Yes, there actually is a huge difference between government and corporate surveillance

[851-977]

For those who argue that NSA spying is no big deal because companies such as Facebook and Google do the same:

Putting aside the government's power to capture or kill, your inability to refuse the government is what distinguishes the NSA from even the nosiest companies on Earth. In a functioning marketplace, boycotting a company that you dislike — for whatever reason — is fairly easy. Diners who object to eating fake meat can stop frequenting Taco Bell. Internet users that don't like Google collecting their search terms can try duckduckgo, an anonymous search engine.

By contrast, it's nearly impossible to simply pick up your belongings and quit the United States. For most people, that would carry some significant costs — quitting your job, for instance, or disrupting your children's education, or leaving friends and family. Those costs can be high enough to outweigh the benefits of recovering some hard-to-measure modicum of privacy. Besides, leaving the country would ironically expose you to even greater risk of surveillance, since you'd no longer be covered by the legal protections granted to people (even foreign terror suspects) that arrive to U.S. shores.

There are still some ways to shield yourself from the NSA. To the best of our knowledge, the government has yet to crack the encryption protocols behind Tor, the online traffic anonymizing service. But Tor's users are also inherently the object of greater suspicion precisely because they're making efforts to cover their tracks.

In the business world, no single company owns a monopoly over your privacy. The same can't really be said about the government.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/04/yes-there-actually-is-a-huge-difference-between-government-and-corporate-surveillance/

[leftstreet]

1. So...government bad, private business good. Got it n/t

[el_bryanto]

2. That might be an oversimplification. nt

[Blue_Tires]

3. what the hell is the significance of "851-977"??

?

And yes, we all know there is a "huge" difference, but "consumer account" tracking still needs to die a horrible death as well...

[gulliver]

4. This is very naive.

The government has oversight. Corporations have obscure click-through licenses and usage policies. The government responds to the voters, giving it the maximum possible legitimacy. Corporations respond to shareholders and executives. The government actually protects your privacy, electronic and otherwise. You have vastly more to fear from rogue individuals, rogue groups, foreign countries, and corporations (to a great extent because of Snowden-like insiders) than you do from the U.S. government.