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NSA Internet Spying Sparks Race To Create Offshore Havens For Data Privacy
schwit1 writes "Some European leaders are renewing calls for a 'euro cloud,' in which consumer data could be shared within Europe but not outside the region. Brazil is fast-tracking a vote on a once-dormant bill that could require that data about Brazilians be stored on servers in the country. And India plans to ban government employees from using email services from Google and Yahoo Inc. It is too soon to tell if a major shift is under way. But the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimates that fallout from revelations about NSA activities could cost Silicon Valley up to $35 billion in annual revenue, much of it from lost overseas business. A survey conducted this summer by the Cloud Security Alliance, an industry group, found that 56% of non-U.S. members said security concerns made it less likely that they would use U.S.-based cloud services. Ten percent said they had canceled a contract. Even some companies that seek to profit from fears about U.S. snooping acknowledge that law-enforcement agencies in other countries want to catch up with Washington's capabilities. 'In the long run, there won't be any difference between what the U.S. or Germany or France or the U.K. is doing,' says Roberto Valerio, whose German cloud-storage company, CloudSafe GmbH, reports a 25% rise in business since the NSA revelations. 'At the end of the day, some agency will spy on you,' he says."
Before all this, people didn't even think about creating a real competitor for Google or Amazon. Now we can expect some real options for these services soon. This is good news for everyone, thank you USA!
First we rid ourselves of manufacturing to become a country of services and intellectual property. Then we destroy the reputation of our services by spying on everyone who uses them. Good job government. Good job.
And here's the big-ass BUT, really, DARPA built the Internet. Someone has been spying on some of it all along, most certainly. BUT the level it has risen to with the holy excuse of THA TURRISTS is unexcusable. The Snowden Shaming was long overdue.
Industrial espionage is a big concern. It has been known since at least 2001 (when Echelon was widely covered in the press and the European Parliament opened an investigation) that the NSA has intercepted communications among European companies and then handed over business secrets to their American competitors. Even if it wouldn't protect individuals' privacy, the idea is that a European cloud would protect European businesses.
I'm glad that someone is attempting to quantify this. As someone who works in sales for hosted services, I saw this trend emerge virtually overnight with the Snowden leaks - the complete erosion of trust for any service hosted in the U.S., even if the actual, measurable impact to date any of my customers of being spied upon is exactly nil.
Now if only someone would compare the impact to the NSA's operating budget and draw some lines, things might get better. I've been called an optimist before, however.
"Actual" and "measurable" are two different things. The simple truth is we don't really know the extent of what the NSA is up to or whom they're sharing this data with. Already there have been calls for this treasure trove of private information to be "shared" with private companies so they can "help out" in the fight against terrorism. And the fact that these organizations have the guts to publicly lobby for such access says to me that likely somebody somewhere in private industry already has access to some or all of it through "connections" and now wants this sharing legalized so their access to that knowledge can be leveraged for greater financial gain out in the open, in front of stockholders.
Who did what now?
Countries like France and UK, yeah, absolutely. Germany... is slightly more touchy about issues pertaining to surveillance and the general topic of totalitarianism, for some reason.
Iceland overthrew its government when said government wouldn't jail bankers. If Iceland says they ain't going to spy on people because fuck that, I would lean toward cautiously trusting them.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
Pretty much. Governments have long recognized that the existence of a decentralized packet-switched network makes spying on its citizens harder. Therefore, their goal is to break the Internet, splitting it off into lots of little regional networks that don't fully talk to one another, requiring companies to store data on their citizens in country-specific servers so that it is easier to keep track of everything that's happening, etc. Government would love to go all the way back to the circuit-switched days of mainframe computing if they could.
This is why we, as citizens of the world, must unite to demand more reasonable policies, starting with laws that fine companies an exorbitant amount of money for sharing information about their citizens with foreign governments without a warrant from the citizens' governments. If Google were hit with a million dollar fine every time it obeyed an NSL without getting a court order from whatever country the target was from, Google would then be forced to sue the federal government to reclaim those damages, forcing the U.S. government to act like a proper player on the world stage instead of a world-class thug that bullies its way into whatever information it wants.
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The fact that we don't know just makes it worse. We have to assume that the entire US and everything in it is compromised.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
And China has been accused of it many, many times - they barely even bother to hide it. Every country does it, then acts outraged when all the others do too.
Will they shutdown the FBI, CIA and NSA? The DHS?
It's not a "Free Country", or even a plausible republic, with Secret Police.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Eduard Snowden wasn't employed by the NSA, but by Booz Allen Hamilton, which belongs to the Carlyle Group. Think about the opportunities insider information offers to these kinds of investors.
Oh, shit.