Conclusion
After analyzing the themes and computing technologies in What Happened to Monday?, our conclusion is that technology companies will not comply with governments and betray their users by giving up their data. In the movie, the company which produces the watch has clearly given the government free reign over their user's data. The government is allowed to track citizens' locations as well as store private information on the government-issued watch. In the real world, there are many examples of big tech companies refusing to aid the government regardless of the situation because it would violate their user's private information. Through our presentation, you can see that most tech companies do not comply with governments in order to stay loyal to their users.
Doing some initial research, we gathered the following statistics:
Facebook has received 57,910 requests for data just last year [1]
Google received 39, 536 requests for disclosure of user information last year [2]
Microsoft received 24,798 requests for customer data [3]
This clearly shows that these technology companies, especially the more powerful ones, "have become major actors in the world of law enforcement and national security" [4]. They hold a lot of power in the sense that they can give up user data to government officials if they wanted to as seen in the movie. However, through our presentation, we hope to convince you that these companies usually do not comply with governments for a few different reasons.
References:
[1] “Facebook Transparency Report: Gov Data Requests.” Facebook Transparency Report | Gov Data Requests, transparency.facebook.com/government-data-requests.
[2] Google Transparency Report, Google, transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?user_requests_report_period=series%3Arequests%2Caccounts%3Btime%3A%0AY2017H1%3Bauthority%3AUS&lu=user_requests_report_period.
[3] “Law Enforcement Request Report: Microsoft CSR.” Microsoft, www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/law-enforcement-requests-report.
[4] Haupt, Claudia E., and Jack M. Balkin. “Cooperation or Resistance?: The Role of Tech Companies in Government Surveillance.” Harvard Law Review, 10 Apr. 2018, harvardlawreview.org/2018/04/cooperation-or-resistance-the-role-of-tech-companies-in-government-surveillance/.