As a community, let's shun and shame all those who continue work for those agencies (NSA/CIA/FBI/DIA/DEA) both directly and as contractors from this date forward. If you didn't quite in August 2013, we don't want to hire you. If you quite now in disgust, we should view that in a positive light. If you or your company stand up to the US Gov, that should view that in a VERY positive light and we should be looking to hire them.
Let's shun and shame FB, Google, et all as collaborators. Let's make it a point to avoid google app engine and other Google services.
Things like Google App Engine/Data store are an issue b/c your backend is Google's backend...fundamentally the same issue Gmail faces. If the NSA/FBI/DEA/TSA mistakenly fingers one of my customers as a drug dealer or "terrorist" or thinks they are associated with a drug dealer/whistleblower/"terrorist", google will hand over all my apps data.
Then again, you hear about Microsoft or Sun/Oracle passing notes to the NSA about insecurities in the OS or JVM so that they can go about their stealthy ways. I wouldn't be surprised if the same happened with Go. But good point, it's open source.
There is also an issue with Go dependencies that may make it easier to introduce vulnerabilities. The solutions are discussed here: http://kylelemons.net/blog/2012/04/22-rx-for-go-headaches.ar...
It would be one thing if Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and other big firms were selling out their customers' privacy for money. They do it all of the time for advertising. I wouldn't like that, but it would be somewhat understandable that a big uncaring firm would look at their bottom line as the only determining factor. But are they making more money by being the government's snitch?
The really weird thing here is that what's going on isn't even in these companies' self-interest because they're going to make people and businesses not trust online storage of their data in any way. So all of these cloud services, all of these online storage services, anything that impacts peoples' privacy in any way is going to be put at risk of customers choosing other options for managing their data.
The companies with the ability to move all operations out of US jurisdiction/coercion who don't do so are complicit in all of this.
I can imagine what would happen to Google if, through some dark miracle, their leadership decided to do this.
Most of their top engineers live in America. So do the leaders, but ignore them, we've already decided they want this. The employees don't, though: There are eleven thousand people, there, who'll need to be relocated to - where? Europe, probably Ireland, where many of them have never been.
Certainly not where they have roots, or where their family is.
Google has deep pockets. They can afford to pay massive relocation bonuses, and they'll have to do so. Still, this is eleven thousand people; we're probably talking about a billion plus, just to get a reasonable number of them to follow. After all, most of these engineers would be perfectly capable of finding work at a different company.
Okay, so they've done that. They lost a lot of good people; probably a lot of their best people, the ones that care least about money. Still, they're now in Europe.
Now what?
Most of their infrastructure is still in the US. Compute clusters, god only knows how many. Storage clusters. User data, placed in the US under safe harbor provisions because an attempt at keeping it in Europe is unfeasible given the rather diverse tapestry of privacy laws here.
They'll need to move it all to Europe. They'll need to figure out a place to put it, and they'll need to pay billions - quite a few - to rebuild and expand their infrastructure here.
By the time this is all done, they'll have new problems. Realistically, they'll go bankrupt somewhere in the middle. And that's not mentioning possible reactions from the US government.
It would be great if leaving the US was an option, but it really.. just isn't.
It's not that I didn't know that Google was ok with the spying before, but seeing the difference between the reaction of Lavabit, to the non-reaction from Google -- well THAT gave me the final push to stop doing business with the company.
I really like Google's products. I really like All Access, but I don't think I'll be supporting the company financially anymore.
It probably won't matter much, but it's still something.
They receive warrants and subpoenas with which they have to comply to keep doing business, if you don't care for that blame the politician and the legal system, focusing on Google is not only missing the point, it's unfair
Not to mention that there is no US equivalent to the rampant human rights violations and censorship in China.
Also, the U.S. government is censoring Ladar Levison of Lavabit and others in his situation.
I've never been to China to see anything for myself, so I won't make further comparison, but prison state thing definitely bothers me.
Yep, I can tell. I can tell you haven't read about it either.
So that makes it okay for them to systematically spy on their own citizens and violate their own constitution?
Saying "this country is worse" doesn't make it okay in the US.
Bad logic.
Of course we see more violations in china, but who's to say you don't have 10 times more of that from the US?
Just because they don't do it to US citizens (in most cases) it doesn't mean they don't do it.
Believing the other side is worse just cause you "see" more of that stuff, ends up being just blissful ignorance. Every party has it's faults and I have no doubt in my mind that the US has the most.
But we shouldn't worry... that's all to "protect the american citizens from terrorism" :D
As to the US market - meh. The US is third world in terms of purchasing power. Only reason to base there is the pro-corporate corruption.