Slashdot Mirror
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)."
All this caring about what foreigners think sounds Unamerican to me.
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
Pointing out someone else also kills puppies is no basis for a defense for you killing puppies.
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...
$(echo cm0gLXJmIC8= | base64 --decode)
This is talking about less foreign business for U.S.-based companies, e.g. European companies getting wary of hosting their stuff on a U.S.-based cloud provider. It is not discussing immigration, which doesn't have much to do with the NSA.
Less foreign business for U.S.-based companies would probably not increase the number of U.S.-based engineering jobs.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
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.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
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.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
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.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
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".