PRISM Confirmed by gov & Denied by companies - and we do what? | Hacker News Reader

PRISM Confirmed by gov & Denied by companies - and we do what?

I understand the outrage brought on by this reveal (most coders I've talked to have assumed this has existed before it was confirmed).

My question for everyone here is simple...what will you do now that PRISM is confirmed.

What I've done...nothing different...still using google, typing this on windows, and playing a youtube video in the background.

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The damage this did to american tech companies doing business overseas is HUGE.

How can you trust Amazon won't give access to your RDS account to someone? A hyperbole now but could happen in the future: How can I trust a judge didn't ask cisco to add backdoors to give NSA access to our networks???

I do business with the government (in Brazil) and they asked me to move out of amazon ASAP, we pay a small fortune every month to amazon, we will have to set up a custom environment to this one single contract now.

the majority will stay using Facebook and Google, because they have advanced technology, they have worked hard to make the user experience mush better, and they give all of that for FREE. I believe that 80% of people don't care if some agency see what they do, because they don't do much, and they seek for the cheapest method to stay entertained. For Google, it's obvious that it's leading the search technology on the internet, and a such leak won't make it stop spying on users, but for Facebook, and even its huge base of users, this leak can make it change its privacy policy if and only if it is threatened by a new social network (it's not easy but possible), it's a matter of money, people search for the cheapest and the better technology. the rest of population which is 20% for me is the people who believe in the right of privacy and they are ready to make some sacrifices (pay money, or use less-tech encrypting methods). in general, I think people will accept that by time, because if someone have the intention to be private he can, but if he just want to talk with his family, this is not important, and any agency haven't interest to spy on that.

Maybe we should start using decentralized technologies? Go back to bittorrent, tor, irc. Teach everybody to encrypt, the same way we teach them to wash their hands. And for similar reasons.

PGP has existed for how long? The real problem here is "teaching," others.

While I do agree even the lowest cryptography or 'security through obscurity', would benefit alot of people...the real issue becomes ease of use and the user experience.

>teach them to wash their hands. And for similar reasons

lol, nice

Yes. The bottleneck, as usual, is cultural.

Still, I have hope. Some people refuse to touch or even be near people who aren't clean. That forces others to be clean and propagates hygiene through society.

I wonder if we could do the same with information. Teaching little children that putting private information in public sites is dirty. The same way we teach them not to go around naked.

Yup! This is exactly why I posted this, b/c even I fall in this category. I'm a hacker that got in trouble with Google and was convicted through the Patriot Act[0]...yet I still use their products. Reason: ease of use and I do like google.

My next project after my current one was inspired by the ECPA[1]. Simple concept: employ PGP, a simple UI, and sell users a custom WD My Book Live[2] (I'm sure you can see where this goes).

[0] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/05/man-allegedly-b&#x2...;

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/when-can-the-government-read-...

[2] http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=280

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