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IBM Distances Itself From the NSA and Its Spy Activities

Posted by samzenpus on from the we-don't-even-know-those-guys dept.

An anonymous reader writes "NSA surveillance has raised concerns among customers globally about the safety of their data from U.S. government spying. More organizations, companies and countries are looking for ways to distant themselves from the NSA activities to safeguard the information of internet users. IBM is the latest to fall into the category of companies that do not want to be associated with the NSA spy activities."

21 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Lip service? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Are they also stopping donations to politicians who support the NSA activity?

    1. Re:Lip service? by Frobnicator · · Score: 2

      It isn't just that.

      Snowden documents and news reports do the affiliation they need. They proudly proclaim that they use IBM's cloud-based processing systems for processing.

      If IBM really wants to distance themselves, they should cancel these contracts.

      --
      //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
    2. Re:Lip service? by MrBigInThePants · · Score: 2

      Not at all lip-service. Just the plebs using the wrong context.

      When the plebs say "distance" they mean financially, contractually and to uncomfortably avoid eye contact at dinner parties and whisper nasty about them behind their back.

      When IBM says it they mean in terms of marketing/PR/Branding only.

      This whole NSA fiasco is only a minor inconvenience that has exposed a few flaws in the way they keep their evil shit hidden. It will in the long term only serve to make them better at it. There is already talk of new systems and procedures that do essentially the same thing using legal loopholes and new laws to create more holes to hide in.

      This will only make the police/surveillance state stronger.

  2. But they can't tell you by bob_super · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "IBM promised to challenge the U.S national security via court procedures if ordered to provide information and data from an enterprise client through a gag order which prohibits them from discussing the order with the client."

    Sure, I've got THOUSANDS of lawsuits already in secret court against the big bad abusive government!
    Nope, can't give you details. It's secret, you know.
    Just trust me...

    1. Re:But they can't tell you by cavreader · · Score: 2

      IBM conducted normal business actions when the sold IBM systems to Germany before the war and the death camps were known. Has it come to point where those who sell computer systems are responsible for what others will use the systems for?

    2. Re:But they can't tell you by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      IBM conducted normal business actions when the sold IBM systems to Germany before the war and the death camps were known.

      Was it normal business action when the service contract fees during the war were still being paid directly to Armonk, NY?

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Nothing new for IBM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Regarding World War II and Hitler, their spokesperson said "I know NOTHING!"

    1. Re:Nothing new for IBM by Forbo · · Score: 2

      They also had their hand in the pot for the Japanese internment camps in the US.

    2. Re:Nothing new for IBM by HiThere · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why does it seem far fetched? I don't know that it's true, but I certainly don't find it unlikely. IBM was born out of the US Census (among other factors), and has always had strong ties to the federal government.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  4. Let's assume for a moment I believe them by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because it's, frankly, moot whether they tell the truth or whether they're lying through their teeth. The moment the US government says "gimme", they'll have to roll over. It's not like due process or any outdated junk like that still held a drop of water.

    It's nothing personal, nothing "evil", just business. The government wants something from us, we could fight it but the outcome will be that we hand over what they want, we have higher expenses and we have a government grumpy at us that can make our life miserable so... why bother fighting?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    1. Re:Let's assume for a moment I believe them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Qwest found out what happens when you challenge the NSA--you mysteriously lose government contacts. And then your CEO goes to prison.

    2. Re:Let's assume for a moment I believe them by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You don't fight. You go another direction.

      You don't fight for commercial products to be free from backdoors. Another regime can always come in and force people to put them in, later. You build a healthy computing ecosystem resistant to back doors. And that means Open Source and Free Software.

      Many eyes may not catch all the back doors, but many eyes are still better than only spying eyes.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Let's assume for a moment I believe them by Frobnicator · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Qwest found out what happens when you challenge the NSA--you mysteriously lose government contacts. And then your CEO goes to prison.

      And if IBM truly does want to distance itself from these government agencies, that is exactly what they should be doing proactively.

      The article has the headline IBM Distances itself from the NSA and its Spy Activities. If IBM were truly distancing itself, the article would have had a list of billions, nay, trillions of dollars worth of contracts that IBM was cancelling, along with an announcement that IBM would no longer make bids on NSA projects, and they would prohibit their products from being used as the backend as far as allowed by law.

      Instead IBM has released a very specific bullet list of things they didn't do. For example, one of the bullet points is "IBM has not provided client data ... under the program known as PRISM." Which is a wonderfully worded statement. They might have provided other data under PRISM. They might have provided client data outside of PRISM. But in that specific program, that specific data was not provided.

      Sorry Robert C Weber, Senior VP at IBM, your words are too much like a lawyer's wiggling for my tastes. Does IBM really want to distance itself? In that case, actually distance yourself by terminating existing contracts and refusing to bid for future contracts.

      --
      //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
  5. Unsavory Character by pitchpipe · · Score: 4, Funny
    Ha! The NSA has become that unsavory character that you meet in dark alleys to buy your drugs from. Still buying them, just denying it when you go to NA. Lots of corporations in NA (No-spying Anonymous) now.

    Maybe IBM's sponsor is GHCQ.

    --
    Look where all this talking got us, baby.
  6. Fragmenting the internet? by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Among the countries, Brazil has considered asking service providers to hold data within the country, a move that Google describes as potentially Fragmenting the internet.

    How does that fragment the internet?
    Forcing service providers to build infrastructure in-country doesn't fragment anything except Google's business model.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
    1. Re:Fragmenting the internet? by afgam28 · · Score: 2

      If every website had to be set up in a different data center for each country that they served, most websites would not bother setting up in most countries. They'd just set up wherever is most profitable, and forget about the rest. For big sites like Google and Facebook, they might just go and set everything up everywhere, but smaller sites are probably going to be US-only, or China-only, etc.

      For examples of this, look at websites that already need to have separate country-specific sites for other reasons. Amazon doesn't need to have servers in each country, but they kind of need to have local warehouses (part of it is to ensure reasonable shipping times, and another part of it is that some companies refuse to ship products overseas). Netflix doesn't need to have servers in each country, but their content is geoblocked in all but a few select countries.

      It's bad enough that we have to deal with things like shipping restrictions and content restrictions, but at least this only affects a few web sites. If every single website out there was forced to set up servers everywhere, the reality is that they would just stop serving most countries, and the Internet would fragment into a bunch of country-specific bubbles.

    2. Re:Fragmenting the internet? by TubeSteak · · Score: 2

      If every website had to be set up in a different data center for each country that they served, most websites would not bother setting up in most countries. They'd just set up wherever is most profitable, and forget about the rest.

      I'm not sure you're understanding this correctly.
      Google's problem, like many other multinationals, is that they set up a local subsidiary.
      This puts their in-country operations under local jurisdiction, which means they either play ball or go home (like they did with China).

      http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/nsa-spying-allegations-put-google-on-hot-seat-in-brazil.html
      2013-10-29

      âoeBrazilian users would ultimately be harmed because they couldnâ(TM)t access new tools, new services,â said Marcel Leonardi, public policy director for Google in Brazil, in a telephone interview from Sao Paulo. âoeCompanies would choose to implement those services at a much later stage, if at all.â

      This has been an ongoing process since last year, when the spying revelations were first made public.
      Google may not be able to afford ignoring Brazil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS
      It's kind of a big market for them.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
  7. Even with the best of the intentions by gmuslera · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... they are tied to a country which government can require them to put backdoors in software and hardware, and not to tell anyone about that. The only way to really get clean is really open the source/specifications of everything (including propietary firmware) and let people, companies and countries really be able to check that claims. Until then, you can't decide whether they are telling the truth or not. We already learned what happens when you put blind trust in something even bigger than IBM.

    1. Re:Even with the best of the intentions by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 2

      "they are tied to a country which government can require them to put backdoors in" ... anything and keep quiet about it.

      OK, so fantasy magic wand time: all of the .gov is now 100% trustworthy again from top to bottom. (I said this was a fantasy.) What would it take to make everyone happy? Is there ANYthing that they could do?

      Personally, *I* don't think so in the short and mid-term. It'll take a lot of time and effort on their part to regain any of their lost brownie points -- they're hard to earn to start with but then again extremely easy to lose. And that's just with the trust-technology bit, not any of the actual politics.

      Of course they're literally the biggest "Too Big to Fail" elephant in the US so it's not like you're going to walk away from them.

      --
      If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
  8. We don't associate with the NSA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And even if we did, it's classified and we couldn't tell you anyway.

  9. Maybe not the NSA - maybe other agencies by ron_ivi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Considering how closely they partner with Lenovo, I'm not sure the US government are the backdoors in IBM people should be most worried about.