Slashdot Mirror
How the NSA Is Harming America's Economy
anagama writes "According to an article at Medium, 'Cisco has seen a huge drop-off in demand for its hardware in emerging markets, which the company blames on fears about the NSA using American hardware to spy on the rest of the world. ... Cisco saw orders in Brazil drop 25% and Russia drop 30%. ... Analysts had expected Cisco's business in emerging markets to increase 6%, but instead it dropped 12%, sending shares of Cisco plunging 10% in after-hours trading.' This is in addition to the harm caused to remote services that may cost $35 billion over the next three years. Then, of course, there are the ways the NSA has made ID theft easier. ID theft cost Americans $1.52 billion in 2011, to say nothing of the time wasted in solving ID theft issues — some of that figure is certainly attributable to holes the NSA helped build. The NSA, its policies, and the politicians who support the same are directly responsible for massive losses of money and jobs."
As soon as software catches up and makes it practical, the rest of the world is going to dump the US cloud forever.
Had you any business acumen, you'd realize that your short-sighted vision will bite you in the bum long-term. "Yes, we suck, but the other guys suck worse" Eventually, someone will come along/transform to provide a better solution and eat your lunch.
If the American security infrastructure is going to turn American corporations into de-facto arms of the intelligence process, then nobody has any choice but to not trust them.
Anything involved in the security of the internet that's been tainted by being complicit with the NSA et al can't be trusted. So Cisco is going to feel the pinch.
Anything in 'the cloud' ran by a US company is subject to PATRIOT Act demands. So Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon ... they're all going to feel the pinch. And Google's hosted solutions for email is also something you can't trust.
When the NSA undermines security for their own ends, then anything they've had a hand in can't be trusted.
So the end result is most governments and companies in other countries more or less have to look at any US player as not trustworthy, or actively hostile to your goals.
As long as you keep acting like your security trumps the sovereignty of everyone else ... well, the only answer is to say "OK, fuck you" and cut you out of the picture entirely.
All of your big corporations are more or less presumed to be lying (because they can't admit to participating in this), complicit with collecting data to send back to Big Brother, and violating local privacy and data access laws.
And since 'Murica has been railing about how the Chinese are infiltrating their stuff (while doing the same thing), and complaining about countries which restrict a free internet ... they've lost a position of having the moral high ground. The US is doing everything they accuse other countries of doing, only they're apparently doing it on a massive scale.
So, yes, this should have an impact on the US economy. And you can choose to stay the course and see it keep happening, or you can fix the problem. And so far, we've seen no evidence whatsoever there's any contrition or accepting that what they did was going to piss off everyone else.
But when all of those orders start getting cancelled, and new ones stop coming, don't stand around wailing about how unfair it is that people have decided they can't trust you and don't want your stuff.
But in a country which is actively ignoring its own Constitution and freedoms, I'm not expecting any meaningful introspection on behalf of the US. I'm expecting more bluster, claims about how everyone else is doing it, and continuing with the status quo.
SHOW ME THE PROOF
I would, but look what happened to the last brave American who tried that. I don't want to have to seek asylum in Russia and ask some crime ridden South American country to take me in, nor watch my back every minute for the U.S. agents trying to kidnap or kill me. The President talked big about protecting whistle blowers before this happened, but then all of that was quietly removed from his website Everyone of us that actually has the proof knows better than show it to you.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
In today's multi/transnational corporate world the USA does not exist. The famous Authur Jensen speech from 1976 comes to mind. There is nobody that's going to protect us from this anywhere in the world. Anybody who tries will be 'liberated'. And the biggest part of the problem is that people keep on blaming policy and politicians for this, and nobody will look in the mirror and admit that they voted for it, To them I say, *you asked for it, thankyouverymuch.* The ball is in our court.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's not a about 'cred'... dude.
When your government puts its own institutional interests above those the people from which it derives its democratic legitimacy, it's no longer acting democratically. So, technically, once the US began operating imperially, back in the 19th century, the slow withering rot of oligarchy began to emerge as the driving farce behind the facade of electoral chaos.
Take the case of Teddy Roosevelt who believed that the US naval superiority should be used offensively to increase domestic political power by use of force or the ease by which Truman chose to drop not one but two weapons of mass destruction on the Japanese. These actions were neither expressions of democracy of altruism. They were imperial. Not that we should overlook the covert actions of the Dulles brothers when they used the Dept of State and CIA to prosecute the interest of US corporate business around world in the 50s.
The players have changed but the song remains the same, and now that the world is largely developed and includes 7 billion people who tend to get in the way, either legally or by their mere presence, there's nothing left to do but degrade the wealth of those who share the same nationality. So get ready for the 21st Century. It's going to be a bumpy ride if you still believe in the fairy tale of Democracy for all or self determination for anyone.
Router based on PCs were there since last century, it wouldn't change projections beause they were always there. But putting an equipment that you can't trust in the critical point of your network where you must have the maximum trust (either because Cisco want to cooperate, or is forced to, secret laws are nukes in the trust domain) is not a great idea.
We have found that we cannot trust the networks of ISPs anymore: there can be an NSA tap anywhere. A good and practical move would be to start using more and more robust end-to-end encryption. Things like SSL are possibly out of question as NSA has corrupted the root certs.
What trustworthy country do you want to buy them from? China? Russia? One of the major US allies?
sigh
Just give me the Cisco one. :(
or the ease by which Truman chose to drop not one but two weapons of mass destruction on the Japanese.
Truman was trying to end the war between Japan and the U.S. before it could become a long, drawn out ground war costing millions more lives. AFAIK, the U.S. only had enough material for the 2 bombs (after testing), which of course was not made public. Japan did not immediately surrender after the first A-Bomb attack, and that's when the 2nd bomb was used, and only then did Japan surrender. Thank God that Japan did not know that Truman was bluffing his poker hand, or the war could have gone on far longer.
Emerging markets ... likely need enterprise class equipment too.
Well, yes and no, but reportedly 98.9% no in the case of at least one huge deal that fell through.
SDN is coming, and the likes of Cisco are terrified of it. So would you be if your own executives thought it was going to cut your company's value in half and there was little you could do about it.
The main thing they've got left to compete with is the trust in their brand, the idea that they're a safe bet and no-one ever got fired for buying Cisco. They're in trouble even without all the NSA publicity, but if their own government is damaging their established brand, it doesn't exactly help their situation.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
SHOW ME THE PROOF
Ok...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130909/11430124454/john-gilmore-how-nsa-sabotaged-key-security-standard.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?hp&_r=0
I think you're just failing to understand the scope of what they've done. The NSA planted people in standards bodies to deliberately weaken those standards. Not only do we have eye whiteness's from those standards committees that have complained about this for years, but we've got leaked documents from the NSA bragging about doing it. One of their primary goals seems to have been to dissuade broadening the use of encryption in general. By making the standards complicated, hard to understand, a lot of people just gave up and didn't implement them. In other cases they tried to block standards from using encryption by default. All of this leads to a less secure network. Without a doubt those actions of made crime and identity theft much easier. Can we find some guy and say that his identity was stolen because of the NSA? No... but what we can say is that without the NSA's interference, there would be more, and better encryption... and more and better encryption would have definitely reduced the numbers of identity thefts in the world.
Truman was trying to end the war between Japan and the U.S. before it could become a long, drawn out ground war costing millions more lives. AFAIK, the U.S. only had enough material for the 2 bombs (after testing), which of course was not made public. Japan did not immediately surrender after the first A-Bomb attack, and that's when the 2nd bomb was used, and only then did Japan surrender. Thank God that Japan did not know that Truman was bluffing his poker hand, or the war could have gone on far longer.
Oh yes, please continue to to repeat that mass-murder-justifying state propaganda. It does wonders for our society's ability to think clearly about moral issues.