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It's Official: NSA Spying Is Hurting the US Tech Economy
An anonymous reader writes China is backing away from U.S. tech brands for state purchases after NSA revelations, according to Reuters. This confirms what many U.S. technology companies have been saying for the past year: the activities by the NSA are harming their businesses in crucial growth markets, including China. From the article: "A new report confirmed key brands, including Cisco, Apple, Intel, and McAfee -- among others -- have been dropped from the Chinese government's list of authorized brands, a Reuters report said Wednesday. The number of approved foreign technology brands fell by a third, based on an analysis of the procurement list. Less than half of those companies with security products remain on the list."
What the hell does McAfee do to earn money, why the hell it is still alive, and what makes it a key company? Seriously, what.
The Chinese government only wants their own backdoors in technology used internally, not ours.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
That's interesting because terrorists have been announcing that one of their goals is to have an impact on the US economy.
Is the article's point saying that the terrorists have won?
The terrorists already won long ago when Dubya and a willing Congress shredded our civil liberties after 9/11.
The terrorists already won long ago when Dubya and a willing Congress shredded our civil liberties after 9/11.
Thats okay, this guy will save us as soon as he gets in office...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQlsS9diBs
And remember that this will not change. If you buy U.S brands of electronic devices, you WILL be spied upon. The U.S has long since stopped being a country to trust and rely on, and the U.S and its exported products are now something we should instead be wary of.
Oh, they were shredded before 9/11. 9/11 just made it so they didn't have to hide that fact anymore.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
... it's Snowdens fault for telling, not the NSA's fault for spying...
That would be an asinine argument. It's obvious that the NSA has massively exceeded its authority and needs to either be reigned in or disbanded completely. It's one thing to gather intelligence on other governments and another thing entirely to indiscriminately scoop up all electronic communication, including that of US citizens, indulge in corporate espionage, undermine the security protocols the whole world relies on, and so forth. Snowden did the honorable thing and the world owes him big time. The NSA needs reform and there needs to be consequences for those found to have authorized such unconstitutional and illegal actions. Start by charging Clapper with perjury and work from there.
Move manufacturing out of China... it's simple. They won't buy apple goods, move the 1 MILLION FOXCONN apple workers to a different country. That will get someones attention... quickly
I'm thinking a ~Whoosh~ is in order... ;)
Remember, the alternatives suck also. The recent revelations are that most if not all countries are dirty liars when it comes to spying.
Table-ized A.I.
Bets on how long until an NSA apologist like Mike Rogers or Peter King issues a "blame the messenger" (Snowden) statement?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
This is like blaming the cheerleader that the team lost the big game because she reported the star quarterback raped her.
It was the NSA's choice to engage in ethically questionable actions. These events are the fallout from that decision. That the NSA's actions in spying on citizens without legal authority, warrant, or adequate oversight should affect international business by undermining worldwide trust in the nation is, frankly, exactly what the NSA should have expected.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
I like how they pretend that this was only just revealed to them when so many products by those brands are assembled in China, and the backdoors are installed at the factory (according to recent news). They knew this all along, so they're not doing this for security reasons. They're doing it so that US businesses will pressure the NSA to stop, and then if it succeeds, China will have the upper hand in espionage.
In every other conceivable respect, this isn't funny at all. It's just that they think we'll fall for that, and for the most part, we are. But neither these businesses nor the NSA will. The end result will be that China will start buying these products again and it will be spun to us as the result of some kind of breakthrough negotiation. I give it a year, but they might pull a headline grabber and make it happen sooner if it was primarily a bid for lower prices all along.
Oops, wrong year since Paul Wellstone died in 2002. So it was 51-49 Democratic Control when the vote happened.
Each product spec sheet should include a list of all countries that will be spying on you as a result of your purchase. Then you can compare various models and decide who would make you most happy if they were to know everything about you. Customer transparency. Customer choice. Even Apple can get behind that!
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I'm 100% in favor of strict NSA accountability, but it's wrong to blame the NSA as if they aren't at least partially working for the right reasons.
Blame hackers, oligarchs, and wannabe international gangsters first and foremost. The NSA must be held accountable with hardcore oversight, but we need law enforcement and defense.
Also, the tone of this article is weird, it seems to put China as some kind of arbiter of global trade ethics:
Cisco, Apple, Intel, and McAfee -- among others -- have been dropped from the Chinese government's list of authorized brands,
China's government is a totalitarian, freedom depriving monolith. The people of China are victims.
I see the angle, when we put spyware in tech like this there are consequences and it's probably overreach by the NSA, but TFA is criticizing from the wrong angle.
China is not a threat to us. That's the core misunderstanding. How many books, blog posts, articles by Thomas Friedman have there been about the "China Rising" nonsense? We don't owe China like a bank...they ***invested in the US*** by buying our bonds...you don't invest in something you are trying to destroy.
China's financial sovlency depends on the US's ability to honor our bonds. They hitched their wagons to our economy.
Also, China is a pollution wasteland. Human and chemical. Their disasterous one child policy has ruined the population balance of a generation and they have to run their city marathons in smog so thick it's visible at ground level.
I want the US to be a good influence on China. I want our policies to promote them making the right decisions for their people.
Thank you Dave Raggett
One could argue that it's Snowden's revelations are hurting the economy. The NSA is supposed to be spying on foreign entities.
If the NSA are supposed to be spying on foreign entities, then it stands to reason that Snowden telling everyone this would not be a huge revelation; it would be just stating the obvious. As such, Snowden could not have hurt the economy.
Ah, gotcha! Yeah, folks tend to assume that if you support Obama you don't support Bush and vice versa. In truth, more and more folks are realizing that both have played a pretty big role in eliminating civil liberties.
I support Congressman Thomas Massie (R) - Kentucky for that reason. I have a lot of respect for him being one of the few that actually went on record publicly stating in a televised interview that Snowden did a service to the people. I commend him for that courage.
China steals tech, and they want to develop its industries in all fields. Such as stealing wind turbine tech from American Superconductor, high speed rail tech from Japan, France, and Germany, and car tech from the major car manufacturers.
Well, what do you expect? Like a lot of Americans, they believe we stole the tech from aliens in Area 52.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I'm providing a counter to an argument that this is somehow Snowden's fault. Whether it's allowed or not isn't the end of this though. Expect strong encryption to become more and more commonplace. The NSA overreached and the consequence is that its job will become more and more difficult going forward. That's not Snowden's fault, the people who made these choices at the NSA have to answer to their actions and explain what the hell they were thinking when they decided that a) "collect it all" was sensible policy and that b) they would some manage to keep this a secret indefinitely.
Let's not be naive and think that China doesn't try just as hard to spy on the US as the US does on China. If Chinese etc firms have come to realize that the extent the NSA is able to spy on them is greater than they previously thought, Snowden is the reason, not the spying itself, of course.
See, that's what happens when you freely intermingle your illegal and unconstitutional activities with those which you are supposed to be pursuing. Snowden didn't reveal names of agents, for example, but is it really his fault when shining the light on the bad also revealed the proper activity?
Like it or not, that was (and is) the game the NSA is playing. By treating vulnerabilities as weapons and not disclosing them properly to the parties who could fix them not only did the NSA have increased ability to spy on others, but so did others on us. In their hubris, the NSA apparently thinks that only they are cool enough to take advantage.
The same is true when the NSA targeted individuals in corporations like Gemalto. Those actions were wrong and not in the NSAs charter. Sure, some of the results of the operations might conceivably have helped efforts that were within their purview, but you can't tell and their actions were simply wrong.
So *maybe* the NSAs actions helped keep America a little safer. Though they can't find any evidence of that (the shameful attempts at lies were exposed). But what we *do* know is that by undermining digital security they have made both American citizens and American corporations more vulnerable.
What the NSA has done is the equivalent of using dynamite to destroy the enemy's boat. Unfortunately, it is the same boat the NSA is on and everyone is going down together.
Well, at least...
It's funny to watch the whole spiel from across the pond. I know, maybe it's the distance and the loss of resolution distance entails, but I can't really see that much of a difference between those two parties that you have. It's pretty much the same party to me, maybe with a strawberry flavor here and a blueberry flavor there, but slushy is slushy. The basic ingredients are the same crap, the rest is flavoring. Artificial flavoring.
But yet you see people bicker with an insane drive to ensure that THEIR side of The Party isn't to blame, it's ALL the other side's fault. I look at the whole mess and can only think that you're sitting in a swimming pool with a line splitting it off in the middle, with either side blaming the other one for pissing in the pool but neither even thinking about getting out and draining the water.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The fact that you can't see the faulty code in closed proprietary software doesn't mean that it has no exploits. You clearly haven't worked in proprietary software development teams and seen the incompetent vomit that goes into products.
Vulnerabilities are detectable by boundary testing and fuzzing just as easily in closed software as in open software, but in very stark contrast, in closed software there is no possibility of the community finding the faulty code and reporting it, so typically the vast majority of vulnerabilities never get fixed.
The initial bug rates per KLoC don't vary between closed and open projects. The difference is that in open software, bugs are rapidly found and eliminated, so you've completely misunderstood what you're seeing. The high rates of 0-day reporting show the process of fault elimination working rapidly in open source, whereas in closed software it's far slower and so the faults hang around far longer.
Maybe you should think a little about what it means before posting a nonsense conclusion.
9/11 tore down the last bits of restraint for sure, but you need to look at the War On (arbitrarily chosen based on historical racism) Drugs for the foundations. 4th Amendment? Gone. Due process? Turned into a bad joke by a overflowed court systems coercive plea bargaining and the horrendous situation with assett forfeiture not requiring even being CHARGED, much less convicted**. Cruel and unusual punishment? I'd say years in prison just for having a drug that's not alcohol/tobacco, and decades to life for selling it to other consenting adults, it pretty damn cruel. And it's the original cause for the shift to militarization and war-like mentality for the police, because the only way to enforce this law turns people and communities against the police.
Oh, and guess what the vast majority of PATRIOT Act powers are used for, and what the 'anti-terrorism' grant dollars buy... the largest category is by far drug crimes, with terrorism coming in dead last. Law enforcement was foaming at the mouth over all the post-9/11 authority, but it sure as hell wasn't because it helped them fight terrorism- it let them make even more money, through grants and forfeitures, and superior-pleasing arrests, by fighting more drug crimes.
**And it was not 'ended' or 'reformed' by Holder, worst case of wholesale swallowing of media spin ever; it merely made it a requirement to only forfeit under federal law if you make it a joint investigation, makes it no harder to forfeit under state law, or for the feds on their own, or really at all since all it takes is putting a feds name on the paper to say it's joint)
The original Patriot Act vote was 98-1 (a Democrat being the only "no" vote)
When the Patriot Act was renewed in 2006, there were 10 "no" votes. Here are the senators who voted "no"
Akaka (D-HI)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Byrd (D-WV)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Murray (D-WA)
Wyden (D-OR)
No Republican voted against the Patriot Act, either time it was before the Senate.