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F-Secure's Hypponen: The Internet Is a 'US Colony'
nk497 writes "Web users are vulnerable to mass online spying because the U.S. has too much power online, according to a leading security researcher. Discussing revelations of U.S. spying at his LinuxCon keynote speech, F-Secure's chief research officer Mikko Hypponen argued that the internet had 'become a U.S. colony,' at the expense of democracy. 'We're back in the age of colonization,' he said. 'We should think about the Americans as our masters.' Hypponen argued that its dominance over the web gave the U.S. too much power over foreign countries, noting that while the majority of European politicians likely use U.S. services every day, most U.S. politicians and business leaders don't, for example, use Swedish-based cloud services. 'It's an imbalanced situation,' he said. 'All the major services are based in the U.S.'"
the us invented it, did most of the work developing and deploying it, and funds most of the upkeep.
the rest of the world waited for it to be done, walked in, and started bitching.
People act like the US is the only country to have ever spied, when really, in this case, they just got caught. How do you know that others wouldn't be doing the same sort of monitoring? How do you know that they're not already?
We built the original infrastructure. The original backbone was developed here, and nearly all the funding came from US sources. Everyuthing else is an extension of that, and built on that framework.
Don't like it? Build your own, like China or Iran, and see how well corporations and people flock to use your "Internet".
Israel has been colonizing the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights since 1967l. Turkey has been colonizing Cyprus since 1974, probably encouraged by the example set by Israel. China has been colonizing Tibet since the 50's.
There are probably other examples but these are three of the most notable that continue today.
The problem is, what can be done about the problem that would actually improve matters?
The most commonly suggested answer is to turn it over to the UN, and, frankly, I don't think that there can be much argument but that would make matters immeasureably *worse* for the average user.
So wait..this gets modded troll for telling the truth? Nice way to mod dickwad :P
Where are the non-US-based search engines, social media sites, video hosts, and email providers? Yes they exist, of course, but there are almost no notable standouts. For every Vimeo there's a dozen US-based YouTubes.
You only have yourself to blame for complacently letting US businesses dominate these fields. The internet is based on open protocols and open networks. The playing field is level other than the minor niggle of ICANN's control of domain names and DNS root servers (minor since the internet works without DNS and could be replaced with something else). Hell, most countries have an advantage over the US considering our antediluvian telecom infrastructure.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I'd argue that "Colony" is sort of an unfair term: a "Colony" is something that I set up by getting some of my jackbooted thugs together, sailing to your country, and telling you that this is how it's going to be from now on, while drinking gin-and-tonics and exporting your resources to the home country.
On ye olde intertubes, it's sort of hard to 'colonize' somebody (especially since, unlike land, which hasn't been available in the "actually not populated by somebody you'll need to shove if you want to 'discover' it" flavor in centuries to millenia, the internet exists because it is built, and you can build more if you want more), except on the very limited scale of cracking their server and stashing stuff on it.
It seems that it might be fairer to say that the internet is more of an American shopping mall. It is true that, to a surprising degree (especially surprising in areas that have never liked us much, or for which we never bothered to do much localization), that lots of foreign traffic crosses into American-held internet infrastructure to work, play, and do business; but (unlike a 'colony') that isn't because that infrastructure used to belong to somebody else until we grabbed it, and the locals are still stuck there; but because once it was built, people came.
Anybody who doesn't fancy being watched by Uncle Sam, or a EULA-serf of a major American multinational(including US residents) should definitely give some strong consideration to how much of their activity is currently firmly within the grasp of the US government and a few cooperative (except on taxes) corporations; but if they want to get anywhere, the line of thought is going to have to be closer to "So, why does everybody go through $AMERICAN_COMPANY$ anyway, and why isn't there a homegrown equivalent elsewhere?" rather than following the misleading road of some sort of post-colonial process. There simply was no such colonization, so expecting to decolonize is going to fall into exciting category error fun time.
Perhaps the Japanese feel the same way about our domination of baseball.
I don't think comparing the fact that the majority of major services are based in the US to colonization is fair or helpful. As far as I can tell we didn't even use similar tactics. The only part of the "internet" which the US really has fought hard to control is related to the root name servers. We never required anyone to route their traffic through us, or stopped them from creating their own services (that could have been the "major" service).
Are a lot of services used world wide based in the US - I would say yes
Are US services more popular with US users than services in other countries - I would think so, they are likely in English and have a much better shot of providing a low latency experience.
Should the rest of the world create their own services to use - thats up to them
Just because the US happens to have services that people decide to use doesn't mean that the US is colonizing anything, it means that people are freely choosing those solutions - which I hope means that the US services have provided more value to those users.
Facebook and Google are US companies, but where is the Swedish made alternative?
This isn't a matter of US dominance, it's a matter of national boarders being meaningless on the internet. The security problem is that most of the hardware running the internet is located in the US, and rather rightly so given the internet was invented and built in the US.
Got a problem with that Sweden? Then build your own damn internet.
China seems to flip a switch on BGP and all the traffic gets routed through them. The US can't stop that. The problem is that the rest of world relies on US benevolence. Something they seem to be re-evaluating as we speak.
That is absolutely right. They are not bitching about spying. They are bitching about America has too much power to do spying and them (Finnish people ??) NOT! If the balance was tilted towards their side, do you think they would complain this much ? I think not...
Also, I'd prefer American's do the spying instead of Russians or god forbid Mujaheddin army from the garden variety of middle eastern kingdoms/banana republics. I am not a born American by the way, if you are going to try flaming me with phrases starting with "You, Americans always say it like that....blah-blah". It is common sense. Regardless how bad the freedoms are in this country, I'd rather not be anywhere else at this moment in time.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Or at least take the initiative in creating it.
Somehow, I trust the US colony over the European one, while still trusting the global democracy over the US version (esp. the NSA). If I could learn pictograms and had the marketable skills, I'd probably just move to South Korea or Japan. All I ask is fiber+freedom.
Ok, if we go along with his point for argument's sake, what are we supposed to do about it? And more importantly, who is responsible for a solution? The US, or US corporations, are behind the vast majority of developments and investments leading up to the internet as we know it. It's easy to complain about something someone else built and not offer any constructive suggestions.
The solution is to bring our own US government back in line with the Constitution, and recognize the spurious nature of arguments about mass and warrantless surveillance.
Making chunks amenable to foreign countries, with less protections (see arguments about Europe spying being literally 100x more intrusive) is just an insensate knee-jerk reaction: it is useful in practice only to bring pressure to bear against the US government to be more open and restricted.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
What do you mean by "all major services" have you forgotten Baidu. The do search, user submitted videos, cloud storage, cloud service hosting, etc. etc. I can even download Dr. Who episodes.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Two-time World War champs! Suck it, Eurotrash!!
Nobody is stopping other people from building their own services.
If you don't like the state of affairs whining about it isn't going to fix it.
I'd mod this if I had points. Every country with any power spies. We spy on our allies and they spy on us. When caught, the spies are simply sent home to be later replaced.
Also, I'd prefer American's do the spying instead of Russians or god forbid Mujaheddin army from the garden variety of middle eastern kingdoms/banana republics.
You would really rather be spied on by a country that has the capability to summarily execute you anywhere on the planet via drone strike, than a bunch of radicalized extremists living in tents, who couldn't get close enough to harm you, even if they really really wanted to?
Pardon me for finding that an odd position to hold.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
He wants you to have his man baby.
Use Baidu.com as your search engine and mail.ru as your webmail. Guaranteed privacy, not controlled by Americans!
You don't need to ask permission or pay a western "king" before competing with google or facebook you just need to execute. Who did the Chinese ask or pay before starting Baidu?
Talk is cheap, whining even cheaper. As a US resident I certainly hope the rest of the world treats NSA as a wakeup call to diversify. The more distributed services are, the more choice there is in the market the more *EVERYONE* wins. Get off your asses and compete.
As a European I must agree with the Americans in these comments. 'Colony' is not a fair word to use in this context. And we only have ourselves to blame - nothing but our own lack of innovation in this field has stopped us from developing competing services.
The beauty of the current system (American inspired) is that it isn't bureaucratically locked to certain providers. There are dominant companies, sure... if you don't like it, quit whining for the socialist governments of the world to come save you and go compete.
Under US control: Spying
Under "International" control: Censorship
You mad
They are, it's just that individual states of Europe has a intelligence budget so low, they couldn't even spy on their own citizens let alone foreigners abroad.
Why should I, as a citizen of Europe, have less rights online than US citizens? Especially when we are talking about companies (Google, Microsoft, etc.) that operates within EU, whom are also forced by US law to give away stuff to US government.
Europe should create laws where service providers (working directly or indirectly in Europe) can't give the user's data to third parties without (very least) informing the user in question. Purpose of these laws should be aimed at conflicting with US's FISA request-law which prevents me from knowing if my data is given away or not.
As a European (Danish) I must agree with the Americans in these comments. 'Colony' is not a fair word to use in this context. And we only have ourselves to blame - nothing but our own lack of innovation in this field has stopped us from developing competing services.
While some level of monitoring goes on in every Western country, most national intelligence bodies don't have the resources to tap at the same level as the NSA. Just look at the budget of the NSA compared to that of Finland or Poland's intelligence ministries. The NSA can tap fiber even outside the US, but even wealthier and more powerful European governments don't enjoy that same luxury.
True, but no other country on earth likes to boast about FREEEEEEEEEEEEDOM!!! as much as the US.
I don't think most people believe the US is the only country that does this, just the one with the most cognitive dissonance.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Somehow I believe there is substance to the idea that a document written before the automobile, automatic weapons, missiles, mass communication, computers, vaccines, etc. may not be the same document to form the best basis for a government in a country existing after the discovery of all of that, and the great many technological wonders to soon follow.
Sure, we can amend, but isn't that like patching legacy code too damn old for the machine it's running on?
I will agree that in this point in time, until a real alternative is written and voted on, the constitution needs greater protection than it has been afforded in the last decade especially. But I don't see "getting back to the constitution" as the end-all, be-all solution, just a step.
What we really need is a new constitutional convention to draft a new constitution, or at the very least one hell of a big patch, a bill of reform perhaps.
Maybe it's just Europeans or westerners that are affected by or really notice this US dominance of the internet. Our most eastern asian relations don't seem concerned - but please anybody from an east asian culture feel free to chime in and enlighten me beyond my 30 seconds of googling.
And what does freedom, and the "boasting" about said freedom, have to do with spying or the lack thereof?
Nothing, unless it is done illegally against it's own citizens. Which it is, and we're not too happy about, sure enough. That aside, why would the American constitution give foreigners freedoms when they are in another country and are, instead, bound to that country's rules and regulations?
If anything was an "American" colony, the languages would be those of native Americans. What language do you speak? English? That means you're part of the British Empire, just like the entirety of the English-speaking world.
I think the assumption is that if those governments had as much power, then the damage they could inflict would be proportional. If the US couldn't do anything with the knowledge, then no one would care.
IIRC that was a Swedish thing, and quite popular at one time.
Just becasue some contries are still doing these things doesn't mean we are still in the age of colonization. Colonization has always been going on. The Age of refers to a period of time where it was happing on a large scale. Such as all of Africa and all of East Asia. There are still kingdoms in Europe but we are no longer in the Age of Monarchy. North Korea is communist but we are not in the Age of Communism.
All bets are off when your hand is revealed, man.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
No, but the US sucks becuase it got caught. If you're gonna spy on your friends, you CAN NOT get caught. Period. Relying on the silence of underlings only shows off your real weakness.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Also, I'd prefer American's do the spying instead of Russians
Since you're a greengrocer and I'm not, can you explain why there's an apostrophe in "American's" but not "Russians"?
and stop whining about it
Well IPv6 could change this, if it's true. US is not the world leader on this internet. So many US network admins don't want to get on, they like their /8 10.x.y.z. So we slide further and further back while others charge ahead.
Because the Internet would be SO much freer and friendly to dissent, political debate, and just about anything else with Iran, China and Russia managing the whole thing! After all, we all know how much more accommodating they are to freedom of speech and differing views, with their constitutional protections and track record of far less censorship than the United States! ...oh,wait...
You would really rather be spied on by a country that has the capability to summarily execute you anywhere on the planet via drone strike, than a bunch of radicalized extremists living in tents, who couldn't get close enough to harm you, even if they really really wanted to?
I find it rather amusing that you consider England, Russia, and China to be a bunch of "radicalized extremists living in tents".
What this article is bitching about is essentially "Everybody goes to the US to setup companies, data centers, hire tech people, and that's not fair". Bullshit, there's nothing the US does to force people to setup their stuff in the US. There's nothing the US does to penalize anybody in other places.
There are a wide variety of reasons why the internet is "US-centric" for most services, but US having some kind of vague, undefined Authoritarian Control is not one of them.
A lot of people avoid the EU because of Net filters and (in their mind) excessive privacy regulations. People avoid China and Russia because they have little or no confidence those governments are not going to simply take their assets. And more to the point in the case of Russia and China, most people assume they'll have all their data and intellectual property straight ripped off... of course no mention of that recently because right now the NSA is the bogeyman people are hiding from.
If you don't want the internet to be US-centric then it's easy to solve it- make your own country a more appealing place to setup shop. The US offers relative stability in terms of economy, infrastructure, and laws, and if you look at the planet and where communications lines run it's "centralized". You could try setting up in a country in the Middle East, but political instability, poor infrastructure, and lack of a wealth of advanced educational services make it a pretty piss-poor region to consider right now. So if you're going to try and offer Internationally available services the US is currently the logical place to be.
And what are you going to gain by moving elsewhere? Technically the NSA's job IS to spy on other nations, the controversy is that they got caught doing it to US citizens. You still have to worry about the NSA everywhere else, in addition to the local governments. Sure, setup shop in Saudi Arabia, that sounds great until the local Dictator decides you're violating some religious requirement and shuts you down. China? Get ready to see your products show up on the black market with a minimally altered logo affixed. South America somewhere? Nope, there's crap for infrastructure and political stability is a major issue. Asia? Sure, some countries are appealing, but again you're looking at connections to the rest of the world having to go either through the US, or politically unstable regions.
Pardon me for finding that an odd position to hold.
Hold whatever position you desire, but please at least try to base it in some type of semblance of reality.
They also have the capability of burning my house down because I support... educating women, and you know, letting them drive and stuff.
I judge by words and actions, and _as long as those are in check_, I don't really care what anyone knows, in fact I'd feel safer knowing people weren't just getting along cause of what they don't know.
Posting anonymously because I don't trust all the idiots reading this forum even a quarter as much as the guys with drones.
Perhaps it's about time we overthrow the evil overlords and take the wild west for ourselves?
Except they all got caught. How quickly you seem to forget that damn near every country with any sort of importance has been spying both on it's own citizens and foreigners. It's almost like you intentionally cherry-pick your "facts" to give yourself a false sense of European superiority.
with blackjack!
But NO hookers!
Since the US basically created the internet and developed the first services for it, the US has been ahead in terms of training and proliferation of internet services. Silicon Valley has been supplying the world with some of the best sites for a decade at least. The companies start in the US and become international, and countries that were new to the internet now have access to all these novel services and can't readily compete because they are behind.
But now, you see, those sites are on servers--physical machines--that chiefly reside in the US, where secret US courts and agencies can claim "National Security" and have access to those servers. Gotta love jurisdiction. Even if part of the network is in America, it's an American business, and thus the gates are open to the company's sites in other countries. What a mess!
Worse still is the fact that, because the US has been doing the internet longer, we have intelligence agencies better equipped (trained/familiar with) to cracking, hacking, and stealing information. They apply these techniques to other nations they don't have a cheap backdoor into, and spy on them electronically. Bonus points if that nation is struggling to secure their new internet setup, they are a prime target for the NSA...
Remember: The internet is a very sucessfull DOD project.
"The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was one of the world's first operational packet switching networks, the first network to implement TCP/IP, and the progenitor of what was to become the global Internet. The network was initially funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later DARPA) within the U.S. Department of Defense.
Interesting how you mention "bound to that country's rules and regulations".
The US doesn't always feel this is applicable either (see the Michael P. Fay case as an example)
The web is not a US colony it is a meritocracy. In this case the US has most of the services which are essential for NOW. But this may not always be the case. So, Sweden and other countries that are upset should start working on the technological things that might give them the edge in the future.
In this world it is now all about the information and the technology. There is no fair and balanced here. Whoever knows the most... wins.
GC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
A false sense of WHAT? I cherry picked WHAT??? I'm sitting here in CALIFOIRNIA just sort of shooting off repsonses to idiots, I'm not writing a peer-reviewed article, just an opinion, AS AN AMERICAN, understanding however that the US GOV is OFF ITS ROCKER as a democratic institution, and I'm a european shill now? So much for land of the free... OUR government is out of control. Scrape the shit out of your eyes, brother. This govnernment set out a plate of delicacies called the "Internet", implicitlly said "I will govern this gift with a benevolant hand", and then whosale helped itself to whatever secrets it wanted. That's morally wrong, I don't care what you say. This government is under the illusion that it knows what's right. The last 10 years show it really isn't. To believe otherwise is to be blind, or complicate.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I agree that our government is out of control, but you just sound like a lunatic.
"People act like the US is the only country to have ever spied, when really, in this case, they just got caught. How do you know that others wouldn't be doing the same sort of monitoring? How do you know that they're not already?"
Really? Name for me a country that isn't totalitarian and has the same breadth, depth, and unimpeded access to global information. If this was China, nobody would be surprised, because that's what China does: spy on people, their own citizens no less.
The big deal isn't that the NSA is spying, it's how much they are, how far they can go, and how powerless the world is to stop them (who is going to sanction America that the US can't just ignore?). The potential for abuse is staggering, and the only way to keep out the NSA is to cut off access to America (which would make global business suffer horribly), and even then that's not a sure bet (thanks Stuxnet).
Nobody's stopping other countries from doing whatever they want with their portion of the internet. It's as simple as that. Stop bitching and do something about it. Look at China.
that way they get all the shit for corrupting the lives of ignorant 3rd world people, while I as an innocent by-stander from Europe don't have to deal with it, just reap the the goods.
I think the assumption is that if those governments had as much power, then the damage they could inflict would be proportional.
But they don't, which makes it a terribly inaccurate comparison.
If the US couldn't do anything with the knowledge, then no one would care.
Which is why I find OP's position odd, since the US very much can do stuff with the knowledge. Bad, unpleasant stuff.
Considering probability, it's a lot more reasonable to fear the US government's panopticon than one that Osama bin Deadtowel might have built in some remote Turkaturkastani cavern.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The internet is a global and somewhat de-centralized collection of networks. Those that do not wish to participate in it may avoid it. If you don't like the U.S. connected internet, then disconnect your PC/ISP/state/country. Make your own or or not, it's entirely up to you.
The U.S. invented and built today's internet. It's not unreasonable for them to be a driving, or even controlling force behind it. If you don't like that;
Step off, bitch! But don't get on the American internet and whine about America's control. The ONLY people entitled to that privilege are U.S. citizens.
I also am in California, and I can attest to the fact that there are lots of lunatics here. Not as many is Florida per-capita-wise, but it's still pretty bad.
where is my pyramid?!
"I'd prefer American's do the spying"
And who would you prefer to chop your head off? This is not the case of "lesser of two evils" - spying on foreign nationals and governments is illegal under a number of international laws and it doesn't matter if it's Oman, the USA or the freaking Vatican - it's still wrong and should not be happening.
I don't get the issue about USA boasting about freedom. So what? Europe likes to boast about brotherhood and tolerance, but it's hardly achieve anything close. China likes to boast about harmony, and we all know what goes on there. If we follow your logic, we would conclude that if the USA government were to suddenly renounce the use of the word freedom, you would deem it as a kind of progress. That's silly.
They are not bitching about spying. They are bitching about America has too much power to do spying.
Personally what I finding hard to deal with is the amazing level of hypocrisy. The US tries to project a picture that it is a beacon of democracy, high moral values and an all round "good-guy"...and then spends its time going around behind all its friends and allies backs spying on them. It is probably correct to assume that other countries do this too and there may even be good arguments for it in some cases (although I have trouble understanding the motivation for bugging European leaders' phones) but nobody else tries to claim that their country is some amazing paragon of virtue that everyone else should follow.
So while I might agree that if I'm going to be spied on I'd rather it be by the US than by others the rest of the world would really appreciate it if you could lay off the hypocritical good-guy act. The US may come off looking very good compared to some of the more troubled nations on this planet but compared to some of the better ones they are beginning to look rather dodgy.
1) There is a reason why tech VC is concentrated in the US - our laws don't punish the greedy 0.1% who put cash in high-risk startups. The rest of the Western world is way behind us due to tons of crazy legal restrictions on VC.
2) Companies like Google may be founded and headquartered in the US, but they are really global companies with workers, offices, servers, and taxable incomes everywhere around the world.
As if unanimity ruled the original convention.
Been on /. a long time, lunacy is in the eye of the beholder. If the king of lunatics as big as the US Gov, who among the peons can say any particular person is a lunatic with any credibility?
I've been a life-long cinservative. Now, the way I see it, the US Government is the lunatic. If your livelyhood depends on that entiity, who are you to question it, right? Of course everyone else is a lunatic.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Slow down and try to understand what people are saying. Their points are that the US is trampling on a bunch of liberties, but most other places in the world would be doing worse with the same amount of power. The best place to have your data center is in the US because, well look at the clashes between big tech companies and governments like Italy's, China's, Russia's, Australia's, etc. It would be much, much worse if the Syrian governement were in the US's position, for instance.
It's all Disney's Fault. They build a theme park and the entire region goes to hell in a hand basket. *removes tongue from cheek*
"There are a wide variety of reasons why the internet is "US-centric" for most services, but US having some kind of vague, undefined Authoritarian Control is not one of them."
Eh. Paying someone to set up your shop in a foreign legal jurisdiction is precisely a 'vague, undefined' control. Whether that becomes Authoritarian or not depends on that jursidiction. Like, say, that government actively spies on its citizens. That it breaks into the houses of Journalists to steal their notes on government corruption. That likes to do strange things with missiles if a different nation is not suitably apologetic for existing with opinions. Has a habit of installing back doors in software, hardware, cracking into everything it can get its paws on, and compromises the robustness of citizens generally want to secure their documents.
If any of a fair fraction of those occur, then it's not 'vague, undefined' control, it's 'vague, undefined Authoritarian' control. No matter the case, it's just head-in-the-sand stupid to entrust critical or sensitive materials and documents within a legal jurisdiction that the company (or government) is not also in.
Those laws would do nothing. In fact, it's very likely that anyone supporting those laws would lose major monitary support for having that stance, but also you can't really make laws that regulates a company's actions in another country.
The most you can do is to not do business with any company that complies with those US laws, in which case you're telling companies to choose to operate in your country or in the US. And good luck convincing people your country is a bigger market than the US. Most international companies cannot afford that loss.
Ironically, the leaks make the U.S. one of the most transparent countries right now. Nothing seems to stay hidden.
It's also telling that "they got caught" by a self-declared American patriot. Even if the U.S. government doesn't encourage whistleblowers, many Americans see it as a public service.
Not just a two-front war, a two-theatre, multi-front war. The US was simultaneously engaged in ground operations in France, Italy, North Africa, and in islands in the Pacific, was engaged in naval maneuvers in the North Sea, the central Atlantic, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Pacific, and had air/bombing operations over Europe and Asia.
The US was lucky in that vital production infrastructure wasn't located close to the war, and was far enough away that even raid-type attacks were impractical. Contrast to France where they were taken within months, and Russia, that ceded territory like mad until the Germans failed to build out enough to make up for the distance and lack of scavengable resources in Russian territory. The United Kingdom enjoyed at least a modicum of this kind of isolation, insofar as they couldn't be ground-invaded quickly, but their infrastructure was still vulnerable to both bombing and to small-teams insertion, so they had to be particularly vigilant, committing resources that the US simply didn't need to spend defensively.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If you don't want the internet to be US-centric then it's easy to solve it- make your own country a more appealing place to setup shop. The US offers relative stability in terms of economy, infrastructure, and laws, and if you look at the planet and where communications lines run it's "centralized".
What is your point, actually? Are you suggesting that having stability and thereby attracting service providers justifies using those service providers to spy on people? And if you don't live in a country with an economy comparable to the US, you deserve to be spied upon, because it's your own fault for not "solving it"? It's "easy to solve", after all.
I'm not really a fan of those FTFY kind of comments, but for the sake of your own education:
[T]he controversy in the US is that they got caught doing it to US citizens.
I can assure you, that is not what is the controversy elsewhere.
No, but the US sucks becuase it got caught. If you're gonna spy on your friends, you CAN NOT get caught. Period. Relying on the silence of underlings only shows off your real weakness.
No, you morons just have an axe to grind and are jumping at the chance. I don't see you pissing and moaning about the GCHQ, so fuck off.
Ok normal I'm the guy apologizing for our actions around the globe & embarrassingly enough lately at home and I defintly agree we need more high tech companies around the world (competition is good for everyone after all). But lets not forget the internet is and will always be in some ways ours. It was American brains & American dollars that built ARPANET & American collages & companies that built the tech that powers most of the net. AT&T, UC Berkeley, Sun & the list just keeps going. No disrespect to Tim Berners-Lee & Linus Torvalds indeed the are shining examples of what the rest of the world has to offer to the web (even if Berners-Lee was just trying to reimplement Apples HyperCard).
We won't nor should control computer sciences forever but the foundations where all built here in the good old USofA & that meens rightly or wrongly Shona Ghosh is right the net is an American colony because at the end of the day the Internet is and always will be and American invention that we shared with the world. You can replace our GPS with Galileo or GLONASS but I don't think you'll find it as easy to replace all we've given to the Internet.
Slow down and try to understand what people are saying. Their points are that the US is trampling on a bunch of liberties, but most other places in the world would be doing worse with the same amount of power. The best place to have your data center is in the US because, well look at the clashes between big tech companies and governments like Italy's, China's, Russia's, Australia's, etc. It would be much, much worse if the Syrian governement were in the US's position, for instance.
If that's the point OP was trying to make, they should have actually said it.
Intent is pretty damn hard to infer from an anonymous online posting.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
if it wasn't [us], it would be someone else
isnt that the exact excuse that China used for selling arms to Darfur?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
and I really like it. However, I found it more by luck than it finding me (cubieboard).
If the folks in the EU want Americans to use their services:
1- Advertise in the US. I haven't seen many ads for VPN, secure email, cloud services, etc, on the media I read in the US.
2- Be cost effective. No, $15-$20USD for an email account isn't cost effective. I run my own VPS with SSL for about the same cost in the US, and I could probably do that more cheaply. There are other services based out of the EU that I've looked at, and they have all been more costly than I could justify to myself or my boss.
3- Most Americans wanting that extra warm feeling of security away from snooping need to have the limitations of the local regulations clearly spelled out to them. I have no idea what jurisdictional differences there are between Norway, Switzerland, and Monaco. I know what they are in the US, and am familiar with some of the limitations of our neighbor states. Likewise, I wouldn't expect anyone coming from outside the US to know what our limitations are, but typically US businesses have a very clear Terms of Service that lays all of that out. Most EU based service providers I've looked at do not spell things out very clearly in terms of jurisdictional limitations, etc.
4- Unfortunately, because of US geographical limits, we 'Muricans also don't speak many more languages than just US English, which makes it even more difficult.
That's exactly it. As Americans we're taught about our founding fathers fighting against tyranny in the run up to the American Revolution. So not only do we see it as a public service, we see it as defending liberty from the hands of tyrants.
"The NSA can tap fiber even outside the US, but even wealthier and more powerful European governments don't enjoy that same luxury."
Why? It's not that hard to do. You're also making a huge assumption that it's not already being done. I find that amusing.
Yes, I quite agree with this. I wonder if a more appropriate name for the current era in terms of politics and demographics would be the Age of Migration?
For example, on my father's side, he and his three siblings were born and raised in Maine, US. His parents lived their entire life in Maine except near the end of their lives when they moved to a nursing home near Boston to be near one of their children. None of the children stayed in the state after college. And their kids in turn moved around even more than the parents did.
Now, we're seeing similar effects on the global scale with people moving easily between states (the obstacles being by far more political than physical). I think one very big effect will be the decline of nationalism. If you hop between nations relatively frequently, then you're less likely to be tied to any of them.
Everyone's doing it, and if they aren't, that just means they've not been caught yet, and if they really aren't, they might. They're only treating you like a paranoid lunatic because they're all hypocrites.
Still, congratulations for resisting the urge to suggest that everyone but you is secretly a terrorist.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Who is to blame for the fact that no nation other than the US has come up with a paradigm or service that the whole world has decided they need?
I'm as much against US domination of global politics and economic issues as anyone, but I don't blame the US for the fact that they have a lot of successful internet businesses. No one is forcing anyone to use their services. There are competitors in other nations (e.g. Baidu) that haven't spread outside their local markets. There are forums and services which cater to local markets.
It's not like you can claim that it's so outrageously expensive to register a .com that no one from another nation can compete -- far from it.
If you want someone to blame, look to your own citizens who'd rather pony up the cash for an American service rather than buying locally. Take a look at your local services and ask yourself why they aren't achieving greater market share.
I think you'll find they all have one problem in comparison to their American counterparts: they suck donkey balls.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
That the US outfitted a submarine (the USS Jimmy Carter) some years back to tap undersea fiber has been widely reported. I am unaware that any continental European nation has developed the same capability. Perhaps you can enlighten me by linking to some report?
In the 1780s...
* Guns took awhile to shoot.
* Explosives were relatively weak and difficult to put together.
* Plenty of resources and land to be had.
* Someone in Philadelphia couldn't plot against the country with any real ease.
* To stay well, you stayed the fuck away from everyone else and prayed.
Those are a few examples.
Today...
* You can mow down 20 school children in no time flat.
* You can download how-to guides on how to put together explosives, some with a bit of power, using readily available ingredients.
* Able bodied men and women, willing to work, end up unable to find a job or shelter.
* Someone in Seattle can receive foreign funding anonymously to attack a given target.
* Vaccines save millions of lives annually, but only work when "the herd" is vaccinated.
We have policy interests in reducing the availability of weapons that can kill dozens easily, making sure everyone can work, preventing the actions of crazy people and ensuring everyone gets vaccinated. People forget that the fundamental idea behind a country is that we have a duty to each other.
I would add the speed and nature of voting as well. There is no need for the electoral college. We have many new, modern ideas for voting that allow for greater representation [and I don't just mean third parties].
Now you may disagree with these examples, but that doesn't mean that at 226 years the document doesn't need some heavy revision. If you were to select any 226 years in human history, none would be as drastic in change as the last.
What fucking hole did they find you in? I'd prefer nobody spy, but seeing as we do not live in that world, i certainly don't want any nation with that broad a reach.
The Belgian banks tried this and were betrayed by their own politicians who bent-over for US-ian spies.
That is absolutely right. They are not bitching about spying.
Yes they are are.
They are bitching about America has too much power to do spying and them (Finnish people ??) NOT!
They are complaining about that as well.
If the balance was tilted towards their side, do you think they would complain this much ? I think not...
You're an American trying to rationalize their own bad behavior. What they're doing, spying on friends, is completely unethical. What others are doing is completely irrelevant. That's children's logic ("he did it first!"). The only context where spying is okay is war. In other words declared enemies. And definitely not the phony "war" they're currently waging. Which in any case is irrelevant to the vast majority of the population apart from the wasted resources.
Also, I'd prefer American's do the spying instead of Russians or god forbid Mujaheddin army from the garden variety of middle eastern kingdoms/banana republics.
Your logic is broken. Two wrongs don't make a right.
I am not a born American by the way, if you are going to try flaming me with phrases starting with "You, Americans always say it like that....blah-blah".
A religious convert is often the most fanatical.
It is common sense.
No it is not - it is dishonest and hugely harmful behavior. They have proven they are not friends and not to be trusted. I will deal with them when I have to but will avoid them when I can. Millions, may be billions, feel the same. That's going to have a measure-able effect on the US economy. US people living in their own bubble tend to forget their population is <5% of the the world's population. They're a tiny minority.
Regardless how bad the freedoms are in this country, I'd rather not be anywhere else at this moment in time.
Irrelevant. Unfortunately, like many people who support the spying etc. your logic is pretty dubious. Please, lift your game and start thinking about it more deeply.
You would really rather be spied on by a country that has the capability to summarily execute you anywhere on the planet via drone strike, than a bunch of radicalized extremists living in tents, who couldn't get close enough to harm you, even if they really really wanted to?
I find it rather amusing that you consider England, Russia, and China to be a bunch of "radicalized extremists living in tents".
So, are you saying that, e.g., China has the capability to send a team to anywhere in the world to kidnap some guy they want, or send a drone to kill him where ever he is? Or, England, has the capability to invade a country halfway around the globe because some terrorist head guy is presumed to be hiding in there?
Whether China, Russia, etc are living in tents or not is immaterial. The important point is, you are safe from those countries as long as you stay far away from their territories, which means 99% of Americans living in America are safe (those 1% like to travel around the world).
Perhaps you can enlighten me by linking to some report?
You catch a student cheating. The student puts on a smirk and says: "What's the big deal? Everyone else is doing it -- prove me wrong."
And of course you can't prove a negative.
Don't quote me on this.
if the USA government were to suddenly renounce the use of the word freedom, you would deem it as a kind of progress
Yes it is. It means they would have the moral ground to look at what they did and fix things, instead of having to pretend they can't do wrong.
Don't quote me on this.
If you are seriously worried that the U.S is going to execute you with a drone strike, you need to put your tinfoil hat back on and get back down in your mother's basement and stop bothering us adults...
Everyone else understood, you just didn't read the post properly before you got to replying.
Website operators are responsible for moderating user content as you say. If someone posts libelous comments the owner must remove it.
There's no requirement to use real names or for operators to record them, however, which means there are plenty of nasty Slashdot-like cesspools. The trash talk is just between forum names, not real ones.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Isn't that the exact excuse everyone uses when arms are sold to others?
The NSA is just doing its job. Slipped up on a few corner cases, watching yanks.
So is this the TSA's job?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/10/25/1939214/feds-confiscate-investigative-reporters-confidential-files-during-raid
Now THAT is EVIL. And probably LEGAL, for current values of law.
--
Let's outsource our government.
Any type of hegemony will have awkward repercussions and collateral damage.
Casteism
it's true, the internet has been tailored by the u.s regime. as if it werent bad enough the u.s regime controled all the major search engines, i have done searches on politically sensitive subjects on google, yahoo, bing, and even the Chinese search engine baidu (and Russia's yandex), and all of them will turn up results that are favourable to the west. for example, if you try to search for something negative about the west, usually you will turn up with unrelated items. however, if you try to search for anything regarding China, you will turn up with negative results, even on baidu. thats how much control america has over the internet. the internet was invented by darpa as a weapon. so what do you expect?
People act like the US is the only country to have ever spied, when really, in this case, they just got caught. How do you know that others wouldn't be doing the same sort of monitoring? How do you know that they're not already?
No, not other country devotes the same amount of resources to the spying stuff.
Is not like "they just got caught", stop being that naive.