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Comment by alexholehouse | Hacker News Reader

So here's a related question I've been wondering (IANAL - so hard).

A number foreign blogs/companies/people have displayed outrage that, given that they're not protected by the legal framework American citizens are, PRISM may give the NSA access to their data.

Irrespective of the truth associated with this, you've got to expect at least some percentage of paying customers will move business away from American companies. Considering this, is it conceivable that companies like Apple, Facebook, etc, could sue the government for lost earnings as a result of the fallout from this? Or are there a bunch of reasons why they wouldn't/couldn't (other than the obvious ones like, don't piss off the government).

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Companies like Apple count on the support of the US Government in all sorts of trade / legal / international issues, now and in the future. Using Apple as an example, when you're a half trillion dollar company and trying to navigate practically every market on earth, it's an absolute nightmare at times and helps to have a superpower that possesses the world's largest economy and military in your corner. Having IP problems in Indonesia (wherever)? Ask your buddies in Washington to help.

That's just one example, and a friendly one. The not-so-friendly example is Qwest and Joe Nacchio. Or perhaps you lose lucrative government contracts for iPads. Or perhaps the Senate massively turns up the heat on your tax avoidance schemes, and it costs you billions because they have a record of everything you've ever said or done via NSA spying and know where you broke some obscure tax laws (guaranteed to happen at that scale). Or perhaps that damn pesky anti-trust case just refuses to go away, and instead is expanded, as the Feds start snooping around other business deals and practices (guaranteed to find something).

Or if this were the past, maybe they light Steve Jobs on fire in the options scandal, instead of being nice and letting it go away with the equivalent of a slap on the wrist (with a few patsy scapegoats).

Excellent answer and also illustrates why people don't understand, and it's obvious, why the right thing doesn't always happen in Washington. Because it can't.

Politics is the art of compromise.

It's not about who is right and the right thing happening. It's about who can best navigate the system to achieve what they want, or, as much as they can without losing to much.

Your comment covers this concept perfectly.

According to their latest tax returns Facebook and Apple have a net loss in the US so if anything they should pay the government a commission for sending customers to their more profitable offices in Ireland and the Caribbean.

I'd love to see if/how traffic has changed since the announcements. I wouldn't be surprised if we look back on this as a watershed moment for the whole Internet industry.

I doubt it's changed much.

Where would the traffic go?

It's hard enough replacing products & services from the 'big companies' (google, facebook apple, etc) with smaller ones operating inside the US. Let alone replacing them with services outside the US.

Where does the traffic come from?

Do the majority of users really care that they're being spied on. "If you have nothing to hide..." seems to be a reasonably common way of thinking.

Well, at the minimum, I guess businesses will think twice about using Skype or Google voice

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