, as has been well documented, the telcos and other firms
> charge the government for data records. While possibly distasteful
> ("they're making money off of giving our data to the gov!"), it makes
> sense from an operational point of view: there are real, concrete
> costs associated with storing, retrieving, and providing those data to
> "valid" requests, not to mention the process of handling sensitive
> requests in the first place. So I'm not sure the counter approach
> ("provide it to us for free") is a good idea, either.
>
> That said, you do have all sorts of other pressure. Imagine a company
> that does a lot of federal work being told that all their contracts
> would have to be reviewed if they don't cooperate: the loss of a
> significant (read: material) amount of revenue is a serious motivator
> for profit-driven entities. It can get nastier from there:
> investigations, regulatory filings, etc. They have lots of leverage to
> apply to private organizations, even large powerful ones.
>
> (Disclosure: I work for a telco but I don't speak for them and I damn
> sure don't share their opinions on any of this stuff. And I'm not
> involved with any sharing of personal data to the gov or anybody else.
> I can't even access it.)
>
> On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 2:38 PM, Seth Woodworth <seth at sethish.com> wrote:
> > It's not legal to pay for preferential treatment from the government,
> that's
> > bribery.  Why would it be illegal for the NSA to pay ATT & Chase?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 3:27 PM, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Let's say major corps like ATT and Chase are doing favors for NSA. Why
> >> would they if not for a quid pro quo?
> >>
> >> And if they are getting favors in return, isn't that illegal?
> >>
> >> I wonder if there is evidence to show what the payback is.
> >>
> >>
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