Okay, let’s say you work for a big corporation that did something incompetent and stupid and caused a whole lot of damage. You were using your phone to text to various places asking questions and giving information. So a few months later after the company has been sued, someone high up in the company, *really* high up in the company, comes to you.
“Those texts are a problem,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“They prove we made dumb and negligent mistakes. They need to go away.”
“But I got a written notice from corporate council to keep them as evidence!”
“Don’t worry about it. No texts, no problem. We’ll take care of you.”
“But… I’ll go to jail!”
“No you won’t. We’ll provide council, and in the unlikely event you *do* go to jail, we’ll pay you handsomely. Whereas if you don’t delete them… well, you’re just not a team player, and you will never work in the oil industry again.”
“Well…”
“Good man!”
So now it’s a bit over a year later, and the court wants to see the texts.
“Oh. I musta deleted them!”
And the corporate counsel says, “We told him not to delete it?”
And the high muckety muck who ordered him to either delete them or walk the unemployment line says, “I did meet with him, but only to tell him not to delete those texts!”
And the poor schmuck is hung out to dry.
Lesson: Any high executive of any major corporation is, by and large, a lying sociopath. If he says the corporation is going to take care of you if you break the law for them, he is lying. And if you actually believe him… you’re an idiot, like that idiot BP engineer who’s now going to jail for obstruction of justice for deleting those texts about the oil spill.
‘Nuff said.
— Badtux the Law Penguin
Over in the real world, and not this wacky crazy-world mutation of reality, everyone would instantly realize that that particular executive is utterly untrustworthy, and no one would trust him to even buy a stick of gum on credit, never mind employ him or trust him with anything that might injure other people.
In Crazy World, he’ll get a promotion, and people will continue to trust him.
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Hey, he may have saved the company money in the lawsuit if he’d succeeded. He is of course a cold-blooded lizard person from planet Sociopath with absolutely no human feelings or empathy for others, but big corporations feel that’s an *asset*, not a liability.
One thing about lizards, they can lie with a straight face and all sincerity. That’s why so many of them end up in politics or as televangelists…
– Badtux the Sociopath-observin’ Penguin
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This is yet another reason why CISPA has the potential to be so damaging. Various corporations are now trying to make excuses about why they are supporting it, such as Facebook claiming that your information does not HAVE to be shared with the government, but I would not rely on any company’s goodwill towards its patrons in terms of the only thing standing between you and ending up on some “cyber-terrorist” watchlist for file-sharing.
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