NSA Spying Hurts California's Business

mspohr points out an opinion piece from Joe Mathews that "makes the argument that California's economic life depends on global connections. 'Our leading industries — shipping, tourism, technology, and entertainment — could not survive, much less prosper, without the trust and goodwill of foreigners. We are home to two of the world's busiest container ports, and we are a leading exporter of engineering, architectural, design, financial, insurance, legal, and educational services. All of our signature companies — Apple, Google, Facebook, Oracle, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Chevron, Disney — rely on sales and growth overseas. And our families and workplaces are full of foreigners; more than one in four of us were born abroad, and more than 50 countries have diaspora populations in California of more than 10,000.' It quotes John Dvorak: 'Our companies have billions and billions of dollars in overseas sales and none of the American companies can guarantee security from American spies. Does anyone but me think this is a problem for commerce?' It points out that: 'Asian governments and businesses are now moving their employees and systems off Google's Gmail and other U.S.-based systems, according to Asian news reports. German prosecutors are investigating some of the American surveillance. The issue is becoming a stumbling block in negotiations with the European Union over a new trade agreement. Technology experts are warning of a big loss of foreign business.' The article goes on to suggest that perhaps a California constitutional amendment confirming privacy rights might help (but would not guarantee a stop to Federal snooping)."

Comments

So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

less foreigners == more american STEMs getting hired?

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely more unemployment, since you wont be able to sell anything connected to the net to foreign countries, ergo your markets will shrink considerably.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Ash Vince]

less foreigners == more american STEMs getting hired?

Or the work just gets done overseas. It is probably roughly 50 / 50.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Trepidity]

This is talking about less foreign business for U.S.-based companies, e.g. European companies getting wary of hosting their stuff on a U.S.-based cloud provider. It is not discussing immigration, which doesn't have much to do with the NSA.

Less foreign business for U.S.-based companies would probably not increase the number of U.S.-based engineering jobs.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[gl4ss]

less foreigners == more american STEMs getting hired?

yeah, more jobs picking apples and manufacturing produce which isn't high tech(provided you don't start poisoning it too).

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[gstoddart]

e.g. European companies getting wary of hosting their stuff on a U.S.-based cloud provider.

Which, sadly, is something people have already been warning about for some time.

That the PATRIOT act allowed the US to force US based companies to provide them this data has been known for some time. Many governments have policies which say you can't put anything into the cloud because it has a good chance of hitting a US controlled server and you would potentially have them accessing it.

Ever before this revelation came out, many people were pointing out that this was a very real possibility and likely already happening.

Now that it's been confirmed, people are suddenly realizing just how bad an idea it always was. But people have been identifying this as a risk for some time now.

This is a self inflicted injury.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

less foreigners == more american STEMs getting hired?

Or the work just gets done overseas. It is probably roughly 50 / 50.

Where it still gets spied on.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[rtfa-troll]

less foreigners == more american STEMs getting hired?

Or the work just gets done overseas. It is probably roughly 50 / 50.

Unlikely. Trade has to be a huge net benefit otherwise it doesn't get done because the companies that are involved in it have to cover huge costs (transport; multinational lawyers; dealing with multiple regulations; insurance; security people; translations; business travel for sales; moving support people etc.). From the point of view of the place that it's done in, all those costs are employed people.

Furthermore, one country trades with many. Thus, for California which is effectively a trade hub, especially for IT services, the benefit is disproportionate.

In any case, this is unlikely in any way to influence the influx of poorer than you Indian workers coming for money. It's rather going to influence richer than you German and Swiss companies trying to buy things off you. When the company heads know that their customers might be spied on then they are breaking the law by outsourcing to the US. They may end up in jail and they have to move their work away from the US.

Difficult case in my view. The US approach that you shouldn't let your data be gathered, but once it is you have no control is not working. The European approach that the data should be under full control of the person who owns it clearly doesn't work properly for secret services. No idea how you restore trust now.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The secrecy of correspondence, telephony and other confidential communications is inviolable". (Finnish constitution Section 10)

Difficult case in my view. The US approach that you shouldn't let your data be gathered, but once it is you have no control is not working

Guess, if I can / will use US based hosts or services for my EU-based startup. And I don't think I'm the only one who came to this conclusion.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with 1/16th of a brain knows not to store locally important data on another continent. NSA fears are just an excuse the sysadmins can use to convince their bosses to make the right decision.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still done on non USA soil. Whenever its spied on or not - is no longer relevant.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[flyingfsck]

Yah, the problem has always been with the bean counters who don't understand technology and who are all gung ho about the cloudy thing in order to save a few pennies. Now at least, one can point out the potential cost of all the law suits and lost business due to the loose control over information as a countering force.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[gstoddart]

Anyone with 1/16th of a brain knows not to store locally important data on another continent.

And yet, people have been doing it.

NSA fears are just an excuse the sysadmins can use to convince their bosses to make the right decision.

Well, then sadly the people who have been making the business decisions do not have that 1/16th of a brain required to see the risks inherent in these services -- or they were so focused on short-term savings they stopped looking at the risks.

It's been known for years that this was a risk, but companies kept doing it anyway.

Now that it's been spelled out in black and white that it's not just a risk but a reality, companies are going to have to re-evaluate if they still think it's worth doing.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the native born non-ethnic white male is the most costly means of getting anything done. Here are the reasons:

1. General cultural expectations. Upon registering the birth of such individuals, Vital Statistics sends a copy of the document(s) to the Good Old Boy Network International. They issue a card that becomes valid upon coming of age in the particular jurisdiction (19, Alabama; 21 Mississippi, 18, federal zone and other states). This card is used to quash traffic stops and grants automatic membership into various trade unions.

2. Will not marry until a college degree required career is established. Wives have female friend to impress. It is human nature.

3. Wife will not bear children until home ownership is established. The uterus will spontaneously abort unless the tissue knows that payment has been positively identified as a mortgage. Raising children in rental environments is a privilege reserved for minorities. It has been disallowed for whites under civil rights jurisprudence.

4. Must fund college for one own children. Asians have snatched all the scholarships, blacks and hispanics have set-asides and government assistance, so the white male must subsidize their education via inflated tuition and other costs as well as for his own children.

5. Must fund one's own retirement. Too little saved means one will be healthy enough to outlive the money. However, having "too much" saved may lead to premature death. It's just the way the universe is permitted/directed to operate. I'm human; I don't make the rules, I merely discover them.

6. Must care for one's aging parents. Medicare is being slashed and the house will become the hospice for however long Nature chooses for grandpa and grandma to rot, suffer and then finally die.

Prove Otherwise.

--
Another fine opinion from The Fucking Psychopath®.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Kilo Kilo]

They'll keep doing it if it means short-term rewards for their investors. Management making poor tech decisions is something that is to be expected.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[jythie]

yeah... he mistrust only really impacts foreign countries buying our products and services. Individual foreigners and companies will likely still happily take our money to sell us products and services.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[MobSwatter]

The NSA gives zero sh!ts about hurting U.S. business, they just tickle to fed to print more money to insure their paychecks. Anyone note that fracking has made uninhabitable enough U.S. soil that can be compared with use of nuclear weapons? You'd think folks as nosy as NSA might have caught on to something like that, but zero phucks are afforded corporate terrorism.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[anasciiman]

That should be fewer foreigners not less. Shame on you.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Ash Vince]

Unlikely. Trade has to be a huge net benefit otherwise it doesn't get done because the companies that are involved in it have to cover huge costs (transport; multinational lawyers; dealing with multiple regulations; insurance; security people; translations; business travel for sales; moving support people etc.). From the point of view of the place that it's done in, all those costs are employed people.

I was not really thinking about jobs moving over seas, I was thinking more about them simply never happening. Once a company exists in a particular place, then you are right, there is no way they would move.

I was thinking more along the lines of if the US lacks STEM graduates then there will be less startups and also that if you are looking at getting a new project off the ground you would outsource it to a country where it could be done more quickly rather than waiting the time it would take to hire enough people. Assuming you already have enough people though then this is unlikely to be an issue as you say.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[sabri]

yeah... he mistrust only really impacts foreign countries buying our products and services. Individual foreigners and companies will likely still happily take our money to sell us products and services.

Exactly. Remember the hype surrounding US companies buying Huawei equipment because of spy concerns? It seems to me that the roles are reversed now... The Chinese government has an excellent argument to ban US manufactured equipment from their networks and country.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[abuelos84]

"non-ethnic"?

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Imbrondir]

US manufactured equipment from their networks and country

Like what exactly? Cisco manufactures most of their stuff in China, with some production in other nations, not sure if US has any at all. I suspect its competitors are no better.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[sabri]

Cisco manufactures most of their stuff in China, with some production in other nations, not sure if US has any at all. I suspect its competitors are no better.

Well, I work for a Cisco competitor and have worked for other vendors in the past. Not all telecommunications equipment is manufactured in China. Mexico is a popular country to have line-cards assembled, for example.

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[Imbrondir]

I've also seen India, Czech republic and Singapore listed as having some factory locations. But the US?

Re:So this means more jobs for American STEMs?

[RockDoctor]

less foreigners == more american STEMs getting hired?

Or the work just gets done overseas. It is probably roughly 50 / 50.

Where it still gets spied on.

But the spying is done by people with legal authority to do so, overseen by their relevant jurisdictions instead of by Americans intent on stealing everyone else's data to try to bolster their failing economy.

Win all round, I think.

Except for America.

Which is their problem, not mine.

Can somebody please rein in California?

[lxs]

All this caring about what foreigners think sounds Unamerican to me.

Re:Can somebody please rein in California?

[instagib]

All this caring about what foreigners think sounds Unamerican to me.

I agree, bring back Arnie!
Oh wait...

Re: Can somebody please rein in California?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be completely honest, that's how you know there's an echo chamber effect happening here.

The state of CA is going to do just fine, this is fear mongering.

Re:Can somebody please rein in California?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's also the other side. The spying gives you valuable information, that any good psychopath^Wbusiness man can use, to raise his profits.

"American" enough for you?

Re: Can somebody please rein in California?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say otherwise. What brought us Apple, Google, Lycos, Yahoo, and even Sun seem to be gone. Companies that genuinely made new and useful things. They expanded the pie.

Instead, we have companies like Facebook which don't innovate, they just new ways of data mining, behavioral tracking, and ad-slinging. FB and such are not expanding any pie, they are just doing new ways to take chunks from other people.

It is shameful; no US school placed in the ACM's top 10 this year, while in the past, CA was always a list-topper.

Re:Can somebody please rein in California?

[RabidReindeer]

Well, there's also the other side. The spying gives you valuable information, that any good psychopath^Wbusiness man can use, to raise his profits.

"American" enough for you?

There are certain counter-intuitive practices that the USA was once known for holding as ideals. We didn't bribe or take bribes. We didn't torture or keep secret prisons. We didn't spy on our own people, interfere with their free travel, or otherwise indulge in the oppressive practices of countries we condemned.

We were never as good at holding these ideals as we deluded ourselves, but we did manage to put up a good front.

In the movies, the villains sneer at the good guys for being soft and impractical, and in the end, they lose. Movies are a bad model for real life, but it is true that if you demolish a reputation for square dealing just to be "practical", that there can be practical costs. And that a reputation once lost can be very hard to rebuild.

Re:Can somebody please rein in California?

[Anonymous Coward]

The movies are often made for kids or as an uncomplicated distraction adults.
I'm not sure you can draw conclusions from movies, even if it is the bulk of your life experience.

Re: Can somebody please rein in California?

[Kilo Kilo]

Instead, we have companies like Facebook which don't innovate, they just new ways of data mining, behavioral tracking, and ad-slinging.

That's because Zuckerberg is from NY. We here in the Imperial State are very good at not producing anything new and charging exorbitant sums of money for it.

Re:Can somebody please rein in California?

[steelfood]

But it sounds mighty Californian.

Re:Can somebody please rein in California?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, right. And most of all you didn't ever realize your huge delusion about never doing those things.

I know you can not ever accept this, and I understand that, but I'm going to say it anyway:
The USA has been nearly constantly at war for nearly its whole existence, at least since the civil war.
When I learned one thing, then that there is no such thing as a war without torture and rape and pillaging and concentration camps and just complete falling apart of all higher human values. Because my dad is a war reporter, I've seen the insides of every important war of the last 3 decades. There has been no exception. Perverse sexual torture games in concentration games are *the* staple of every war. Spying is a *must*. Oppression is part of the *definition* of war.

No, that doesn't make you "bad" humans. Because then, all humans and in fact all life-forms and hence nature itself would be "bad" and "evil". The only reason most other animals and even plants don't do it, is because they *can't*. Nature has no concept of morals.

The bad thing is to elevate yourselves over others based on a pure delusion. Yes, most of us readily do that too. But since "bad" by definition means "self-harmful" (where in most societies, notably with the exception of the USA and a bit Europe, "self" also means "my society/community" to some extend), and delusions always mean a lack of information and hence some self-harm, this is always a bad thing, even for the least-servant life-form.

Re:Can somebody please rein in California?

[Anonymous Coward]

All this caring about what foreigners think sounds Unamerican to me.

Americans meddle in the rest of the world's politics as it is. This article is talking about a state's economy. If you had even taken a single community college intro class in economics, you would understand that trade is beneficial.

Re:Can somebody please rein in California?

[Mr. Lwanga]

It never reins in California.

Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why it was necessary to keep the programs secret and why the leaks didn't do any good.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[ameen.ross]

That's the exact same reason why a murderer should be sure to always safely dispose of the victim's body, clean up traces and never speak to anyone about the crime. Confessing it will never do him any good...

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

apples and oranges comparison. It benefits society to know about and convict mudererers.

AC's point was to suggest that the bigger picture ramifications of the leaks outweighs the benefits. Not that I agree with that presumption but it's important not to conflate understanding with accepting.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[evilviper]

dispose of the victim's body, clean up traces and never speak to anyone about the crime. Confessing it will never do him any good...

Han Reiser might disagree.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Runaway1956]

Exactly the opposite. This is why it was necessary that the programs never be started. I don't care if you're a private citizen, a church, a corporation, or a government. If you're committing acts that have to be kept SECRET, then you're doing something wrong. No, we don't need lurid details of your sex life behind closed doors - but yeah, we figure you're banging each other at night, Mr. and Mrs. Private citizen. No, we don't need to examine your church doctrine, we don't much care - but if you're having initiation orgies and human sacrifices that you are keeping secret, then it's WRONG. Businesses can have trade secrets of course, but deliveries, shipments, and financial transactions should be an open book for auditors. And, government. Yeah, we know you spy. It's cool, up to a point. But if you're a paranoid bunch of assholes who need to keep track of everyone and everything that happens - it's time for you to take a hike. We need a new government. It's really that simple. Remember - you work for us, not the other way around.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[parkinglot777]

It may be true. However, it is useless to talk about what if because it's been done and cannot be undone. No good to keep talking about this. What should be talking about is how to deal with it and how to recover from the damage.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[cffrost]

This is why it was necessary to keep the programs secret and why the leaks didn't do any good.

First of all, you had good reason to post anonymously: you should be ashamed of yourself. Secondly, your comment brings two quotes to mind:

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." — Eric Schmidt

"Security through obscurity is no security at all." — Bruce Schneier

That the revelation of these expensive, ineffectual, unethical, and unconstitutional programs may have harmful repercussions for national security and the economy is not (in my opinion) a good argument for secrecy, but an excellent argument for not starting such programs, shutting the existing ones down, and not starting similar ones in the future.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

How does society benefit by having every little detail of everyone's life being spied upon?

Is your name Cold Fjord?

Re:Reason for secrecy

[init100]

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." — Eric Schmidt

That quote (or a variant thereof) is actually often used to defend government surveillance. It's a version of the "if you've got nothing to hide, you have no reason to oppose government surveillance" argument.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[meza]

Which is exactly why it was the perfect quote for this occation! Same words, even same meaning, yet suddenly almost opposite meaning. Loved it.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[CRCulver]

How does society benefit by having every little detail of everyone's life being spied upon?

As one official has already said, in order to find a needle in the haystack, you need to have a haystack. Not that I agree, but such thinking is widespread.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[flyingfsck]

Actually, he might agree. He had a sure thing going until he suffered a mental break down and confessed.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[flyingfsck]

Of course it can be undone - shut the spy operation down and throw the servers into the sea.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't recover, not every problem has a solution, it has become apparent even to me that the US is finished but Americans will be the last to know. Yeah I laughed a year or two ago when that Russian claimed the breakup of the US was imminent, he's still a kook but the US is done and gone, only the trappings remain and the US has become a vegetative patient on life support with no soul left.

Maybe they can reconstruct the better parts afterwards but I doubt it, the US doesn't seem to have widespread common ground to build upon, ideology or history certainly won't suffice and they don't have any actual culture (in the original meaning of the word) below it all.

The states might survive as reborn independent nations, certainly Texas, Alaska, Washington (likely renamed), Hawaii, Florida, and California should easily do okay and the south could surprise by thriving, but the federation is nothing but a trillion tons of horseshit.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Kohath]

I don't care if you're a private citizen, a church, a corporation, or a government. If you're committing acts that have to be kept SECRET, then you're doing something wrong.

This sounds exactly like "if you don't have anything to hide, you don't have anything to worry about from the NSA spying".

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you really just lump orgies (sexuality between consenting adults) and human sacrifice (murder)?

Fuck off, prude.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

Obvious shill is obvious.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[parkinglot777]

That is not UNDONE, that is an attempt to recover. You can NOT erase everyone from knowing that there is/was the operation (unless you have a way to completely erase people's memory).

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Security through obscurity is no security at all." — Bruce Schneier

"Clearly, those tanks aren't inflatable, Patton is certainly commanding the invasion, and it's not going to happen at Normandy." -- Adolf Hitler

Yeah, I'm Godwinning this, because that tired quote is asinine outside of a very, very, very narrow context. Obscurity has been, is, and always will be a very valid layer of security.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why people like you deserve to be shot and tossed into unmarked mass graves, you pathetic excuse for a human being!

And yes, I am feeding the freaking troll! So what!

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice synagogue you have there. Might we have a copy of your membership list?

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Kazoo the Clown]

If you think you have nothing to hide from the government, maybe you should consider that some 250 people have so far been let off death row due to DNA testing which finally overturned their conviction-- presumably many of these were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and/or pursued by an over-zealous prosecutor. Now imagine an over-zealous prosecutor with the ability to cherry-pick any bit of information he might want about you-- who you've called, where you've been, any email you've ever written, at any time in the past. You might also want to look at the reliability of the no-fly lists, and what happens to those who mistakenly end up on it or are mistaken for someone on it. When the government gets it wrong, you can go to jail, or worse. And the government gets it wrong on a regular basis.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

If the NSA wasn't doing anything wrong, they wouldn't care about the leaks.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I don't care if you're a private citizen, a church, a corporation, or a government. If you're committing acts that have to be kept SECRET, then you're doing something wrong.

OK then Runaway1956. Please provide the following:

Your bank accounts
Your credit cards
Your social security number
Your birthdate

You're not doing anything wrong, right? So why not set all your personal information free?

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

How does society benefit by having every little detail of everyone's life being spied upon?

As one official has already said, in order to find a needle in the haystack, you need to have a haystack. Not that I agree, but such thinking is widespread.

What the hell.
Did the US bureaucrats suddenly started getting lessons by the ex-STASI cadres or what ?

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fine with entities spying on me as long as I can spy on them AND whoever they are spying for too.

But I don't think the NSA, CIA and leaders of various organizations and countries will accept those terms.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[gmuslera]

Yes, thats why killers try to keep their crimes hidden, that could affect their families. Is really unfair that they get caught, why not pretend that nothing happened and let them walk free?

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

"Security through obscurity is no security at all." — Bruce Schneier

The actual intent is more akin to: "Security through obscurity is worse than no security at all." Because the former is an illusion of security (thus lulling people into acting without due diligence), whereas the latter is obviously not secure.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[evilviper]

He had a sure thing going until he suffered a mental break down and confessed.

He was already convicted before he admitted anything, and revealed the location.

Re:Reason for secrecy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah? Then how come even after three months of submitting my application I am still waiting for my US Visa? I spent close to a million dollars on buying softswitches and media gateways from a US company last year. In the past I did substantial business with Motorola. I always try to buy from US businesses as I have a soft corner for them having spent my student days there. Now, I fail to see the usefulness of the haystack if you can't find the needle in a timely manner and yes I had cheaper offers from Huawei and ZTE.

So Europeans don't spy?

[alen]

What does the dgse and other agencies do all day?
Xbox?

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[mwissel]

What does the dgse and other agencies do all day?

Evaluate the data they receive from NSA.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[AHuxley]

Contain their own press, save or rig trade deals, hide or set up sex scandals, protect NATO com links, insider trading and contain any "public" outbreak of local crime. Help the USA and UK.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pointing out someone else also kills puppies is no basis for a defense for you killing puppies.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Anonymous Coward]

They try to sort out what US companies intercept by exploiting Chinese hardware backdoors. Tough job.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you underestimate the homegrown capabilities of the EU intelligence services

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet that time and again is what most Slashdotters say and celebrate with "+5: Insightful" every time another country is mentioned in this arena or any other. "So what, the USA [...]" and "It's not like no one else [...]" are the mainstays of our enlightened readership. There's no falling back to the excuse of "There's more than one person on Slashdot" -- when it occurs with such consistency, predictability, and overwhelming support of moderation across time, there might as well be.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the internets, it is kittenz that are dying, not puppies.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly. NSA is not any better than the European agencies, just better funded.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, your "wahh wahh stop picking on us" approach isn't going to convince me of anything. If SO many people have issues that it constantly becomes marked +5 insightful then perhaps you need to re-align your own views than defending the actions of this gruesome abuse of privacy. Regardless of if someone else might of done it before.

I'm sticking with my original "Pointing out someone else also kills puppies is no basis for a defense for you killing puppies.".. which you have yet managed to convince me of otherwise. If other governments do it too, then that's wrong, but don't defend your own government for doing it because others do. "Well my brother can kill puppies because your brother did" doesn't make me feel any more justified that puppies (or citizens) are being killed/spied on/molested/etc.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[instagib]

Nope. DOS games. Xbox might have a backdoor.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an official fatwa so consider yourself warned, heathen. Kittens are SACRED harm one and NSA, CIA, Anonymous, MI6 and the republican guard will get you.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Kohath]

It's the "everybody does it" defense -- a favorite defense of those who are obviously guilty.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to pretty much every "average person", who would gladly murder a murderer, torture a torturer, and terrorize a terrorist, it surprisingly is.
Becoming the thing you hate doesn't seem to be an issue.

Then again, I'm no psychopath, have a brain, *and* actually use it... so I don't know.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Well my brother can kill puppies because your brother did" doesn't make me feel any more justified that puppies (or citizens) are being killed/spied on/molested/etc.
 
Remember foreigners are not citizens and may be spied on with impunity.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Nyder]

What does the dgse and other agencies do all day?
Xbox?

Not getting data about their spying being released into the open is what they are doing. And probably reading all the NSA leaked info.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Nyder]

Yet that time and again is what most Slashdotters say and celebrate with "+5: Insightful" every time another country is mentioned in this arena or any other. "So what, the USA [...]" and "It's not like no one else [...]" are the mainstays of our enlightened readership. There's no falling back to the excuse of "There's more than one person on Slashdot" -- when it occurs with such consistency, predictability, and overwhelming support of moderation across time, there might as well be.

It tells you who the government shills are, doesn't it? I'm taking note.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[lennier]

What does the dgse and other agencies do all day?

Blow up environmental protest ships.

Re:So Europeans don't spy?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to read the following article:

http://www.free-it-foundation.org/article/2013-07-11-after-edward-snowden-are-core-banking-systems-secure

So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Karmashock]

Seriously. We've been saying this for decades. Secure it.

Top to bottom encryption, compartmentalization, etc.

Make it so the NSA just can't tap your communication.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. We've been saying this for decades. Secure it.

Top to bottom encryption, compartmentalization, etc.

Make it so the NSA just can't tap your communication.

Microsoft helped the NSA get around their encryption. Securing technology only works as long as the company securing it does so against everyone. How can you tell whether the company you're working with has a quiet deal with the government?

I know one response will be "open source!", but how many people actually go through OS code looking for hidden back doors? And it's not like we can all run our own infrastructure, you've got to trust someone at some point, and how can you tell whether or not they've got a quiet deal going on in the background?

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't really matter what encryption or security you use when the other end deliberitly forwards the unencrypted data to the NSA.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that one of the points of all of this controversy? Microsoft was confirmed to be engineering some of their systems (I believe Outlook/Hotmail in this case) so that the NSA could bypass the encryption. If they did it with a "cloud" service what reason is their to believe they aren't putting backdoors in other software. To a degree even that has been discovered, unpatched zero day exploits have apparently been funneled to the NSA for years.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Exporting Encryption is illegal, probably for this very reason.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[AHuxley]

You would have to go for an air gap.
With trade deals US cloud providers start to whine and put pressure on the US gov.
The result is demands from the US gov like this:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/public-service/trade-war-up-in-the-clouds-20120529-1zhpg.html
"‘Concerns that laws such as the Patriot Act offer the US government carte blanche to obtain private data from US providers are misplaced"
We should have listened to our own experts and air gapped much more :)

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[gl4ss]

but if it's done in america you can't trust the compartmentalization. maybe through open source, but even then it's a bit iffy.
you see, the problem is that you can't trust that the american offices weren't visited by men in black.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Karmashock]

Air gapping isn't good enough because that only concerns hacking.

What about intentional collusion between your service provider and a third party? THAT is at least half the problem.

Many companies do have good security that would give the NSA a hard time. BUT all the NSA has to do is make a phone call and the company just hands over the data.

That is unacceptable. As a result, systems need to be set up in such a way that information is decentralized thus making it harder for any one source to compromise you entirely. And the information must be encrypted using private encryption keys that the company doesn't have access to... That is, they store and transfer your data but they don't decrypt it. It decrypts and is encrypted on your systems.

Its really all about control and "what is possible"... To make ourselves secure, we need to make it more and more impossible to get data. Make it theoretically unlikely or literally impossible for them to breach your data without basically blackjacking you and then water boarding the information out of you.

There are systems that cannot be breached. They are generally very inefficient but we have processing power, storage, and bandwidth to spare. Especially concerning high security data we can afford to make our systems literally unhackable.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they're bringing quantum computing online, or so they say. Likely the death knell for PKI. At least, you have to assume that at some point it will be breakable in real-time, or that key-loggers or factory back-doored CPUs, radios, cams, routers, NICs, disks, and so on are operating. It could be prudent for some people to begin, uh, freeing up disk space now, not later, as well. So I'm told. I would know myself, of course.

One thing's for sure. Privacy is neither a postive right, nor a positive attribute. It's hardly even an attribute, more a contextual or relational artifact. You cannot even attempt to define it unambigously legally or constitutionally without destroying it. The best you can do is define informational prurience, which the state can always find some justification for, not just exercising, but monopolizing. Worse, you can consider any such attempt to have such a motive in mind, however innocently couched.

But, what you said. Just please don't ask legislatures or "governances" to do that, either.

Re: So... SECURE THE TECH!

[chromeronin799]

Phew, I'm mad then the best encryption is made outside the USA so it doesn't have to be exported. Though this does mean is citizens may be restricted to the broken backdoored systems.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Karmashock]

The point is not for any one thing to make you 100 percent bullet proof.

The point is to make getting your data without your approval annoying, inefficient, and incomplete.

When we over centralize and give our hosting companies total access to our data then there is only one place the "men in black" need to go to get everything. They don't need to force hack anything because the company will just give up the security keys.

Break things up while avoiding big companies that it becomes unlikely that your host will have any "deal" with the NSA or FBI.

Furthermore, no reason for the host to even be able to give the NSA what they want. Use them to HOST your data... not manage its encryption.

There are methods of encryption that can't be breached or are so difficult to breach that they'll be secure for generations. That's good enough. When the NSA wants your data they're going to have a very short attention span about it. Tell them it will take 10 years of super computer time to break something and they'll opt for plan B... which might be actually sending you a court summons or something.

Point being... we're making it too easy for the NSA by over centralizing and placing too much trust in our hosts. Reverse that policy and the NSA will find very little they can exploit.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[kav2k]

So is importing, in some countries.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[L4t3r4lu5]

Point me to a secure and easy to use for the regular user system, and I'm all for implementing it.

Currently, what we have is PGP. This is great for people who know what the terms X.509, 2048bit RSA, and certificate revocation list mean and why these things are important. However, it doesn't help Bob in Accounting get his TPS report to Simon in Management very quickly. It's awkward and it's cumbersome for anyone who doesn't have quite an in-depth knowledge of the technologies involved.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not rely on the provider crypto.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Runaway1956]

Well, at least with open source, I can decide whom I want to trust, if anyone. With Microsoft or Apple, what are your choices? The various officers of either company can make statements that "You can trust us!" but there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that ANYONE can inspect the code to find those back doors.

I'm far less than competent at reading code, but I can actually step through some of it, with open source. I can do it openly, without fear of someone finding out that I "hacked" the code. I can look at it all day. If I find something that I don't like, I can contact someone - anyone - to find out what it is. My buddy, down the street, who is a little more competent than I am. People on a support forum, some of whom are actually competent. The developers themselves, if I think I've really got something.

Try that with Microsoft or Apple. You might want to consult with a good lawyer before doing so.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[ewieling]

I thought plan B was for them to hit you with a $2 wrench until you tell them your encryption key?

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Runaway1956]

"American envoys are now pressing the Australian government to alter its official guidelines on data security."

Don't do it. It's a trap, plain and simple. "Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly."

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Runaway1956]

A proper air gap, in which your own data is stored on your own servers, and only accessed under rigorous guidelines, wouldn't be crossing your ISP's infrastructure. Therefore - the ISP can't hand it over to the government. No one can reach what is inaccessible from the internet, unless then come in to your place of business, to gain physical access to your servers. That might be done with a secret warrant from a secret court - but the moment they come through your doors, it's no longer very secret. You KNOW that the government is snooping through your data, and you KNOW that you've been compromised.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[sFurbo]

That is what they are doing. One step in securing the tech is to limit the number of back doors. Apparently, the best way to do this presently is to have as little US tech involved as possible.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[TheRaven64]

Exporting encryption has not been illegal in the USA for some time. Certain forms of encryption, however, are still illegal to export to countries under arms embargoes.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[flyingfsck]

We need a commercial version of a Class I Crypto and partitioned systems. Basically, private industry need to start doing the same things that the military IT services have been doing for the past 50 years. The so called 'firewall' concept needs to be strengthened to form a really secure barrier.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[spacepimp]

If you think a private crypto company is going to be safe/reliable then you have missed the point entirely. You can't trust the software if you can;t see the code. Period. It has been shown time and again when standards are ratified that the NSA had been poking their heads about to ffer suggestions to design.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Thud457]

This is the U. S. gubbamint we're talking about, that wrench isn't going to be a mere $2.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[synapse7]

Beyond top to bottom encryption, know who has access to your keys.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Anonymous Coward]

One could always mail whomever they're corresponding with a one time pad in a sealed foil-lined envelope. (Snail mail tends not to be tampered with much, and tamper evident packaging also has its uses.) Then use an open source encryption engine along with lengthy keys from the one time pad for their internet communications. That's pretty near impossible to break unless you got a lot of time or processing power to throw at it, and most communications probably aren't considered high enough priority to try and break in the short-term.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[chihowa]

In the case of corporate infrastructure, like you describe, it's much easier. If you have knowledgeable people designing and running the system, you can make it quite easy for the end users. It's easier to justify the expense and hassle of crypto dongles (or smartcards) to take key management away from the users. You can set policies on the systems to force the use of encryption.

It gets hard when you start dealing with random people, your grandparents, and friends. They can't keep their computers free of malware. How do you expect them to keep their private key safe and not lose it even if you go through the trouble of setting everything up for them?

Frankly, I'm disappointed that there aren't more USB PKCS #11 dongles available and that OS support for these is still severely lacking and, if even available, flaky. If decent support for (especially email) encryption was more widely available, the hard stuff gets reduced to key management. Hardware security modules makes key management much easier for clueless ens users:

• The key is now a physical object that can be protected as if it were a house or car key.
• The key can be plugged into a friends computer to check email without a massive security breach. (still not a great idea, but better than the current situation)
• The key survives lost/stolen/reformatted computers.
• A crypto module is a more secure solution on an untrusted computer (which their computer would always be with them administering it).

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you tell whether the company you're working with has a quiet deal with the government?

Easy, you use a French company.

And this is precisely why California is worried. The Washington's paranoia has allowed the NSA to flush our businesses down the toilet.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[houghi]

I have no idea how TCP/IP works. Nor do I know what POP3, IMAP or SMTP mean. Yet I am perfectly able to send and receive email. Without any in-depth knowledge of the technologies involved millions of people are able to use computer and other systems.

So what we need is some people who know how all this technical stuff works and implement it so that it is easy to use and on by default.

Just adding a pgp signature by default should be a great start.

The reason this is not yet done is not because it is impossible or hard. It is because nobody actually cares enough. And because they do not care enough, nobody gets to order to make it usable.

Make me a business case where I will make a profit from implementing it and I will start doing it. And with that I mean how much I will gain and/or loose from it. Also compare it to a memo that says "Don't send out sensitive information.".

The moment you come out positive, companies will start implementing it and the rest will follow.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Em Adespoton]

A proper air gap, in which your own data is stored on your own servers, and only accessed under rigorous guidelines, wouldn't be crossing your ISP's infrastructure. Therefore - the ISP can't hand it over to the government. No one can reach what is inaccessible from the internet, unless then come in to your place of business, to gain physical access to your servers. That might be done with a secret warrant from a secret court - but the moment they come through your doors, it's no longer very secret. You KNOW that the government is snooping through your data, and you KNOW that you've been compromised.

Not actually true: if they monitor your place of business and then serve your landlord with a secret warrant, they'll walk in when nobody's there, temporarily disable your alarms, do what they want (including installing keyloggers) and then leave, with you none the wiser, unless you've got an ultraparanoid IT staffer or physical security person that you actually listen to (and who hasn't been muzzled by same government agents).

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[lgw]

Thus far, the suggestions that the NSA has made about crypto standards have been good advice. It usually takes a decade or so to be sure, but at least so far it has been wise for the standards committees for follow the suggestions offered by the NSA.

Their only old suggestion that remains a bit mysterious is "stop using product-of-primes based crypto entirely, switch to elliptic curve or something". Based on their track record, it's probably good advice, but its an open question as to why.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[lgw]

I think the point is: if you're a US company, the government will simply ask you for your data. Therefore no security procedures can make you trustworthy.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[lgw]

The fundamental problem for home use is: only the web mail provider can easily do this. Almost nothing would be gained here if Gmail et al encrypted emails in flight for you. If the endpoint in compromised, in-flight security is pointless.

So what can you do? Normal people don't run a program to do email any more, and they expect to be able to read their mail from any device with web access.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[0xG]

It's all on Facebook anyways.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Karmashock]

Wrong. Don't give anyone access to them that doesn't need to have access and that you do not trust implicitly.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[mcrbids]

Thus far, the suggestions that the NSA has made about crypto standards have been good advice.

In most cases, yes. We *think*. However, there are cases where we're pretty sure that's not the case. As with everything, your mileage may vary, and in crypto, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't actually out to get you.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Karmashock]

No.

The time of people acting like children and expecting to be taken care of is over.

You give people a choice.

Take the tech seriously and learn or accept that you're going to be vulnerable.

Choose.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Karmashock]

That's probably around plan D.

But as effective as that plan is... it lacks subtly. I would much rather the government have to resort to plan D rather then simply secretly take all my data at will.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[lgw]

Oh, that's news to me, thanks! That's the problem with government agencies: no history of trust is grounds for trusting them. And people wonder why I favor small government.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Karmashock]

Wrong, that only ensures different backdoors are inserted.

Furthermore, you are forgetting that many of the programs are directly hacked by State trained and funded cyberwarfare teams. They will breach your system unless you've built it to very paranoid specs.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know one response will be "open source!", but how many people actually go through OS code looking for hidden back doors? And it's not like we can all run our own infrastructure, you've got to trust someone at some point, and how can you tell whether or not they've got a quiet deal going on in the background?.

And with OpenSource you can trust that 1000 developers many times without direct contact decided that they will make a hole in porpouse because for example OpenSSH is not looked by everyone but besides the development a lot of people see that code, distros making patches, hackes looking for holes, other software companies like metasploit which rely and profit finding holes, etc. You can always be suspicious, but a distributed, wide and complex development and deployment system is always more secure. To M$ wich has confidentiality contracts with anyone involved only one memo is needed to open a backdoor, to make the same with OpenSource you have to convince A LOT of people of risk his credibility and reputation hopping that nobody talks about it even when no contract binds them. If M$ open a backdoor nobody cares (the stock price hasn't lowered since the notice in fact keeps climbing) but if the same happened to OpenSSH or OpenPgP the Linux Kernel, etc. it will be doomed

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[synapse7]

With most cloud services(maybe all?) that is now an option.

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[synapse7]

*not

Re:So... SECURE THE TECH!

[Karmashock]

Its an option on some. Very few offer it because security was not taken seriously.

They are now saying customers don't trust them. Well... This is a step you can take to offer that trust.

Make the providers literally incapable of betraying you. It will make the technology less efficient and less user friendly. The customer can choose. Trust the provider and accept lower security for easier use and possibly lower fees. Or don't trust them and accept some of the management burden on yourself along with possibly higher fees due to using up more of their resources to provide you with segmented technology.

Its all a trade off between reliability, security, and efficiency.

What're you gonna do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seccede from the union? Then you're just as much a furriner to the NSA as the rest of the world. And thus fair game to spying operations that have gotten a little out of hand. To the point that you can no longer say "don't do that" to the people doing it. It is so much out of control that you have to shut down the machine entirely and scap it. And please don't rebuild it, not even from scratch.

This also shows how utterly provincial the USoA really is. It takes an outlier like California to look outside the borders with anything but thinly-veiled suspicion. And that also means that the USoA is not really fit for playing the world's neighbourhood cop, since that is a position of trust, not power. It doesn't surprise, then, that there's quite a difference between how the rest of the world sees what it's done and the stellar job it itself thinks it has done.

Re:What're you gonna do?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Who's talking about secession? Are we just making shit up now?

Ah, the ancient sport of looking down on Americans as uncultured slobs. Centuries go by and this pastime is evergreen. It never, ever gets old and the arguments are the same as they have always been.

Re:What're you gonna do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the ancient sport of looking down on Americans as uncultured slobs.

You only have to watch Fox to conclude that, on balance, that's an accurate description of much of the populace.

It never, ever gets old and the arguments are the same as they have always been.

If the foo shits ...

Re:What're you gonna do?

[lxs]

Ah, the ancient sport of looking down on Americans as uncultured slobs.

I wouldn't call it a sport. Sports require skill.

Re:What're you gonna do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's talking about secession? Are we just making shit up now?

Ah, the ancient sport of looking down on Americans as uncultured slobs. Centuries go by and this pastime is evergreen. It never, ever gets old and the arguments are the same as they have always been.

And then there's the fact that "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" was on TV and got decent ratings.

Re:What're you gonna do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they'll take down the altars they erected to worship Obama.

Just California?

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ, I know the US likes to pretend it is at the centre of the friggin' universe and that nothing exists beyond their borders... But hell, you guys have the same problem internally?

That NSA shit is bad for all of you. Never mind California. You all better start wisening up and do something about the fuck heads you gave all your power to. What do you think would happen if the rest of the world woke up and decided to put trade blockades in place over any technological product the NSA could potentially have their fingers in?

Re:Just California?

[TWiTfan]

I remember telling a friend on 9-11 that we would do way more damage to OURSELVES with our response to 9-11 than 9-11 or any other terrorist attack would ever do directly. That's the whole point of terrorism, really. The amount of lives we've lost (and took) since, the economic damage we've done, the national debt we've incurred, the international goodwill we've squandered--they all make the actual damage done by direct terrorist attacks pale in comparison.

And I was hardly alone in seeing this coming. But the U.S. government still played out the script almost exactly as expected, right down to the internment camps, the curtailing of civil liberties, the assassinations, the spying, etc. It's like a historical play that we NEVER LEARN FROM.

Re:Just California?

[Anonymous Coward]

"international goodwill" has zero practical value. Which country was going to do us a favor?

Re:Just California?

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember telling a friend on 9-11 that we would do way more damage to OURSELVES with our response to 9-11 than 9-11 or any other terrorist attack would ever do directly. [...] And I was hardly alone in seeing this coming.

It was a bit hard to miss. In the same sense that an oncoming tsunami is a bit hard to miss.

But the U.S. government still played out the script almost exactly as expected, right down to the internment camps, the curtailing of civil liberties, the assassinations, the spying, etc. It's like a historical play that we NEVER LEARN FROM.

And so we conclude, the terrorists have well and truly won.

Anyhow. What to do about it? This is, after all, the American Government[tm], set up as an institution to express the will of the American People[tm], and so if it's not their American Will[tm] that's being expressed, it's their job to change that.

What's was that slogan of the incumbent high chief's election campaign again? Wouldn't it be about time to, you know, live up to that promise? "Make it so", eh.

Re:Just California?

[Kazoo the Clown]

Yes, it was pretty clear that Bush et. al., would, in their response to 9/11, kill far more Americans and do more financial damage than the terrorists ever dreamed. I figure the terrorists won that battle far better than their greatest expectations. And that many in the US think otherwise merely due to the fact that more of them have died than have us, just shows how bad we are at keeping score. The terrorists have won because they have caused us to lose our rights, to be treated as would-be terrorists or enemies by our own government, and to flush billions of dollars down the toilet in the process. And we took the bait hook line and sinker. One argument would be that we showed our adversaries that our responses to such things are so totally irrational so they'd better not mess with us in the future because there's no telling what we might do. But the problem with that is, our responses actually *were* totally irrational, it's not that they just appeared to be-- which damages us at least as much as it does anyone else, and is continuing to do so.

Re:Just California?

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest of the world needs America more than we need you.

Re:Just California?

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I remember telling a friend on 9-11 that we would do way more damage to OURSELVES with our response to 9-11 than 9-11 or any other terrorist attack would ever do directly. That's the whole point of terrorism, really.

That's not the "point of terrorism" at all. All you have to do around here is spout some sort of line about how "what the government has done is far worse than terrorism" and you get modded up by the morons who agree with you. The point of terrorism is most assuredly not to make you do bad things for yourself. The point of terrorism is to gain a political objective you cannot get through the ballot box or through legal and normal means of working within the system by killing so many people that you make the price of maintaining the status quo higher than those who maintain the status quo are willing to pay. The 9/11 attacks were in part to get US infidel troops out of holy Saudi Arabia, in part to punish the US for it's support for "evil" Israel, and in part to unite the Arab world under a caliph who would just happen to be Osama Bin Laden. I can assure you that Osama and his buddies did not sit around the campfire some months before September 2001 and say "You know, if we pull this off it will make air travel within the US extremely inconvenient, which is, of course, our ultimate goal". The IRA killed people to try to force the non-Catholics to leave Northern Ireland so it could be joined with the Irish Republic. The PLO and similar groups wanted to kill so many Jews that they could either get an independent state for Palestinians or drive all the Jews out of Israel. The Chechen terrorists want to make so many non-Muslim Russians die that those who survive will give them complete independence. The Tamil Tigers tried to kill their way into an independent nation. Those are the point of terrorism, to take by force what cannot be gained without it.

Re:Just California?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yes, it was pretty clear that Bush et. al., would, in their response to 9/11, kill far more Americans...."
 
But we killed a lot more foreigners, which means that we won or are still winning. Remember, if you fuck with America you'll get a boot in the ass!

Re:Just California?

[c0d3g33k]

I remember telling a friend on 9-11 that we would do way more damage to OURSELVES with our response to 9-11 than 9-11 or any other terrorist attack would ever do directly. That's the whole point of terrorism, really.

That's not the "point of terrorism" at all.
*snip*
The 9/11 attacks were in part to get US infidel troops out of holy Saudi Arabia, in part to punish the US for it's support for "evil" Israel, and in part to unite the Arab world under a caliph who would just happen to be Osama Bin Laden.

I'd call those "stretch" goals. Usually accompanied by a rippling effect on the screen as the scene shifts to the fantasy montage where our protagonist has a waking dream about what could be.

I can assure you that Osama and his buddies did not sit around the campfire some months before September 2001 and say "You know, if we pull this off it will make air travel within the US extremely inconvenient, which is, of course, our ultimate goal".

Probably not. And as the son of a billionaire, I suspect the wishful thinking about world domination occurred in a venue a little less primitive than a campsite. But thanks for that imagery. Since the people in question weren't unintelligent, they were probably able to discern the difference between best-case-scenario and hurt-them-enough-to-get-publicity. Any astute student of history knows that it's not the big things that bring down empires, but the little things that jam the gears and bring it down from the inside. Hail Eris, Goddess of Discord.

The IRA killed people to try to force the non-Catholics to leave Northern Ireland so it could be joined with the Irish Republic. The PLO and similar groups wanted to kill so many Jews that they could either get an independent state for Palestinians or drive all the Jews out of Israel. The Chechen terrorists want to make so many non-Muslim Russians die that those who survive will give them complete independence. The Tamil Tigers tried to kill their way into an independent nation. Those are the point of terrorism, to take by force what cannot be gained without it.

That's the ultimate goal. Few outside the fanatical and delusional expect the big goals to actually be realized. Not for long, anyhow. But causing a little pain? Everybody can get behind that and the results are achievable.

Re:Just California?

[Anonymous Coward]

The terrorists have won because they have caused us to ... flush billions of dollars down the toilet in the process.

Correction, Trillions (with a "T"). Let it run for another 10 years and we'll be in the neighborhood of a Quadrillion.

For that amount of money, you could give ever man, woman and child a good education for pennies, repair all of the infrastructure (hell, fibre to every home and rail in every city), subsidized jobs for a living wage, single-payer healthcare, renewable energy for all and on and on.

Instead, we have "mission accomplished" by 20 guys and a couple of wannabes who crashed/threatened to crash airplanes? That's an effin' PHENOMINAL return on investment. And we rolled over.

Snitches are bitches

[benjfowler]

And WHO, might I asked, tipped off these "Asian governments and businesses"?

If America is losing business, blame your culture of coddling attention-seeking little bitches like Snowden.

Re:Snitches are bitches

[Anonymous Coward]

If America is losing business, blame your culture of coddling attention-seeking little bitches like Snowden.

Because heaven forbid you blame it on your sense of entitlement to spy on everybody.

Sorry, but if you think this is entirely the fault of people who pointed out that the US does this, you've lost the plot.

If ever that had come to light, the response would have been the same.

Now that it's been demonstrated that American industry are government lapdogs who will roll over at the first sign from their masters, of course people are going to cut and run and stop trusting them. They're no less trustworthy now than a few weeks ago -- it's just that now we know you can't trust them and haven't been able to for some time.

Fuck your business and your shareholder value. You made this mess, not us.

Re:Snitches are bitches

[benjfowler]

Everyone spies. The French and the British have just been busted doing it, to a far greater extent than the US. Read about 'full take' if you don't know what I'm talking about.

The fact that Snowden is being lauded as some kind of hero, when he's just a mindless, mentally ill vandal, who's destroying people's jobs, business and livelihoods everywhere, is unbelievable.

Don't buy the basement-dweller libertarian hype.

Re:Snitches are bitches

[cffrost]

Snowden: I never gave any information to Chinese or Russian governments [2013-07-10]

Re:Snitches are bitches

[AHuxley]

Did "Snowden" make so many trusted US 'brands' hand over their crypto? They seem to do that as part of some "everyday" commercial event as hardware and software upgrades.
Not a word from their legal teams, no CEO in court talking of your right to privacy.
How could any agency spy "far greater extent than the US"? The Soviets had orbital options and needed to move huge spy ships around for limited regional efforts, the UK had cash flow problems and has to use US computers/software...the French seem to focus on their own past glory, nuclear security and trade deals.
NATO was told to use US/UK crypto as it was safe, cheap and would ensure future US "help'.
Germany can only link its own telco network to one point and gift it all to the NSA. The BND efforts end up in the German press.
Canada? They gave up to the NSA in the 1950's.
Japan? Note all the US bases... South Africa at some point in the past? The USA helped them track down Communists via their phone network.
Snowden has been busy over many years....
Any spy agency could tell what the US was doing from the 1950's onwards. By the mid 1970's you had books, magazines... court cases.

Re:Snitches are bitches

[kilfarsnar]

And WHO, might I asked, tipped off these "Asian governments and businesses"?

If America is losing business, blame your culture of coddling attention-seeking little bitches like Snowden.

Is this real life?

Re:Snitches are bitches

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's better to be a happy cabbage like you, your masters know what's best for you and anyone who exposes their wholesale lying and spying must be "mentally ill". I guess you'd volunteer to have government cameras in every room in your house and would be first to rat out your neighbour to the Stasi for using non-backdoored encryption when it becomes illegal.
What a good little dog you are. Shame your masters will not reward your boot-licking loyalty and will squash you like a bug if it suits them.

Are you even for real?

Re:Snitches are bitches

[benjfowler]

Yes I am for real.

The state is the expression of the collective will of a society. The more advanced and democratic that society, the more likely it is to reflect the collective will. That will reflects that society's priorities, hopes and fears.

As it were, it appears, judging by the size of the US military, that the US as a nation are fearful and paranoid.

That might be a difficult concept for an American to grasp, but it's an uncomfortable truth.

Don't pretend that "the government" is some distant, remote entity. Last time I looked, the government was staffed, run and overseen by citizens too.

Don't like it? Then do something about it. Then the change must come from society, and government will reflect that change. That's already been demonstrated through the civil rights era and the Vietnam War.

Just don't lie to yourself that you aren't "the government".

Re:Snitches are bitches

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the pay good or are you doing it for free?

Re:Snitches are bitches

[misterooga]

Is this just fantasy?

Re:Snitches are bitches

[Anonymous Coward]

That he knows of... or care to admit

Re:Snitches are bitches

[c0d3g33k]

Caught in a landslide ...

Re:Snitches are bitches

[Anonymous Coward]

As it were, it appears, judging by the size of the US military, that the US as a nation are fearful and paranoid.

AND immature AND imbued with an undeserved sense of entitlement...

Not to worry. The Roman empire lasted ~2,000 years. The US will be lucky to last 1/6th of that.

Raise the price of Oil to $20/gallon and/or move the jet stream far enough out of wack that the midwest dries up and blows away, and Pax Americana will come to a sudden and violent end.

Re:Snitches are bitches

[Nyder]

Yes I am for real.

The state is the expression of the collective will of a society. The more advanced and democratic that society, the more likely it is to reflect the collective will. That will reflects that society's priorities, hopes and fears.

As it were, it appears, judging by the size of the US military, that the US as a nation are fearful and paranoid.

That might be a difficult concept for an American to grasp, but it's an uncomfortable truth.

Don't pretend that "the government" is some distant, remote entity. Last time I looked, the government was staffed, run and overseen by citizens too.

Don't like it? Then do something about it. Then the change must come from society, and government will reflect that change. That's already been demonstrated through the civil rights era and the Vietnam War.

Just don't lie to yourself that you aren't "the government".

I'm not the government. It's not a lie. I can go down to any of my local or federal government offices, but I won't get passed where the public can go. Will they allow me access to the meetings because I pay taxes or vote? No. Will they listen to what I say? Maybe, but unless I'm a big ass corporation with lots of money, they rarely care.

And for the matter, when we vote for someone (ie. Obama) and they say one thing and then do the opposite of what they been saying, what can you do? When you have 2 party choices and they both suck and are taking the country in a direction different then what you want, what can you do?

When your whole political system is setup for a 2 party system, so even if you get a good 3rd or 4th choice, they need to have senators & congress people from their party voted in to become president?

The USA government isn't ran by it's people. It's ran by corporations and the rich. anyone who thinks or says otherwise are fooling themselves or part of the problem.

Re:Snitches are bitches

[Anonymous Coward]

No escape from reality.

They voted for it

[Kohath]

Californians voted for bigger, more intrusive government. They got it. They should accept the consequences.

Re:They voted for it

[liamevo]

Would you like to explain what you mean, or do you just want to post bumper sticker-esque nonsense?

Re:They voted for it

[asylumx]

Oh, I see what you're doing. You're insinuating that this is all Obama's doing, as if this hasn't been the Government trend for many decades. It's funny that they've got you believing this is a difference between political parties.

Re:They voted for it

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they really? GW Bush started the spying program, and Californians voted against that. Then Obama ran on a platform that included reversing that change. Californians voted in favor of that. Of course, now we know Obama lied or changed his mind on his promises*, but it isn't like the other major party actually has a platform against the patriot act or warrantless wiretaps.

* I voted green for that exact reason.

Re:They voted for it

[Kohath]

Californians are responsible for the Obama Administration because they voted for him. California's two Senators are Obama Administration allies, so they're unlikely to help rein in the government they support. Californians didn't vote for Bush, so they aren't responsible for his policies in the same way.

Californians should start supporting smaller, less intrusive government if they don't want to accept the consequences of having a huge, powerful, active government.

You can't keep accepting the idea that government knows best and then complain when government doesn't do the right things.

Re:They voted for it

[cffrost]

Californians voted for bigger, more intrusive government. They got it. They should accept the consequences.

Just California? Neither Gary Johnson nor Jill Stein won any states.

Re:They voted for it

[Kohath]

California is the topic of the article. Californians are responsible for the people they voted for.

No one will ever be responsible for a Gary Johnson Administration or a Jill Stein Administration. (Which is a big part of these candidates' appeal to some people.)

Re:They voted for it

[kilfarsnar]

Californians voted for bigger, more intrusive government. They got it. They should accept the consequences.

Right, because all government action is the same. If you vote for tighter pollution controls, you should expect to have your communications recorded.

Re:They voted for it

[Kohath]

You keep giving them more and more power. And you keep being surprised when that power is used against you.

Re:They voted for it

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, all he insinuated is that California was somehow different than the other 49 states, in the fact that it has always supported Republicrats. That's the untrue part; in all 50 states a supermajority of voters support bigger and more intrusive government.

A state was explicitly mentioned; a party was not. The "parties" stuff was all in your head, not the post you replied to.

Yes, New Hampshire, even you. Just a little under 99% of you said you wanted government to be less accountable. (Actually, that's somewhat impressive, in a twisted way. I don't think many states ever get less than 99%.)

Re:They voted for it

[SecurityTheatre]

Big, yet transparent government is different than big and shadily opaque.

Re:They voted for it

[Kohath]

It just looks different from the outside.

Re:They voted for it

[Eunuchswear]

And everyone knows that all this started when Obama set up the NSA and the FISA court.

Re:They voted for it

[Kohath]

Read my post. Californians aren't (as) responsible for the guy who set it up because they didn't vote for him. They are (a lot more) responsible for the guy who is running the spying now because they voted for him.

Bush has been gone for years and years now. He has zero control of the government.

Obama has had 4+ years to stop spying. He didn't. He didn't try. He's not trying now. And Californians supported him for election and re-election by large margins.

Re:They voted for it

[asylumx]

And if they had supported Romney, then Romney would be the one spying now and I imagine you'd still be saying the same things about Californians. Likewise about McCain. Yet, you don't hold Texans responsible even though they voted for the guy that originally put the system into place (or at least these pieces of it).

US considered hostile

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use US services.

Are you surprised?

[gstoddart]

If you demonstrate that your industry is an arm of state surveillance, why would you be surprised that when this is revealed people stop trusting you?

Every other country in the world now more or less has to assume that these American companies can (and will) provide their data for US national intelligence -- at which point the logical choice is to stop using those US companies.

Much like if companies from another country were found to be enabling widespread spying on US citizens, there would be outcry in the US and backlash.

I don't see why anybody should be surprised that if you undermine trust, there will be consequences.

Some of these companies were already very casual with what they were collecting (eg Google and the wifi passwords when doing Street View). If they were likely handing this kind of stuff over to the US government, even less so.

Once damaged, trust is a very difficult thing to get back. If Google and everyone else though they were under scrutiny for their privacy policies before, then they should really expect a lot more of it.

Re:Are you surprised?

[BSAtHome]

It is called "blowback". No surprise there.

Re:Are you surprised?

[drinkypoo]

If you demonstrate that your industry is an arm of state surveillance, why would you be surprised that when this is revealed people stop trusting you?

No one is surprised, and suggesting otherwise is disingenuous douchebaggery. Just as when a slashdot headline is a question the answer is no, so too is the answer no when a comment title asks one.

I don't see why anybody should be surprised that if you undermine trust, there will be consequences.

I can't even figure out on what specious basis you're claiming that people are surprised.

Re:Are you surprised?

[gstoddart]

I can't even figure out on what specious basis you're claiming that people are surprised.

The entire tone of TFA is one of "what happens now". It's full of things like:

Will tourists balk at visiting us because they fear U.S. monitoring? Will overseas business owners think twice about trading with us because they fear that their communications might be intercepted and used for commercial gain by American competitors? Most chilling of all: Will foreigners stop using the products and services of California technology and media companies â" Facebook, Google, Skype, and Apple among them â" that have been accomplices (they say unwillingly) to the federal surveillance?

I'm not saying nobody didn't see this as a possible outcome -- but it certainly reads like now that people are realizing the potential scope of the impact they're wondering what they can do to mitigate it.

Even before this was revealed many people were already saying that, due to the PATRIOT Act, you shouldn't be trusting these companies with your data. Now it's been confirmed. US based cloud services might suddenly find a lot of doors closed to them -- it's not a surprise in the "wow, who saw that coming?" send, but people are acting like the "what next" part is coming as a surprise.

Hell, I'd go so far as to say that a lot of these companies should have been saying to themselves "if this ever gets out, there is a real chance of business risk". Now that it has, there is. If they didn't have a plan in place for what to do, then that's their problem.

Re:Are you surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

No it's not, go fuck your americanisms, learn English.

Re:Are you surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is surprised, and suggesting otherwise is disingenuous douchebaggery

Speaking of douchebags

Re:Are you surprised?

[drinkypoo]

I'm not saying nobody didn't see this as a possible outcome -- but it certainly reads like now that people are realizing the potential scope of the impact they're wondering what they can do to mitigate it.

The truth, though, is that now that the scope of the impact has been publicized, corporations who already knew that data they shared with U.S. corporations was being Hoovered into the government's databases are now having to deal with the backlash from their customers.

Hell, I'd go so far as to say that a lot of these companies should have been saying to themselves "if this ever gets out, there is a real chance of business risk". Now that it has, there is. If they didn't have a plan in place for what to do, then that's their problem.

Exactamente.

Monday

[coofercat]

It's a Monday, and /. is stating the bleedin' obvious.

What's less obvious is how much NSA snooping hurts US companies. I doubt it's nearly enough to be able to call it a justification for dismantling the infrastructure.

Re:Monday

[Anonymous Coward]

NSA snoops the foreign countries and tries to put America in better position for treaties. They may also snoop foreign companies trade secrets as "rewards" for US companies helping them out. On the other hand, the snooping causes American businesses.

Whichever side have the loudest lobbying team to the congress would win in this race.

Re:Monday

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt it's nearly enough to be able to call it a justification for dismantling the infrastructure.

It also assumes that the American ruling / political class give a shit about jobs and a functioning, growing economy. It seems to me that while they pay devoted lip service to the subject their actions show they really couldn't give a toss.

I don't think they'd care if it was a burning wasteland, as long as they were top dog.

Re:Monday

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, the snooping causes American businesses.

So you're saying the entire American business is based on fraud?

Re:Monday

[AHuxley]

Re So you're saying the entire American business is based on fraud?
More that any global crypto standard is cleared by the NSA. More that any local crypto standard is questioned by the US until US firms can get total access.
US diplomats, students (PhD swaps), private sector just offer the same message of quality, many eyes, US court protections and freedoms until American business gains what the NSA needs.

Re:Monday

[kilfarsnar]

On the other hand, the snooping causes American businesses.

So you're saying the entire American business is based on fraud?

No, just Wall Street.

Re:Monday

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider how copyright and trademark laws are applied, and say with a straight face it's not fraud.

Re:Monday

[steelfood]

Actually, this is true of all big multi-national investment banks. Look at Barclays, UBS, etc.

Re:Monday

[Anonymous Coward]

I kind of think California hurt business all on its own via regulation and its rabid anti-business garbage.

one-sided

[Anonymous Coward]

Other countries pull back from the US from the *fear* of spying and theft. American companies, on the other hand, keep pumping in: Money, equipment, and even technical know-how even though we know this happens. Just as long as the labor is cheap. This is considered a a manufacturing best practice.

This short-term view is also irrational. Even our closest allies fight tooth & nail to protect their industries--see Korea and Japan for their domestic agriculture and automobile tariffs.

Skype

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Skype listed there. It originated from eastern europe and is owned by Microsoft, neither of which are based in California.

Re:Skype

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find any mention of Skype.

Re:Skype

[AHuxley]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/nsa-taps-skype-chats-newly-published-snowden-leaks-confirm/

Re:Skype

[flyingfsck]

Skype was quite secure, until Microsoft bought it for the NSA.

Anti-terrorism is an excuse

[brxndxn]

Anti-terrorism is the excuse for spying. Business is the real purpose. When the countries we spy on the most can be ranked in terms of size of economy, there is no fucking way the government can keep claiming that the purpose for these spying programs is anything other than to keep the powerful people powerful.

For example, revelations were made that we target Germany for spying. It only makes sense if you look at the size of the economies. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/nsa-spies-on-500-million-german-data-connections-a-908648.html

Yes, NSA spying will hurt California's business.. and it should. Instead of giving in to the secret government's secret demands, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and everyone else should be fighting these anti-democratic efforts tooth and nail.

Re:Anti-terrorism is an excuse

[drinkypoo]

Yes, NSA spying will hurt California's business.. and it should. Instead of giving in to the secret government's secret demands, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and everyone else should be fighting these anti-democratic efforts tooth and nail.

It's too late. IBM and Microsoft have both been in bed with government since time was time, for them anyway. Social networks and other data aggregators are also obvious allies; the aggregators can't even do what they do without government complicity.

Re:Anti-terrorism is an excuse

[jbmartin6]

I didn't see any indication that Germany was targeted more than say, France or Brazil, which tends to disprove your assertion. i.e. I didn't see a scale where amount of spying correlated to size of economy.

Re:Anti-terrorism is an excuse

[timeOday]

I don't entirely disagree with you, however several of the 911 hijackers, called the Hamburg Cell, did live in Germany prior the attack. This cell included 2 of the pilots, as well as ringleader Mohamed Atta.

As to this story, in the end there is no way to entirely eliminate geopolitics from globalization. But it is a matter of degree and I agree it has got out of hand in the wake of 911, although I am really only upset about the domestic side of it.

Re:Anti-terrorism is an excuse

[Anonymous Coward]

revelations were made that we target Germany for spying. It only makes sense if you look at the size of the economies.

Read a book. Or just remember 9/11 when the terrorists came by way of Germany. I'm not saying the NSA doesn't commit economic espionage too, but the terrorists are really out there.

Re:Anti-terrorism is an excuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because France and Brazil are small economies *rolls eyes*

Re:Anti-terrorism is an excuse

[ahabswhale]

1) It's not ranked in terms of the size of the economy. #1 on the list is Iran. #2 is Pakistan. Need I go on?

2) It's not politically tenable to allow a terrorist attack. So obviously there is plenty of motive outside of commercial ones.

In short, your premise is a complete fail and it calls into question your conclusion.

Whoooosh

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations for missing the point in the most American[tm] way possible. "No, look at them, then!"

Yeah, well, they just followed your lead to stay in the game, eh. I don't know what they'd done if you hadn't provided that lead, but that's hardly relevant, now is it? Be honest now, if you can. What's done is done, and it turns out it did went and done quite a bit of damage, and it's not being done with the doing damaging quite yet.

In a very real sense this situation was created by the USA. Whatever otherwise might have happened, putting your mark on things means you get to bear responsibility for the fall-out, too. It's very American[tm] to try to want to be the firstest and the bestest, except when things go pear-shaped, as they have, and then it's suddenly everybody else's fault because of what everybody else may have done, not because of what you did. How immature. That fine country of yours really just a gigantic kindergarten then?

Well, I have news for you, kiddo. YOU DID DO ALL THAT. That means IT IS YOUR FAULT.

You don't get to skirt that. And so it is up to you to fix it and to earn back the trust you just squandered. Throwing a tantrum isn't going to help you. You really do need to grow up.

Re:Whoooosh

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did he mention that he's American? For all you know, he/she could be a caring European with Euro-centric perspective who's not unlike many of the caring Americans around here with a US-centric perspective.

Re:Whoooosh

[Runaway1956]

Trust? WTF trusts us, anyway? Ignore everything and anything we may have done wrong prior to 9/11/01. Let's call that water under the bridge. WTF have we done SINCE 9/11/01 to earn or to bolster anyone trust in us? What has government done to earn the trust of US citizens, much less the trust of foreign citizens, corporations, or governments?

I'm having a very hard time seeing anything of the nature.

Re:Whoooosh

[Rob the Bold]

Congratulations for missing the point in the most American[tm] way possible. "No, look at them, then!"

Go ahead with your "it can't happen here" rant. Whatever helps you sleep at night. But don't say we didn't warn you.

Re:Whoooosh

[Anonymous Coward]

Europeans can miss the point in a most American way too you know. For example some of the worst reality TV programs were invented in Europe.

Re:Whoooosh

[Anonymous Coward]

What's happening now, is a real risk that every nation with a worthwhile intelligence service faces.

When you have the infrastructure in place to spy on the nation's enemies, it's fairly easy to change the definition of enemy and point it at someone else.

Don't complain

[Cynops]

German citizen here, and one working it IT Security for almost two decades now. I have been advocating the use of strong encryption and keeping the crown jewels "in the house" to my employers and customers all the time, but managers would often not listen in order to save the odd buck on the next outsourcing deal.

By launching and funding the spy programmes the US government has willingly accepted possibly detrimental effects on the economy.

In my opinion it serves the US companies right that finally the time has come that companies and people all over the world actually start looking at whom they make business with. The USA have decided to spy on every single person on this planet - OK, but now don't complain that this hurts your economy. If US companies don't like what's happening then they should complain to your government and make them change things.

A lot of trust has been destroyed, and it will take the US economy some effort to regain it. Work hard, and maybe some day in the future I will no longer advise my customers and friends to avoid US services.

Re:Don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do that when elimination, sabotage, subversion and manipulation works much more efficiently and focussed? At least for the 1% who believe themselves in power by scratching each others' backs.

Captcha: referee

Re:Don't complain

[flyingfsck]

Well, I advise my customers to avoid all foreign services, not just the USA. Whenever you send an email, it is backed up in at least 5 countries.

Re:Don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

The USA have decided to spy on every single person on this planet - OK, but now don't complain that this hurts your economy. If US companies don't like what's happening then they should complain to your government and make them change things.

That's what this is - people complaining to the government in the hope they change things. Nobody is blaming the victim. Nobody (with the possible exception of those at the top of the government) expects to have their cake (the spying program) and eat it to (no consequences).

So I don't understand the point of your post entitled 'Don't complain' which advises the American people to complain.

Re:Don't complain

[steelfood]

Work hard, and maybe some day in the future I will no longer advise my customers and friends to avoid US services.

You shouldn't. The U.S. has been doing this very thing since the 19th century. If you think that this is going to change in 10, 15, even 50 years, then read up on U.S. history and think again.

Re:Don't complain

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever you send an email, it is backed up in at least 5 countries.

Why five and which five?

What about american stock holders?

[Marrow]

We repeatedly hear that NSA is spying for industrial reasons. To give advantage to American companies. But the NYSE is full of foreign companies that are traded here. And those companies are in complex derivative markets. And the retirement portfolios of Americans. If its an truly international market now, but American companies are benefiting from the spying, then Americans are being hurt. Perhaps the difference is that foreign companies cannot contribute to politicians and political parties. Maybe that is the difference.

Re:What about american stock holders?

[Anonymous Coward]

We repeatedly hear that NSA is spying for industrial reasons. To give advantage to American companies. But the NYSE is full of foreign companies that are traded here. And those companies are in complex derivative markets. And the retirement portfolios of Americans. If its an truly international market now, but American companies are benefiting from the spying, then Americans are being hurt.

The potential gain from helping American companies that employ Americans, pay US taxes, indirectly support other American companies far outweighs the relative damage to the portfolios of Americans holding international stocks.

Re:What about american stock holders?

[steelfood]

Nobody cares about the little fry. It's only the people with big stakes in the big corporations that matter.

If your retirement fund disappears overnight, boo hoo for you. If some corporate exec doesn't land his multi-million dollar deal, someone's going to make it right.

who??

[hesaigo999ca]

>Does anyone but me think this is a problem for commerce?'
John Dvorak!, does anyone care why this guy cries in his sleep? The facts are ....the world has changed, get over it man, move on, we can never go backwards...it's like saying you wish you could still hunt mammoths in your bunny rabbit slippers with sticks....those days are gone. China has made damn sure of this, or USA has made damn sure to let us think that China has made sure of this. Take your pick.

Why not blame the companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not 100% up to date on all the news that's coming out on these leaks, but I remember seeing an article where HP is installing back doors to its hardware. And it's common knowledge that Apple colluded with publishers to artificially inflate e-book prices. It, doesn't take much Googling to find all the conspiracy theories behind Disney, and there's always someone comaplaining about Chevron(and the other similar vendors).

Why not blame the companies themselves for being dishonest?

Also, if "...none of the American companies can guarantee security from American spies." is a problem in negotiations with the EU, then the EU should talk to Russia on how to stop it. I bet they know how.

Re:Why not blame the companies?

[AHuxley]

Russia had some interesting crypto insights to offer.
The UK gov broke Soviet embassy codes early on but leaked coded Soviet efforts to their politicians and thus the press...
They ran so many agents that one time pads failed due to re use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project
Russia knew the West had subs, aircraft, tunnels and many other efforts all around their boarders/ under a few embassies. By the 1950's Soviet spies noted code use was not good and the Soviets stopped all chatter and went to one time pads.
At some point the Soviet Union got really, really sloppy again and the NSA/CIA got near total access again.
The Soviet Union only worked out their error due to a spy in the UK who worked at the London Processing Group (MI6)/GCHQ and later moved up into strange new Sigint efforts -American sigint satellites - Ryolite/Canyon - great for VHF and UHF.
Soviet diplomatic traffic was not safe, its strategic submarines where tracked (~Project Sambo http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/aldrich/vigilant/lectures/gchq/brawdy/)
-ie Russia can tell the EU: try one time pads not some fancy encrypted fax machine.
As for 'Why not blame the companies", the US has one neat legal option. If you write an Australia, Brazil or Germany or Japan OS, file system and crypto - sell it or gift it - trade deals start to come into force. No computer/OS/chip/crypto protectionism or subsidised national efforts.

Re:Why not blame the companies?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your rant would be more believable if you bothered to punctuate, spell correctly and form coherent sentences.

As written, you come off as a frothing, half-literate conspiracy nut job.

Actually not quite true...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps *if* you have the right connections you might profit for a little bit of industrial espionage. Write a letter to your Congressman/woman

Speculation and nothing more.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I start seeing sales drop in the quarterly statements of the mentioned companies, then I may consider that NSA surveillance may be the cause.

If sales actually drop AND surveys indicates that it is because foreign entities are concerned about US spying - showing a causal relationship then, I will believe it.

After all, it has been suggested that the Chinese were putting spying software into Lenovo comuters and it's done nothing to hurt their sales.

NSA cannot not spy

[Anonymous Coward]

That's their business. And it's not the spying that hurts the business, but the revelation if it.

Call me cynical; I'll call you naive if you thing the world would be better off without the spying.

Re:NSA cannot not spy

[Anonymous Coward]

Spying and mass surveillance of everyone and everything are different things are they not?

Re:NSA cannot not spy

[lennier]

Call me cynical; I'll call you naive if you thing the world would be better off without the spying.

Ok, you're cynical and I'm naive.

I'm not a US citizen. I have no voting rights to choose the US President. I have no desire to be spied on by the intelligence agencies of a foreign country whose leadership does not answer to me. And yes, I think all of the world which doesn't live in the USA would be better off without the USA spying on us.

I think you'll find there are a few more people living outside the USA than inside it, and I think you'll find that most of them share my view.

A defense contractor I consulted to refused using

[Anonymous Coward]

closed source software because of such concerns. Over the previous 5 years all their local competitors have seen issues with industrial espionage and data theft which took a few of them out of business since the government wouldn't deal with them any longer.
        When I came to consult for them, they had PCs installed with 8 LAN cards to function as l3 switches, their printers were behind a print server since they didn't trust the firmware and the staff was depositing their phones on entry to the facilities. This was all just their internal network which was physically isolated from the Internet. They had separate machines with no cd drives or usb ports that were painted red for handling emails. If any significant data was to be shared with another party, they would physically come to the facilities or would be met at their facilities with a security team and an engineer carrying a laptop.
        I was asked what can be done regarding cellphones since they wanted to allow their employees to use them and wanted some input from an outsider. I replied "Nothing." Detailed some, and took my standard commission.
        Every now and again they approach me with some proposal from some firm offering said service\product. Every time I review the proposal and raise the kind of security concerns they eventually reply "our property encryption..." I'm lucky enough that the CEO is a CS major so whenever I get them to spew that line, I get my check on the spot. One time I didn't even bother collecting since the entire ordeal was a 10 minutes conference call I took at home over lunch. :)
        I'm probably stating the obvious here, but this contractor doesn't leak. Ever. To the point I have no clue what it is they're actually working on. Something tells me half their staff isn't too sure about what they're doing either.

You need tech, not a law

[Anonymous Coward]

The article goes on to suggest that perhaps a California constitutional amendment confirming privacy rights might help (but would not guarantee a stop to Federal snooping).

The lack of guarantee is why it's pointless. If you want things to be secure, then make 'em secure. Then laws won't matter.

Re:You need tech, not a law

[erroneus]

Quite true in that law is only effective when it is followed and enforced. If people aren't RIOTING about the law makers and law enforcement offices of the nation not following the laws and the judicial not enforcing them, then it just shows that people seriously lack comprehension of just how bad things really are.

Is this ass-covering?

[DNS-and-BIND]

To be quite honest, California hurts California's business. This sounds like a fig-leaf excuse. "Oh, they're not investing because of some reason that's not our fault!" Tailor-made for CYA, an all-too-convenient cureall for a fire under your ass.

No, they're not investing because California has gone to great lengths to create a climate that is openly hostile to new business, and all business in general. But I expect the fig-leaf to work because the people who get the policies passed are not the same ones who have to answer for them.

Re:Is this ass-covering?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be quite honest, California hurts California's business. This sounds like a fig-leaf excuse. "Oh, they're not investing because of some reason that's not our fault!" Tailor-made for CYA, an all-too-convenient cureall for a fire under your ass.

No, they're not investing because California has gone to great lengths to create a climate that is openly hostile to new business, and all business in general. But I expect the fig-leaf to work because the people who get the policies passed are not the same ones who have to answer for them.

And yet California is the most productive rich state in the union. If you free market thinkers hate California because it is a red state (in the sense of socialism/communism) have the state secede from the union. Who wants all those commies infesting the paradise of free market capitalism.
Right ? Right ?
I'd say Californians should give the finger to the US. They'd be better off without subsidising the rest of intransigent, back looking republitard states. An independent California is a plus for California. An independent California is a negative for the rest of the US.
Free California or death !!!!!

Re:Is this ass-covering?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that's not what the numbers prove elsewise DNS-and-BIND

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/us/californias-new-problem-too-much-money.html

Political Correctness

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the ancient sport of looking down on Americans as uncultured slobs. Centuries go by and this pastime is evergreen. It never, ever gets old and the arguments are the same as they have always been.

Ah, the ancient Slashdot sport of getting all "offended" and wailing the instant someone says something "insensitive" about America.

Indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Last thing I heard, we have scrapped the tought of outsourcing our Exhange setup(or moving into the cloud as the bosses say).
Also since we have our own "cloud" spread over 2 locations with complete hardware redundancy, including storage, it is easier for us to keep it local.

It seems to me that reality finally caught up with management and they no longer trust that the companys information will stay inside.
Before, a limited number of users were allowed(through company policy and firewall unblocking) to use services such as Dropbox to communicate with external partners regarding less critical files, such as fabrication of print material, but now they want us to have our own "Dropbox" solution too.

I'd say that we are going to buy more hardware but less online services.

minimal trade = better trade

[noshellswill]

Since America runs a foreign-trade **deficit**, then any reduction in trade helps provide (net) employment  for American workers.  Nothing is more important. No chi.com B1z or narco.MEX chicken.pickers either.  Make capitol chase (citizen) labor. Sure --- some investment sharpies  and market gamblers get screwed, but they have-it-coming. No loss. We spit on their shrivelled bodies in the gutter.

Enjoy their  newly impoverished wives and daughters also as they get used to the "street" ... hehehe ... So please ... increase the intrusive spying on foreign producers and chase them the hell-away! Use-it-here / make-it-here is the best policy for working American producers of concrete needed good and services.

The NSA knows I bought tickets to Book of Mormon

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no. They'll tell everyone i went.

Easy Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans, live up to your constitution. In spirit, and not just in words. In actions and not just in rhetoric. Your move.

Re:Easy Fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans, live up to your constitution. In spirit, and not just in words. In actions and not just in rhetoric. Your move.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh my, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Man you're serious, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Freedom, justice and liberty are lost bit by bit until you realise all of a sudden the country you grew up with, admired and loved is no more. And by then it is too late.

Americans have sacrified everything on the altar of the "war on terror". If you further consider that no nation is as nationalistic as the US, things won't get better. A country that has a culture of the military in every aspect of society is already rotten to the core. It just takes time to see all that rot come up to the surface for all to see/enjoy.

Stop Deluding yourself

[wisnoskij]

Foreigners have never had, and never will have any trust or goodwill for any part or the whole of the US.

business man can lobby government

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a good thing, if companies start to remove their service from US will make business man to lobby government to be more clear about prism and give more privacy to data stored on US territory. Brazil wants to approve a law that makes Google, Facebook and others companies to store user information inside Brazil. Countries worried about Prism can start to do laws like this and damage California`s Business for sure. Brazil wants to nationalize servers (http://tinyurl.com/p2l56nu Google Translation)

Not a bit

[PopeRatzo]

There's not going to be any problem with anyone hosting anything in the US. What do you think all these lovely "trade agreements" are about?

The NSA will promise to "partner" with friendly foreign intelligence services and it will all be one big happy family except daddy has his hand under your skirt.

I guess the best we can hope for now is that there are some more brave whistleblowers out there who will risk their lives to keep this story front and center. And if that fails, the best we can hope for is that there are some brave saboteurs.

I have bad news for non USians

[Overzeetop]

Are you considering not dealing with the US over concern that the NSA is spying on your communications which pass through the US? I ask because the CIA are spying on pretty much every one else internationally. Oh, and should you feel that other countries are *not* spying on your communications...well, that's the kind of naivete they're counting on so that they can expect that you won't be moving to any annoying end-to-end communication encryption any time soon.

Have a great day!

Re:I have bad news for non USians

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and should you feel that other countries are *not* spying on your communications

My own government might be spying on me ... your government can fuck off.

Just because you guys are self entitled douchebags doesn't mean we need to enable you by buying products from your companies and providing even more data.

The US complains about possible Chinese back doors in their telecoms equipment, but why should any other country trust American products any more?

Hitting America where it hurts most is commerce. And many of your companies have become entities which are proven to not be trustworthy.

Deal with it.

Re:I have bad news for non USians

[Anonymous Coward]

I ask because the CIA are spying on pretty much every one else internationally.

... except the CIA has proven itself quite inept at doing anything except losing money. Exhibit 1: Aldrich Ames.

Not just "California" but all of US business

[erroneus]

I have been saying this since the Snowden releases -- because all of US products compromised by the NSA/CIA/FBI and used as spy devices, people will change the way they feel about US products and services INCLUDING communications.

I would find it not hard to imagine that other nations would begin setting up additional/supplemental communications links across the world to avoid passing through US controlled circuits. It simply makes sense to route around the damage. And F/OSS is also looking REALLY attractive to other nations as well.

Killing puppies is a cost of business.

[Overzeetop]

That's not the point. If you are not going to transact business in a country specifically over the concern about your puppies being killed, you should be aware of which other countries kill puppies as a matter of routine governmental intelligence gathering. And by which others, I mean all of them. In fact, I would say that any country who doesn't kill puppies as part of their internal intelligence operations either has no significant stake in world affairs or is lying. Killing puppies is a fact of modern intelligence gathering; no, let me restate that - killing puppies has always been a fact of all intelligence gathering: governmental, corporate, and private.

To pull out of a country over a "moral issue" and then to ignore such moral issues occurring everywhere else is just grandstanding.

Re:Killing puppies is a cost of business.

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but slightly incomplete in this case.
The headline, was written to sell the article, but it's misleading. It's not the spying that hurts trade, it's them getting caught and the very public revelations made after.

You should also notice something else. Until a decade, almost two, ago, if something like this made it to the newspapers, it would have been squashed fairly fast, not just inside USA's borders, but outside as well. Over time, there were a lot of mistakes made, a lot of pissed off allies and friends, and now it shows.

Thing is ... we'll see a lot more of these incidents, because the security issues that allowed people to copy secret documents en-masse, won't go away unless all those intelligence services will go through a very thorough restructuring ... and considering how political some things are, it probably won't be anytime soon.

Re:Killing puppies is a cost of business.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. There's a HUGE difference between being spied on by our own government which IS accountable to us, ultimately, and some foreign superpower that isn't. Sorry but that's the crux of it. We can do something about the first situation, democratically. What can we do about that bunch of evil sociopaths you voted in? Not a damn thing.

It's already happening. Watch your cloud providers collapse, and you brought it on yourselves. Well done (slow handclap).

Re:Killing puppies is a cost of business.

[davester666]

This revelation will make PETA very angry!

Re:Killing puppies is a cost of business.

[Nyder]

That's not the point. If you are not going to transact business in a country specifically over the concern about your puppies being killed, you should be aware of which other countries kill puppies as a matter of routine governmental intelligence gathering. And by which others, I mean all of them. In fact, I would say that any country who doesn't kill puppies as part of their internal intelligence operations either has no significant stake in world affairs or is lying. Killing puppies is a fact of modern intelligence gathering; no, let me restate that - killing puppies has always been a fact of all intelligence gathering: governmental, corporate, and private.

To pull out of a country over a "moral issue" and then to ignore such moral issues occurring everywhere else is just grandstanding.

God, some of you people are so fucking stupid it amazes me.

OMG WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG! And here I was thinking the Government was protecting the USA from foreigners (and perhaps even ourselves).

USA!
USA!
USA!

A-FUCKING-MEN

[korbulon]

This reminds of how they got Capone on income-tax evasion: it wasn't his (allegedly) serious and morally reprehensible crimes which did him in the end. Likewise, the overreach (such an understatement) of the NSA and "justice" department is now having serious consequences, not just the ones you would expect (e.g,. widespread moral outrage, constitutional crisis, shutting down and arrests). Things will change because of money, not moral outrage.

Germany 500 million calls, France 2 million

[Anonymous Coward]

"I didn't see any indication that Germany was targeted more than say, France or Brazil, which tends to disprove your assertion"

1) It's in the article, Germany had 500 million phone calls/emails/other recorded by NSA per month. France only 2 million.
2) Why would the correlation be proportionate to economy size? Surely terrorist activity? No? That's exactly their point, the ones spied on are the economic competitors of USA, Germany being the biggest economy in Europe and thus the most spied on.

But to put this in perspective, USA had 2 billion phone calls/emails/other recorded in a month, *not* included the meta data. So the NSA is far more out of control than people want to imagine. I doubt if they did a deal with Microsoft for intel on MS competitors, they would limit it to only foreign competitors. I doubt an agency that lies to Congress would think twice about leaking secrets on Congressmen. An NSA policy isn't any protection at all, it's just one mans arbitrary and easy to ignore rule.

simple solution

[odigity]

Secede. Get rid of the federal beast sucking at your throat while simulatenously choking it.

It'll make it easier for the rest of us to do the same, and then maybe we can finally know some peace.

Re:simple solution

[psydeshow]

+1 - unlike most states, California could actually pull secession off. Big population, lots of industry, geographically diverse and geographically isolated. Great trade connections. Plus most of the rest of the US wishes they'd fall off the edge of the continent already.

Good luck getting much water out of the Colorado river post secession, but that's been drying up anyway.

If California were to secede, I would move back in a heartbeat.

Re:simple solution

[TrentC]

Great trade connections.

Which are supported by trade agreements that were negotiated with the United States as a whole.

If California secedes, then it gets to negotiate those treaties all by its lonesome, including with the United States. Who wants to bet that they'll get the same terms?

Good luck getting much water out of the Colorado river post secession, but that's been drying up anyway.

I'm glad you think that water is so immaterial to California; how, exactly, do you think the new country will be able to produce enough food to support its citizens without it?

Doubt it.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

California's high cost of living, taxes, urban sprawl, over regulation, and bankrupt state budget is more a risk to California's business than some speculated blowback from NSA revelations.

Re:Doubt it.

[Anonymous Coward]

California's high cost of living, taxes, urban sprawl, over regulation, and bankrupt state budget...

You must be a Nielsen family. No wonder Fox "News" gets such good ratings!

Don't be stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

We are all "foreigners" (Earthlings).

I stopped using all US based services (to maximum possible), from this Spy show (Snow..) . This includes:

- Google
- Microsoft
- Apple
- HP
- Oracle
- Amazon
- Facebook
- Skype
- Twitter
- Any US Web Hosting or SaaS

Which I consider now Hostile entities. I also distrust anything US Based for now on. As a manager and advisor to Companies, I will either enforce this ban or advise this ban on Security grounds. And believe me that's a considerable amount. If the rest of the world does likes this, you can say BYE BYE to silicon valley industry.

I advise you to presure your government to backoff or pay the price of your tirany.

Re:Don't be stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Pro tip: Slashdot is a US based service.

Also, it's spelled "tyranny".

Re:Don't be stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

The "rest of the world" can suck my red white and blue cock!

tiny example

[roman_mir]

I switched to duckduckgo from google, it's a tiny, irrelevant (in the big schema of things) example, but understand that I used google exclusively for over a decade now and it took overcoming a serious mental block to do that and I did it anyway.

Re:tiny example

[Khyber]

Man I got some news for you.

DDG isn't so anonymous as you'd think.

There's a reason it's advertised all over 4chan - it's a CP and piracy trapper. Moot has been busted on this many times, especially on the hypocrisy of not allowing things to be discussed on /diy/ like the making of sex toys (because he's got advertising for sex toys already on-site, even in the supposedly SFW boards.)

Don't trust DuckDuckGo. Your best bet is to just rely upon links friends send you (and if you have interesting/engaging friends, you'll find what you're after anyways without needing to resort to a search engine.)

Re:tiny example

[daniel23]

There is https://www.ixquick.com/ which hopefully is a safer choice privacy wise. No, I'm not sure it really is but yes, I'm sure now Google is not.
I've been a Google user and admirer since they entered the net, one of the first to switch to the white page from altavista.
In a strange way it hurts me to turn away from them.
Googledrive (or grive, since Google never delivered on the Linux client) was the first to go since the file hosting / sharing works easy with ownCloud and it didn't involve much reconfig to switch to it.
Moving my calendars and contacts from Google to owncloud was less easy and I spend the better part of the weekend with it until I was ready to stage the big calendar and contacts massacer today.

Just a symbolic action, I know, my data are saved and kept in the NSA dungeon. No soul in Mountain View, California will miss me. Just some mindshare they've lost. And like I did when I turned from altavista, I'll be talking about this among my friends, some may follow.

It was inevitable.

[intermodal]

Nobody lets the wolves guard their sheep. If Google and so forth are letting the NSA in, there's no reason to let them hold your data.

It's a bit more than the global connections

[Khyber]

Much of the USA relies upon California for certain intra-state agricultural exports, like Hass avocadoes (those football-sized Florida avocadoes are crap, after all,) fresh produce, and more. (What's funny is most of our own walnuts get exported while we import from Brazil and eat those instead.)

If you think spying is hurting business, watch what happens when the agricultural economy can no longer compete with a big player like China. Cali is 9th or 10th place in the GLOBAL economy (coming in ahead of the USA as a whole.) Not what you call a desirable situation, because CA going down means the rest of the country will stumble right along with it, along with a fair bit of the global economy.

Not looking at the whole picture.

[ron_ivi]

California's also overlooking how much the NSA pays Facebook, Google, etc for that data.

I imagine it must be far more than the lost business.

Ner security products will fix that...

[Kazoo the Clown]

There's money to be made! Prepare to be barraged with encryption and other security products in 3........2.........1.........

The start of the new tech race

[Kimomaru]

"It points out that: 'Asian governments and businesses are now moving their employees and systems off Google's Gmail and other U.S.-based systems, according to Asian news reports."

The biggest concern any agency in this situation would have would probably be all of the adjusting that happens by the public when an operation like this is brought to the public's attention. European governments already seem to embrace open source solutions because the software is open to public scrutiny - this is a total watershed event for the open source movement around the world. I'm just shocked that people outside of the US ever used gmail, hotmail, or Facebook at all.

Next up - SMTP is going to be replaced with an encrypted platform. Count on it. Thirty year old, insecure technology being used to secure bank accounts? It's over. I give it about 2 years before someone comes out with something better.

And, yeah, before you say it - encryption is still a sore spot for spy agencies. The UK complained that their riots were fueled by Blackberry encryption when hooligans cordinated their destruction, and there have been enough cases showing defendants could/couldn't invoke the fifth ammendment when trying to deny access to their own encrypted storage (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/appeals-court-fifth-amendment-protections-can-apply-to-encrypted-hard-drives/).

Open source, encrypted platforms are going to be the most popular ones for the next five years. I wouldn't be surprised if someone tried to pass a bill this year outlawing or regulating encryption in the US.

Tip of the iceberg

[gmuslera]

California tech industry is a lot about intellectual property.What if the world decide to dismiss US intellectual property because US dismissed the intellectual property of just everyone else?

I Rank NSA 3rd most damaging to cali.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I rank Democrats & Public Labor Unions with their naughty bits rammed deep into each others orifices to be more damaging to the California economy. Then the greens. Then the 3 letter agencies. We're pretty much fucked out here. At least the weather's nice.

European view

[TheSync]

I was recently at an IT conference in Geneva.

A speaker from a large company there warned those attending (mainly from Europe) to avoid US cloud companies because of NSA spying. Not just US-based servers, but also any company with SUPPORT STAFF located in the US as well, even if the servers are located outside of the US.

Reason 1 is the risk of private company information flowing to competitors through the NSA either officially or through corruption.

Reason 2 is the legal risk of falling afoul of EU privacy laws by hosting in the US or with US support staff.

That's the report from Europe folks. You can call it FUD, but it is there nonetheless.

Two way street

[Alouster]

The trust was lost years ago in most countries and many alternative ways of communications have already bean established. Spying for financial gain is about equal in the top ten countries. Spying in most third world countries is so commonplace that is always taken as a given and any real issues must always be handled differently. America is also a leader in spying to control their own citizens. The public is just learning now and has yet to develop any real subversive anti-intrusive systems. These take time and are difficult to find otherwise they become useless. Where smaller countries spying on the public is far less prolific due to technology issues and differing priorities. The USA has lost a very large portion of world trade this way, but on the other hand many of the top companies backed by this government are advancing financially at the most accelerated rate in history. It appears to me that they are going to milk this puppy until it dies. Mean while California will devolve until her economics becomes equal to whatever the lowest common denominator is globally. We all live in a glass house now and alternative ways of communicating and thinking are going to evolve into common place soon than we think.

Ponzi/Pyramid

[NewYork]

We'll slowly realize that politics and business in globalization are nothing but giant ponzi/pyramid scams.

You're kidding, right?

[Cybele352]

You MUST be kidding... As Commerce is sooooo American ( you know stuff like Capitalism and so on...), you mean that it's "unamerican" to worry what your customers may think of your ways of dealing with commerce?

So it's ok for American to spy on other countries, companies and individuals whether on american soil and abroad, even more ok to do so for economic reasons, but it's "unamerican" to worry about the consequences of that same spying on commerce?

Sure... Right...