All corporations are owned and funded by governments. A corporation must be incorporated somewhere by some government. These corporations benefit from services, grants, and special benefits (e.g. limited liability) provided by that government.
However, I don’t think governments are using this to do mass surveillance on people with VPNs, if only for the reason that there’s not much to be gained by such an action. Most privacy invasion is of the kind people freely allow. Using a VPN doesn’t make logging into Google meaningfully more private. The only groups I can think of that would really want to be able to spy on VPN users would be the MPAA, RIAA, etc, and I don’t think they have the kind of sway to get governments to do that.
But yeah, if you are doing something a three letter government agency will target you over, a VPN ain’t going to cut it.
They are owned by governments in the sense that they exist at the pleasure of the governments they depend wholly upon. Corporations are legal entities; who administers the law? To use a tech analogy, I’m pointing out that though a file has an “owner”, which is a user account, the true owner is the operating system itself.
I have to admit I’m surprised this is as controversial a take as it is.
All corporations are owned and funded by governments. A corporation must be incorporated somewhere by some government. These corporations benefit from services, grants, and special benefits (e.g. limited liability) provided by that government.
However, I don’t think governments are using this to do mass surveillance on people with VPNs, if only for the reason that there’s not much to be gained by such an action. Most privacy invasion is of the kind people freely allow. Using a VPN doesn’t make logging into Google meaningfully more private. The only groups I can think of that would really want to be able to spy on VPN users would be the MPAA, RIAA, etc, and I don’t think they have the kind of sway to get governments to do that.
But yeah, if you are doing something a three letter government agency will target you over, a VPN ain’t going to cut it.
Incorporation and ownership/funding are very different things. How are they all “owned and funded by governments”?
They are owned by governments in the sense that they exist at the pleasure of the governments they depend wholly upon. Corporations are legal entities; who administers the law? To use a tech analogy, I’m pointing out that though a file has an “owner”, which is a user account, the true owner is the operating system itself.
I have to admit I’m surprised this is as controversial a take as it is.