NSA Spying Risks $35 Billion in U.S. Technology Sales
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Was that too blunt and direct? Somehow I don't think it's blunt and direct enough for the decision-makers to figure out this obvious consequence of their actions, however unintended and however well-intentioned they were when they decided to read so many people's emails as if they were entitled.
It's funny that you should mention that. I'd argue that institutions are responsible for the elected officials as well. One might even argue that the entire system is so broken that it all needs to be torn down and rebuilt.
no it's not , these institutions work as intended by those who put them in place. And frankly these institutions are not about "terrorism", they are here for industrial espionnage.
Either Petrobras (Brasilian state owned oil company) is a terrorist training camp, or they are doing industrial espionage there.
And I don't think that this 50000 networks ( http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/11/23/nsa-infected-50000-compu... ) have backdoors installed by the NSA for the terrorists neither.
If nothing of this happens, then the entire system and all involved are guilty.
Source report for the article: http://www2.itif.org/2013-cloud-computing-costs.pdf
I always laugh at graphs who move steadily upwards from the beginning of recording to the present, but then do insane things like dip dramatically and then rise prolifically in the future, like figure 1 in the report.
After looking at the endnotes for this report, it's clear that the writer has actually bought the meaningless blustering these companies and governments are doing. Threats, promises, and warnings aside, there's a distinct lack of actual action on the part of governments and companies towards this idea of harming US companies for what their government did.
Do you know what it is like to live in a jurisdiction where you are actually liable for what happens to the data of your users? Especially if it is data on teachers and pupils, which are (due to the fact that they are children) especially protected, as is the case with education software startups?
I can't use the Amazon cloud, can't use App engine, Cloudflare or anything that is connected to the US or companies with a US mother firm.
The whole situation is one infuriating clusterfuck and I find it really insulting when people claim that there are no real consequences to the recent scandal.
But is that because of NSA spying, or because of the lack of privacy laws in the US? Because I know people who've not sent any user data to the US for years, certainly before they found out about NSA spying.
No offense but it's this same reason that U.S. companies would be pilloried if they hosted all their users' private data on a cloud service hosted in Russia or China.
Even without an entity like the NSA an organization in the EU could not simply assume that any other nation obeys their data privacy rules without a strong bilateral agreement dictating just that.
That's not a consequence of the "recent scandal" as even now the scandal hasn't revealed anything with regard to non-U.S. networks that wasn't already known: the NSA intercepts communications abroad when they can, just as they've done since 1949.
The NSA stories have certainly brought it to prominence but anyone hosting their user's private data on Amazon's US-EAST before this, without a guarantee that the U.S. would obey European data privacy laws at the Virginia data center, was guilty of negligence at best, since no such agreement has ever been made to my knowledge.
What the NSA stories have helped to illustrate is that there is an essential disconnect between applying nation-level laws to global-level networks that needs to be rectified one way or another.
This is why they wanted to pass CISPA.
So, if you're going to be internally consistent, you're going to have to delete all digital copies of all "sensitive" data, lest you yourself get hacked.
Or you could accept that with all operations there exists risk, and attempt to mitigate that risk using methods which are consistent between one another.
Not using US products gets you nowhere, in other words.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/14/us-cisco-results-i...
Cisco's revenue warning comes after former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden exposed widespread surveillance by the National Security Agency through internet data, much of which is transmitted via Cisco's equipment.
Cisco's chief financial officer, Frank Calderoni, told analysts the company had been affected by a political backlash in China, but said it was difficult to quantify how much of its revenue shortfall was a result of this.
When she will support bills like Rush Holt's Surveillance State Repeal Act that repeals the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act, then you'll know the government is serious about reining in on their power and actually care about the many billions the US corporations stand to lose from not doing that.
Until then, pay no attention to their NSA "reforms" - or better yet, do pay attention, because they are likely to add in a lot of backdoors to give NSA more power by explicitly legalizing many of the things they have been doing, like Feinstein's "FISA Improvements Act", and call your representatives to reject it.
Stage 1: denial.
The way to do it is through the pocketbook.
Probably not him.
http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/02/07/fake-quote-f...
NSA spying is terrible, and must stop, but many companies slurp way too much data, and store it sloppily. Look at the number of password database leaks, and that's stuff that they want to keep secret.
The lack of sensible privacy regulation has already caused many companies to not send data to the US.
"International anger over the National Security Agency’s Internet
surveillance is...and setting back U.S. efforts to promote Internet
freedom."
'Salgado said. “This could have severe unintended consequences, such
as a reduction in data security, increased cost, decreased
competitiveness, and harm to consumers.”"
Overall very strange journalism here.
Of course yea... because now we all know that the US (government)actively promotes 'freedom'. God the MSM really sucks these days.
So when are you (plural you) going to put your money and your time where your mouths are and find someone to challenge her, including in the primaries?
The world is not perfect or fair, sorry.
But you do have a chance to work to fix things.
Seriously -- it's too late for that. These so-called "security" agencies and their sponsors in Congress have already ignored dozens of laws going all the way back to 1776. What's another law going to accomplish? Is yet another Church Committee the answer? If so, how do you anticipate the outcome will be different this time?
Edit: here's another question, seeing as you're in Italy. What do you think will happen when the power of the NSA ends up in the hands of a politician like Berlusconi?
That has taken some 200 plus years, a civil war, and many other deaths, and is still not really a 'solved problem'.
So sometimes these things take a long time and a whole lot of effort. Whining about how something is impossible is just a waste of everyone's time, and potentially discouraging to those with the means to get out there and work for change. Mostly it's just a weak excuse to sit on one's ass and do nothing.
Speaking of Italy, this cynical "oh, nothing ever changes, all the politicians are the same, blah blah blah" attitude is one of the worst problems, and one of the best ways to keep people from standing up and doing something. That kind of attitude is far more common here than it is in the US, and the results are pretty evident.
No one but the native Italians are truly qualified to render such an opinion. They can cite 2000+ years of history as evidence. You wouldn't want the NSA to work for Caligula, the Borgias, Mussolini, or Berlusconi, but somehow, people like you think the next guy or gal in line for the throne will be different.
My whole point is that this is something people will need to work out - they won't let go quietly.
This isn't their government, it's ours. Take it back please.
1 person can make a difference. We are in this together.