> the idea that the government does not routinely tell private organizations how to comply with the law is a fallacy.
The fact that the government allows (and even sponsors with taxpayer dollars) dragnet surveillance is evidence that any hope for the ethical regulation of business in America has evaporated. It's bipartisan, functionally unanimous on all levels - you have no right to privacy and will suffer at the whims of the current leadership. You want to see "reform in the regulatory state"? How about the US quits investing in Palantir and Blackwater PMC, or stops letting vigilante adversaries like NSO Group off the hook? Do you support prejudice when it only oppresses the people you hate? It's crazy to read people say this like Microsoft deserves a greater right to privacy than they do.
The system is broken, everyone with ethical consistency has known this from a cursory glance. Laughing at Harvard for getting their share of injustice is an American own-goal, and the remediations he's suggesting border on braindead. How many software developers would still have jobs if Microsoft won their appeal? How would any of our lives have possibly improved by not scaring Microsoft away from John-Deere levels of lockdown?
I know this guy is an a16z shill so his moral standard is probably about knee-high, but this would very obviously not stimulate competition in anything America is competent at. There's a reason Tim Cook has to lobby from the absolute top to protect himself from the same fate Microsoft reached, a just court will take him down too.
