In the Age of Acquiescence, a corporation willing to do anything other than bend over when the government comes a’knocking is a shocking welcome.  After all, if one can buy a bit of good will with the powerful, whether from cash on hand or mere back scratching, odds are that your former federal prosecutor Biglaw specialist advisors will tell you there’s no other route to go.

But Firefox’s mother, Mozilla Foundation, took a different path.  Via Patrick at Popehat :

Harvey Anderson, Mozilla’s lawyer, in response to a demand from the Department of Homeland Security to remove a browser add-on which re-directs traffic from domains seized by the government to the original owners’ new domains:

• Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way? If so, on what basis? (Please provide any relevant rulings)


• Is Mozilla legally obligated to disable the add-on or is this request based on other reasons? If other reasons, can you please specify.


• Can you please provide a copy of the relevant seizure order upon which your request to Mozilla to take down the Mafiaafire  add-on is based?

Imagine, asking why?  How bold!  Maybe not for you or I, but for a corporation in the Age of Acquiescence?  This is the very definition of bold.  What would it have meant to Mozilla to just go along to get along, to rid itself of an add-on that made the government’s job more difficult?  It’s not like it cost Mozilla anything.  And yet, Mozilla asked “why?”

It’s not that the incentive to be agreeable with anything the government requests only applies to corporations.  How often does a driver open the trunk when a cop asks, “you don’t have anything to hide, do you?”  We know that we really ought to tell the cop to take a hike, yet open the trunk anyway.  It’s just so much easier.

And so it goes for corporations as well, who are only too happy to take what they’re told by their Biglaw specialists is the most cost-effective route, complete subjugation to the will of the government.  What could they possibly gain from fighting or being disagreeable?  So what if they have no duty to comply; do you want an investigation or to make an enemy?  Nooooo, you want to make friends with power.

They don’t want to sell out their integrity and customers, but what can they do?  Here’s a thought: Grow a pair.  Until the day when corporations stop being the patsy of the government under the guise of being good corporate citizens, they government won’t stop asking for your to do its bidding. 

And so, like Patrick, my hat is off to Mozilla Foundation for taking a stand by asking the very simple question, why?  If only more corporate executives and their counsel had the guts to do so.