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The Rise of the Global Surveillance Profiteers
blottsie writes "A new report takes a deep dive into companies like Hacking Team, which have sprouted up in the years since 9/11 sparked a global war on terror and a wired technological revolution. As the U.S. developed the online surveillance tools that, over a decade later, would eventually be revealed to the world by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, savvy businesses across the globe realized there were plenty of countries that might not be able to afford to develop such sophisticated technology in-house but still had money to burn."
While I may disagree with the business of data-mining and collection on a large scale, I don't think that 'profiteer' is the right term.
I always looked at someone that was profiteering as someone putting forth little to no effort in order to make the money that they make, and often it's a result of peddling someone else's work. A war profiteer was someone that stole military materiel and sold it, as an example.
These companies, while engaged in a business that I don't agree with, have had to develop the tools and techniques that they use to practice their craft. Depending on what they're monitoring or how they're doing it that might be a fairly substantial task, so I'm not going to downplay their efforts just because I disagree with them being engaged in to begin with.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The simplest feasible explanation is that the Bush regime made huge amounts of funding and credit available to defence software and IT subcontractors to develop this stuff. They're now taking govt./publicly funded R&D and selling some highly questionable tools to oppressive regimes around the world. So the govt./public funds the R&D and the subcontractors sell it at a profit. I think you can call that profiteering... or racketeering... or whatever you like. It's how they operate: Everything to do with war and resource extraction is a dirty business.
“There is a real question here about the public’s need for privacy and our need for security. If we come down 100 percent on the side of privacy, which seems to be in vogue in tech right now, we are putting ourselves at very legitimate risk. And to ignore that is foolhardy. I think, by and large, we and the other people who are protecting this software are working to keep people safe.”
Translation - STFU or the big bad terr'sts will come get you. We know what's best.
Same as Obama's mealy-mouthed "we need to balance civil liberties with our security." No, in point of fact, we don't. A whole lot of men died in the Revolutionary War specifically to give us independence and the bill of rights. Now the very same would-be guarantors of our "freedom" (as such) will trot out the "balance" argument to do whatever the fuck they want. And sadly we've become such a nation of distracted pussies we go along with it.