Eric Schmidt: Anxiety Over US Spying Will "Break the Internet"

jfruh writes Oregon Senator Ron Wyden gathered a group of tech luminaries to discuss the implications of U.S. surveillance programs, and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt didn't mince words. He said that worries over U.S. surveillance would result in servers with different sets of data for users from different countries multiplying across the world. "The simplest outcome is that we're going to end up breaking the Internet."

Comments

Nice wording

[JeffOwl]

I like how the title of the article is "Jitters over US surveillance..." implying that the surveillance itself isn't the problem, we just need to get comfortable with it.

Re:Nice wording

[bickerdyke]

While surveillance itself is problematic, too, it wasn't a real problem before. I used to be comfortable with the fact that in some cases, police and FBI could wiretap phones and intercept email. So surveillance isn't exactly the problem either.

The "problem" is that this power has been heavily misused and that the trust that surveillance would only be directed to crime suspects is now lost. And people losing trust in police IS a problem.

Re:Nice wording

[Anonymous Coward]

And people losing trust in police IS a problem.

It is, but not directly related to this.
This is about the rest of the world no longer trusting the US. You will sometimes see comments on slashdot in the lines of "The constitution doesn't apply to non-US citizens." and similar when human rights violations are up for discussion.
That you see comments like that in a group that is supposedly well educated hints to me that there is a widespread lack of knowledge in the US about the UN bill of human rights and that the US has ratified it. (At least the more basic parts where it clearly says that human rights should be applied equally regardless of nationality.)
It also tells me that it is common in the US to either not care about human rights or to not consider non-US citizens to be human. (This is a matter of empathy, even if a nation doesn't have laws that protects human rights a person can still stand up for what is morally right.)

The problems the US have with the government not following the constitution isn't that relevant to Internet. Its that neither the government nor the population cares about playing fair with the rest of the world that is the problem here.
Now, both are very serious problems and may have the same cause, but that isn't necessarily the case.

Meaning

[StripedCow]

Did he mean "breaking" as in: services becoming more federated instead of being governed by 1 or 2 mega-corporations?

Re:Meaning

[Monoman]

Probably. Breaking a business model and breaking the Internet are two very different things but they probably mean the same to him.

Re:Privacy more of a issue

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's interesting how people embrace the cloud and social sites and all it brings. "

Yeah and how they complain when from that cloud their private Photos emerge, where they have a cock in their mouth.

Re:Very easy to solve

[Cenan]

Yeah, because we trust them to abide by the law. This is a problem that words on paper won't be able to solve. You cannot ever prove that the NSA (or whichever agency) does not snoop, even if the law says they can't do it. They have been proven to snoop, the cat is out of the bag, end of story.

Re:Very easy to solve

[NormalVisual]

They have been proven to snoop, the cat is out of the bag, end of story.

And they've been proven to have no problem lying to Congress as well. "You didn't see it, so I didn't do it."

Or crypto

[DrYak]

Or, alternatively use descent crypto and security procedure.

i.e: don't count on the US and everybody else behaving correctly (As if there were any chance that Russia and China would stop spying) (or US for that matter. They'll simply spin another secret tree-letter agency that they can denying knowing it exists).
instead count of the fact that there will always be fuckers somewhere on the net, and keep best practices to avoid becoming yet again a victim whoever might it be.

Things like end-to-end encryption (total encryption between the two users communicating like OTR, CryptoCat, Jitzi, etc., not only on each leg to/from the server like HTTPS), making GPG more userfriendly, making Tor more popular, etc.

then dragnet or not, user will be safer on the average, even from non-law abiding 3rd parties. (Not only safe from NSA, but safe from script kiddies too).

Re: Or crypto

[sneakyimp]

Yeah Eric is just worried everyone will encrypt their gmail so google can't read it any more and target their ads. If everyone starts guarding their privacy, google's business model starts to look much less attractive. "If you scare everyone about the snooping, we can't keep snooping on everyone."

Re: Or crypto

[irq-1]

Googles business model is to search the web and sell ads on the web; email is small potatoes.

Calling him a hypocrite doesn't make you right, or him wrong.

What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose

[stevez67]

Every country (and reasonably sized corporation) on the planet is doing the same thing, always has done the same thing, always will do the same thing. Only fools believe their online activity is safe from snooping or ever will be.

Re:What this fuss over nothing?

[Megol]

The US have stated that trying to have an international trial against a US citizen (for e.g. crimes against humanity) will result in use of military force. Do you really think anything is off limits for a government with that attitude? Remember this are laws the US recognizes and even was one of the parties who created them and enforced them (e.g. at the Nuremberg trials).

The US is rapidly becoming the biggest enemy of itself and no, while a superpower it can't simply ignore the opinions of the rest of the world.

Eric Schmidt is part of the problem

[RR]

My problem is that I want to control my data by placing it on systems under my control. Storing everything on Google is fine for Eric Schmidt because Eric Schmidt owns (many shares and a significant amount of control) of Google. Storing everything on Google is not so good for me because I don't.

And that's the real issue. Google and Facebook's entire business model is to violate my privacy. I don't know if Dropbox does anything with your data, but they've definitely chosen convenience over security. I'd rather store my stuff on SpiderOak than Dropbox. As long as my data are available to somebody other than me, then my data are vulnerable to hackers and immoral government officials.

Re:Very easy to solve

[dugancent]

Cut their funding. No money, no spying.

Re: Very easy to solve

[Anonymous Coward]

This. You guys are complaining about how bad your internet infrastructure is. Use the 10 billion per year that you are paying to be spied on to upgrade the nations backbone instead. I think that would improve many things.

Re:What this fuss over nothing?

[Sique]

There is no problem with a defense during a trial. Making the trial impossible is a problem. US citizens going free after they commited crimes against non-US-citizens is a problem, and the reluctance of the US to either try them on US soil or have them tried somewhere else is a big problem.

Re:OTOH

[Anonymous Coward]

I will never pay for closed source American made crypto software. Even though OpenSSL turned out to have serious bugs, at least it was open enough for people to find, make public and fix. I don't trust that an American company might have their hands tied by NSL when fixing bugs or "bugs".

Re:Very easy to solve

[Anonymous Coward]

We will not "break the Internet". Worry over spying may cause people to take more interest in protecting their privacy, which may break Google's business model.

Boo hoo.

Re: Very easy to solve

[Anonymous Coward]

Before that could ever happen, we'd need to upgrade the nation's backbone. Not the internet one, the other one.

Re:Very easy to solve

[Tokolosh]

And the courts who are supposed to be overseeing them have proven to be no more than rubber stamps.

I think the judicial branch has a lot to answer for in this whole mess, from letting AT&T retroactively off the hook, to accepting secret FISA courts, to issuing warrants to SWAT teams on negligible evidence.

Re: Very easy to solve

[Noah Haders]

I think the problem is 100% US spying on its citizens.

Re:Very easy to solve

[Forgefather]

As intrusive as I find Google's business model there is no changing the fact that the vast majority of internet content exists only because of add revenue. If that revenue were to dry up then it is quite likely that the internet would be facing a large crisis as so many users have been conditioned to believe they don't have to pay out of wallet for browsing web content.

This is not to support the sensationalist quote from Eric Schmidt, but merely to point out that Google's business model, and the business models of similar companies, are currently the reality of how the internet functions without pay walls. This was in a slashdot article a while ago, but it would cost the average user $230 a year to use the internet without adds.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tec...

While this is not really that large of an amount considering what Comcast extorts its average user for, it is worth mentioning that this would require individual signups for almost every website which throws a wet blanket over the prospect of most internet start ups who are looking to lower the barrier to entry as far as possible. Like it or not adds support the internet and targeted adds are the most valuable.

Instead of dismissing targeted adds as a concept I would prefer to know exactly what is being tracked about me so that I can separate the sensitive information from information that would be useful to marketers.