What if Marissa Mayer went to jail?

“Wednesday at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer presented her company’s side of fighting the National Security Agency over requests to have a look-see at the data of Yahoo users,” Bob Cringely writes for I, Cringely. “It’s a tough fight, said Mayer, and one that takes place necessarily in private.”

“Mayer was asked why tech companies had not simply decided to tell the public more about what the U.S. surveillance industry was up to,” Cringely writes. “‘Releasing classified information is treason and you are incarcerated,’ she said.”

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)
“How would that work, exactly? Would black helicopters – silent black helicopters — land at Yahoo Intergalactic HQ and take Marissa Mayer away in chains? Wouldn’t that defeat the whole secrecy thing to see her being dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the building?” Cringely writes. “My inclination, if I were Marissa Mayer, would be to tell the NSA to make my day: ‘Take me to jail, but understand my company will pay whatever it costs to fight this, we will force it into the open, and — by the way — I’m still breast-feeding, so my baby comes too.'”

Cringely writes, “There’s no way Marissa’s baby would spend even an hour in jail, which is exactly why I wish she’d take a public stand on the issue, this nonsense would go away, and we could get back to solving real problems.”

Much more – including a high-powered lawyer’s opinion – in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take:

United States Constitution, Amendment IV:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

Join The Electronic Frontier Foundation in calling for a full congressional investigation here.

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