I agree that customer data needs to be protected, but it is bold to assume that is the case at all with these powerful corporate entities: if they lie to the state when filing taxes what makes you believe they are ernest when it comes to the protection of their users privacy?
Maybe it is a weird ideology I am holding here, but the more powerful an entity is, the more transparent it should become — nowaday we got this completely reversed with poor people being naked in front of the state and big corps literally fooling everyone.
Edit: some also seem to think the state is the behemoth that jumps on the poor little companies here. To that I just have to think about the account of the German public prosecutor Bäumler-Hösl (of wirecard fame) where she told about a raid on a bank where she and 4 collegues were opposed by 130 (!) company lawyers.
In general this is not what they do. What they do is read the tax code carefully and structure their operations in such a way as to minimize taxes, e.g. because tax is paid on "profits" (revenues minus expenses) so they shift more expenses into jurisdictions with high tax rates etc., causing "profits" to go down in those jurisdictions and up somewhere else.
Then they don't pay any taxes in the jurisdictions with higher tax rates and politicians go on TV and complain about the companies following the laws that the politicians enacted. Because if they actually fixed the laws, the taxes would be paid based on the extent to which the company does business in that jurisdiction, and then companies could only avoid taxes by not doing business there (costing the country jobs) or, for taxes associated with local sales, by raising prices there. Neither of which the politicians actually want to do, so instead they pass laws that allow companies to avoid taxes and then complain about it when the companies do it.
It is just a company--a group of people granted certain rights. They have databases...fancy filing cabinets. Just because the company is famous shouldn't preclude their filing cabinets from being searched (presuming legal processes are used and not abused).
That analogy doesn't work, because the "filing cabinets" are actually sitting somewhere else, possibly in another country/continent. It's not obvious that authorities in one country has authority over documents stored in another country.
No? Then the world is a lot more complex than property rights trumping everything else.
On one hand, if the condemning evidence can’t be provided by someone other than me, should the case be prosecutable?
On the other hand, any sentient human can come up with examples of cases where it might be reasonable to search my belongings for evidence; multiple independent witnesses point to me being guilty of murder and investigations have otherwise stalled. Or anything of the sort.
What if all the independent witnesses are not independent? What if I’m not the guy, but just a lookalike? What if I’m being set up by the authorities?
The easy thing to do here is to say well okay SOMETIMES it’s okay to search one’s belongings but not for like any silly reason or anything like it has to be a real serious one. Then it’s just a matter of where to draw the lines, and who should get to decide.
I like the more absolute stance I made earlier; the government shouldn’t have any business in my personal belongings. Some crimes will go unpunished and that’s a price I’m willing to pay.
For companies that deliberately obstruct justice work? Have the board and a healthy amount of executives serve 20 years in a high security prison, seize the assets and investigate their investors' due dilligence process. Gather proof with infiltrated workers.
Tech leaders need to learn that criminal conspiracy is not part of a good business plan. If they start using mafia tactics, so can Justice.
Also when the government is really motivated, he can arrested the founders or executives directly (Pavel Durov). Which is what they should do to Netflix execs if they are doing business illegally.
