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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."
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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.
Did he mean "breaking" as in: services becoming more federated instead of being governed by 1 or 2 mega-corporations?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
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).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
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.
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.
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.
Have a nice time.
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.
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"
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.
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.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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
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".