Not in the wildest scenario would the US government have jailed the leaders of Apple, Google or Microsoft.
That may be naive. Most people have skeletons in their closets. The government would use these to pressure those leaders to acquiesce. I suspect the most dangerous skeletons are ones which seem harmless to you, but cast in the proper light they can be used as a justification for punishment. E.g. Something which seems harmless now can retroactively be used to claim you were doing insider trading. Few people would step up to defend you, even if the charges are baseless, because recently it's been fashionable to hate capitalists, and trading stocks is the epitome of capitalism. So it'd be very much "obey us or we will litigate you into bending your knee anyway."
Jobs was immune because he was the CEO equivalent of a rockstar. To try to pull baseless charges against him would outrage the public. Yet I'd imagine the public would get grim satisfaction out of seeing Ballmer punished, even if the charges were baseless, because most people don't like him. It's shallow, but it seems true.
On one hand, the CEO of Qwest was convicted of insider trading, and he claims it was retaliation by the NSA because Qwest would not participate in warrantless wiretapping.
On the other hand, the federal government had a perfect excuse to prosecute Steve Jobs in 2006 with the options backdating scandal, but chose not to. Those would not have been baseless charges--Apple really did backdate those options. The government just concluded that Jobs was not personally culpable.
Well, PRISM seems to have been created in '07. Plus Apple didn't matter very much in '06 -- not in the same way Google mattered. Apple didn't have much user data for the government to be interested in, because iPhone didn't launch till June '07.
That's actually a perfect example of leverage that the government would have used against a technology company to pressure them into doing the government's bidding.
I remain astonished that Martha Stewart was targeted, convicted, and jailed. I don't care either way if she did some thing wrong. I care about the unequal application of justice.
In contrast, I can't imagine anyone targeting Oprah. She'd destroy (PR-wise) anyone challenging her. Recall that beef lobby's attacks.
I agree - it's what I mean when I say that I think they got something in return for not fighting the FISA requests. Could be antitrust cases that were dropped, tax hikes that were cancelled or more personal matters.
That may be naive. Most people have skeletons in their closets. The government would use these to pressure those leaders to acquiesce. I suspect the most dangerous skeletons are ones which seem harmless to you, but cast in the proper light they can be used as a justification for punishment. E.g. Something which seems harmless now can retroactively be used to claim you were doing insider trading. Few people would step up to defend you, even if the charges are baseless, because recently it's been fashionable to hate capitalists, and trading stocks is the epitome of capitalism. So it'd be very much "obey us or we will litigate you into bending your knee anyway."
Jobs was immune because he was the CEO equivalent of a rockstar. To try to pull baseless charges against him would outrage the public. Yet I'd imagine the public would get grim satisfaction out of seeing Ballmer punished, even if the charges were baseless, because most people don't like him. It's shallow, but it seems true.