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

Very easy to solve

[Karmashock]

Restore the prohibitions against spying and require real warrants to engage. No more dragnets.

Things are just going to keep getting worse until it happens.

Re:Very easy to solve

[Frobnicator]

Worry over spying may cause people to take more interest in protecting their privacy, which may break Google's business model.

Boo hoo.

The problem isn't really with Google's business model.

It also is not limited to the US government.

Think back to various releases. News stories of the US government intercepting Cisco equipment shipments, installing back doors, and sealing them back in their original boxes with new factory seals. There are many news stories of logs with people communicating over supposedly secure connections and exchanging honeypot URLs, only to have the honeypot link hit several hours later by government-owned IP blocks or sometimes Microsoft or Apple IP blocks when using their 'secure' products.

As a result of those we set up honeypot links of our own, and I've seen reports that a percent of our site-to-site messages with honeypot links really are being visited by IP blocks from several nations. This is not just the US government, multiple governments and probably multiple big businesses have their spying tendrils inside businesses. We're looking for and slowly tightening down on potential leaks, either that or the assorted groups are slowly hitting our honeypots less and less. I used to think some of our security policies were draconian, but seeing how many probably-government groups are watching internal messages, I've become quite paranoid myself.

If someone cannot trust that their encrypted, supposedly secure communications are safe, they will stop using the products. When a government IP address hits a honeypot link shared over Apple's iMessage, does that mean Apple is a willing participant forwarding the messages while telling the public it is secured, or does that mean Apple is a victim too? Either way, iMessage is now one of many banned products in our workplace, sending any type of secure business information over it (or over Lync or Google's services or any but a short list of secure communications programs) has become a fire-able offense.

When the news broke on the Cisco equipment being intercepted this spring, their stock price plummeted and orders slowed. I know in my organization there were several major purchasing announcements, and they only buy HP equipment now (although I'm sure those are intercepted just as readily). Cisco went directly to the POTUS both publicly and privately to tell them to stop harming the company. I would not be surprised if their lawyers are nearly ready to file lawsuits for tortuous interference.

This is about far more than Google's business model. People cannot communicate within their own company infrastructure about business needs without some sort of government espionage or corporate spying. It is completely out of control.

Do you know what else will break the internet?

[peppepz]

DRM in HTML will “break the internet” too, and you pushed for it. Surveillance sucks whether the data is gathered by a hostile government or by a friendly commercial entity.

Background article

[return 42]

If you have time to read 12,000 words, the New Yorker ran an excellent article last year detailing US surveillance programs and Senator Wyden's efforts to rein them in.

"State of Deception"

So what's the problem with that?

[BarbaraHudson]

different sets of data for users from different countries multiplying across the world.

So what? I don't care if my data is "out of sync" in Kabul or Beijing or Kuala Lampour or London or Sao Paulo. It's not a problem for me. However, companies attempting to monetize that data (Hello, Google, etc.) by selling it to advertisers across the globe ... it makes that data harder to sell. Awww. That won't break the internet - if anything it's an improvement, since someone in Nigeria now has to hit servers in North America to get information for spearfishing - something that will be easier to track.

Its not just illegal snooping thats the problem

[simonreid]

Eric is confusing two issues, probably purposefully.

The issue of illegal (at least against US citizens) mass surveillance by the NSA and the like is one problem - but as others have pointed out, its something that should be assumed to always be happening, and doesn't have any real impact on the internet. People make a fuss about it, particularly in the US, but I think most people assumed it was happening anyway and it hasn't really changed the way that people, businesses or governments operate. Just look at the recent Silk Road story as an example

The issue that has everyone jittery is the close cooperation that has been shown between the US Government and US based companies, and from a legal perspective the stance that the US government is taking on data stored by US companies, outside the US, for a non-US entity. This has a huge effect on Google's business in particular, not as an adverting company - I would be surprised if they are loosing a significant amount of their consumer business - but rather their growing enterprise / cloud business. No one outside the US will want to switch to Gmail if their email can be read, without their knowledge, by the US Government issuing a National Security Letter, or even just by any local judge issuing a subpoena.

This is what they are talking about when they say you have to start a data center in Germany just to serve customers there. Its not the NSA hacking your system, or even snooping on the wire people are worried about. Its the legal and risk issue that the US government can seize your data, without any notification, and you have no legal recourse to prevent it happening.

Its a great opportunity for companies in Europe, but if your a US headquartered company, as Google is, its going to break *your* small part of the internet