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Comment by dsleno | Hacker News Reader

Prescient.

Will these NSA spy revelations hurt US internet companies? If I am German or Russian or Brazilian... do I really want to go out of my way to feed the U.S. intelligence beast?

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First: as such you probably already do feed them

Second: that kind of thinking could be a nice way to "motivate" the creation of alternative products out side of the us of a.

Third: but how realistic are such endeavors in today's world?

> Second: that kind of thinking could be a nice way to "motivate" the creation of alternative products out side of the us of a.

> Third: but how realistic are such endeavors in today's world?

It is entirely possible to develop a product outside of the US of A. And it does indeed happen.

Geez!

On the other hand, there are relatively few governments worldwide that I would trust more (or distrust less, I guess) than that of the US to abuse this kind of information. The US isn't perfect, but a lot of places out there are worse.

``Being stabbed by a handsome gentleman is awful, but being stabbed by an ugly man is worse, so thank God I'm only being stabbed by a handsome gentleman!''

Being Brazilian, I am not so worried if the US government has access to my data, my main concern is about the Brazilian government having access to it.

The average German, Russian, or Brazilian probably thinks about the importance of their relative privacy with respect to their government even less than the average US citizen does. And the average US citizen does not really care. (This NSA thing is essentially an "inside the beltway" issue, not a ballot box thing.)

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