Let’s stop the NSA before it destroys the cloud industry | Hacker News Reader

Let’s stop the NSA before it destroys the cloud industry

venturebeat.com

38 pointsghosh17 comments

It's really not possible anymore. Everyone has lost their trust in the U.S. government, to the extent that even if a high-ranking official makes a claim (e.g. "We do not spy on you"), you can no longer believe them.

The same can be said for U.S. companies, since they are given secret gag orders that they aren't allowed to mention, that also tell the companies what lies to say.

There's no going back. If you care at all about keeping information from your competitors, government, or anyone else who might get their hands on it, you need to host it physically on your own local internal network. No cloud.

As much as I'd like to disagree with you, I agree. But in the long term I think the trust can be restored, if majority of people can actually give a shit about these revelations. Mostly because NSA can't do the things they do without the support of big companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. Once these companies start losing money and the reason is apparent, they'll take actions against the government as Lavabit and other relatively small sized companies had done (not saying they'd shut down, obviously).

Governments act the way they do because majority of people don't care about any of this stuff, not yet at least. Most people who're uneasy about these revelations are uneasy because of what might happen in the future and they fear how far governments are willing to go (or better yet, can they go any further) to invade our privacy. Today, governments' actions don't effect any of us, not directly at least. It's been the case that people don't act against something unless that thing directly effect their lives.

But maybe it really is too late and the trust can not be restored again. Wealth inequality directly effects the citizens of the US (at least that's how I see it from a foreigners point of view) and the US citizens did nothing to change it, other than OWS movement which was arguably a desperate attempt.

> But in the long term I think the trust can be restored, if majority of people can actually give a shit about these revelations.

The problem is, that right now US based cloud services loose customers to other competitors which are not hampered by ridiculous US laws. Since cloud services are all about customer lock in, it does not matter if trust can be restored at a later time(which I personally doubt). They have lost the customer to a competitor - most likely forever.

I was actually talking about the trust between governments and their citizens. But since you brought it up...

> The problem is, that right now US based cloud services loose customers to other competitors which are not hampered by ridiculous US laws.

I don't think that's the case. Is there even a cloud service that's out of NSA's reach that's become prominent after these revelations? People on HN mentioned some services, but general public still use Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive as if nothing's happened.

This.

When the Patriot Act was passed, there were a lot of European companies who were very skeptical about DHS/NSA snooping on their data. Now we've got solid proof that it's happening.

Regardless of what the US does now, people have lost faith. They can interpret the definition of words in the law so that what they do (which seem immoral/illegal/wrong to us) is in fact legal.

What the US can't control is purchasing power. Companies outside of the US are looking inwards again. AWS/Rackspace clouds look great, but you're bending yourself and your customers over, and the NSA didn't even buy you dinner.

The US cloud is toast.

Actually Gartner would disagree. We are near the end of the Hype Cycle and enterprises who were once skeptical about the security and risks of the cloud have recently begun embracing it. They pretend this trend is set to continue in the fuTure. The current NSA talk might make some weary but the US cloud is in no way toast.

Sorry I don't have a link to the Gartner report about the current state of adoption I'm referencing.

The cloud isn't dead for end-user applications (e.g. entertainment, video, music, games) but it is completely destroyed for any B2B applications.

Enterprises that are providing services to customers will continue using cloud services for their customers, because they'll probably get the NSA shakedowns anyway.

If you are using cloud services for proprietary development, research, and general employee workflow (e.g. Office 365, Google Docs, Gmail, and similar services) then there's a good chance you're making a big mistake.

If the data you are storing in them actually matters enough to care about the spying.

> The US cloud is toast.

It would be irresponsible to trust the cloud anywhere, really, for two reasons. First, you can't know if another government is compliant with U.S. surveillance. Second, you can't expect any other government to be honest about its own actions either.

Agreed, for enterprises (who also have the $$) the cloud is dead. Giving your data to a third party is now the same as waving it around it public, thanks to the US government. I had hope for a while, but not after seeing Keith Alexander lie directly to congress with no repercussion.

Good for sys admins, bad for software engineers.

You are about a decade too late.

NSA has virtually unlimited funds now, what congressperson is going to defund them and risk the blame for the next incident.

If 60TB HAMR drives become a reality this decade to replace the 4TB per drive limit, they will archive the entire internet for decades until they can decode it. Why not since it costs them nothing, it's "only" taxpayer dollars and the taxpayers aren't worth saving unless they can know every detail about their existance.

If you want a picture of what the business climate looks like in a country without a rich regard for freedom and privacy, just look at Russia. That country... has imprisoned millions of entrepreneurs over the past 10 years.

Not that Russia is a pillar of freedom or privacy, but millions of entrepreneurs seems a bit hyperbolic:

    Prison population total
    (including pre-trial detainees / remand prisoners)
    686,200
    at 1.7.2013 (national prison administration)

http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_country.php...

A sensational article.

Let's say 'cloud' goes the way of the dodo. What's the alternative that is NSA proof? The only thing I can land on is building and hosting one's own apps.

Do you really see consumers rolling their own email servers so the NSA can't access them?

Cloud apps are as important as the content stored on them, the vast majority being benign.

I haven't heard any of the current customers I've dealt with even utter anything related to the NSA changing their minds at all about the cloud. Most companies that are even considering moving their infra offsite to a 3rd party have already vetted the risk/reward value prop and accepted the risks. Much of the articles and talk like this don't factor in to that decision; assuming a slight risk that a 3rd party can access your data was already signed off as acceptable when moving offsite, NSA or not.

Note: you shouldn't down vote just because you disagree.

Decision making takes a long time in any bigger company. Changes often take month to years before implementation starts. I guess, the business effects of the US/worldwide internet spying will not be visible right now, but in a few months or years.

My argument above is that companies that have decided to move to the cloud, NSA or not, have already signed off on the fact that it is worth the risk to allow possible 3rd party access. The new discussion about the NSA doesn't affect that decision.

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