Surveillance Coverage

Politicians often exploit surveillance coverage provided by tech corporations for political ends. As reported by Jack Nicas, Daisuke Wakabayashi and Katie Benner for NYTimes:

On Feb. 6, 2018, Apple received a grand jury subpoena for the names and phone records connected to 109 email addresses and phone numbers. It was one of the more than 250 data requests that the company received on average from U.S. law enforcement each week at the time. An Apple paralegal complied and provided the information.

The issue is related to and much bigger than antitrust against big tech. Despite all privacy advancements Apple made through the years, user's data, at least data stored on iCloud, still aren't fully encrypted. Unencrypted mails stored on iCloud provide conveniences that ProtonMail lacks, but also introduced risks. It's difficult to balance between surveillance coverage and privacy. Both sides have advantages and disadvantages for users. One solution would be letting the user decide which scheme they would trust, but currently for privacy-critical activities, people have to resort to Signal, SecureDrop, ProtonMail, etc.

How does all this have to do with antitrust against big tech? Edward Snowden blowed the whistle on plots of surveillance state. Although Snowden focused on USA government surveillance, PRC government surveillance is arguably more dangerous. Had global tech world been dominated by China, complete dystopia would ensue. As the browser war shows, tech dominance may switch hands quickly under oligopolies. Even Internet Explorer, the focus of antitrust against Microsoft, lost! Overly restraining USA tech oligopolies is giving China a advantage. Contrary to Shira Ovide's claims, China is a issue in current antitrust case because, frankly, people shouldn't give complete dystopia a chance. Apple already gave PRC government considerable surveillance coverage. The situation of a tech world dominated by China can only be worse.

Snowden has a ideal of user-centric, rather than corporation-and-government-centric, Internet. It's much more appealing than political pretenses provided by mainstream news outlets. Before the Internet can be made better, however, do not make it worse. Or there probably would be no chance of talking about the more technical and important issue of surveillance coverage and privacy.