Google’s Schmidt: Surveillance fears are ‘going to end up breaking the Internet’ | Hacker News Reader

Google’s Schmidt: Surveillance fears are ‘going to end up breaking the Internet’

washingtonpost.com

100 pointskarlheinz_py52 comments

Schmidt did NOT say that surveillance fears are going to "end up breaking the internet." That is the Washington Post's misleading headline. He spoke more about the erosion of international trust because of American surveillance activities.

To hear what Schmidt did say, watch the actual video.

He starts talking at around the 21-minute point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-P4Q-M1tW8

The actual quote is at around 24:00: "I think the simplest outcome is that we're going to end up breaking the internet. Because what's going to happen is that governments will do bad, bad laws of one kind or another and they're eventually going to say 'we want our own internet in our country because we want it to work our way and we don't want these NSA and other people in it.'"

I guess I'm missing whatever distinction people are trying to make here.

He says he thinks that fears of surveillance will lead to the breakup of the internet. Which is what the headline says.

What am I missing here?

Context.

I think the distinction is between "Fear of being surveilled" and "Fear of the NSA surveillance program"

Exactly, the headline turns "the surveillance we are doing and have done" will break the internet, to "being afraid of surveillance" (implying "without reason") will break the internet.

It's very evident that he was directly referring to the NSA spying program. Unless they were living under a rock since Snowden, the direct reason is the NSA.

"Fears resulting from surveillance" more precise than "fears of surveillance"

The headline makes it sound like the fears are the problem, as if they're unfounded. But the fears are legitimate; it's the actual surveillance that threatens to break the internet.

>>> He spoke more about the erosion of international trust because of American surveillance activities.

The irony here is that the US is one of the most hacked countries on the planet. And where do you think those attacks originate? Yup, you guessed it. . . Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

One should not give trust when one has not earned it.

Well, the US is only second to China in terms of the number of attacks originating from it, so if you want to bring up where attacks originate, the US is right up there with the worst of them[1]. In any case, I think most people are capable of seeing that cyber-crime point-of-origin is really a separate issue from what this article is talking about. The point that the US tech industry has betrayed the global trust still stands. They're already losing business because of it.

1. http://www.networkworld.com/article/2366962/microsoft-subnet...

Washington Post (or is it Jeff Bezos himself?) seems to really take the government's side lately.

The Washington Post is deeply tied into the political and government establishment of Washington and has been for decades. This sort of thing really doesn't represent a change in tone.

This. And this combined with no words whatsoever about the Bezos' other big venture in the Snowden files.

>"The simplest outcome is we're going to end up breaking the Internet," said Google's Schmidt. Foreign governments, he said, are "eventually going to say, we want our own Internet in our country because we want it to work our way, and we don't want the NSA and these other people in it."

This age of Nation-States, and their private agents, attacking other countries companies through the internet reminds me of the age of piracy in which nations employed privateers acting under a letter of marque to harass and destroy enemy commercial shipping interests. How does any nation think this is an acceptable non-warlike behavior to do allies and friendly nations?

> This age of Nation-States, and their private agents, attacking other countries companies through the internet reminds me of the age of piracy in which nations employed privateers acting under a letter of marque to harass and destroy enemy commercial shipping interests. How does any nation think this is an acceptable non-warlike behavior to do allies and friendly nations?

It's an irrelevant question. They don't have to consider it acceptable--they do it because they can. The only reason nation-states don't engage in piracy anymore is because the major powers' domination of sea power has made it untenable. And the major powers don't do it, in turn, because they have more to gain from trade than from piracy.

>It's an irrelevant question. They don't have to consider it acceptable--they do it because they can.

There are many things that states can do but don't. Why states don't do those things can be for self-interested, ideological, social, culture, ethical or constitution/legal reasons.

>And the major powers don't do it, in turn, because they have more to gain from trade than from piracy.

I think there is a good argument to be made that destroying the internet via proxy conflicts for limited intelligence gain is not in any of the big players long term interest (although it may be in the interests of state security organisations as it expands their mission/importance). Schmidt seems to agree with me.

> The major powers don't do it, in turn, because they have more to gain from trade than from piracy.

Don't you think that applies to the Internet, too?

Maybe. Spying is less invasive than piracy and less likely to dampen commerce. Is anyone not going to shop at Amazon because the government might spy on the transaction?

That is the claim the story makes for instance:

>Wyden himself cited a study from Forrester Research that found that surveillance concerns could cost U.S. companies a quarter of their foreign revenue by 2016.

The bigger issue is not consumer behavior but how Nation-States react. If they balkanize and securitize the internet then consumers may not be able to access amazon/google/facebook even if they wanted to (see Great Firewall of China). This is exactly the point Google and members of the US Senate are making in the article.

Yes; that's kinda the whole theme of the article.

They think it's acceptable because they can get away with it.

We live in a nation of government and laws and it's so ingrained that it's hard to imagine any other way. But the international stage is pure anarchy. There's no authority, no meta-government, and all that guides behavior is precedent, promises, threats, and reactions. Countries will stop attacking each other through the internet the moment they think that they're better off that way, and not before.

All systems that attempt to implement justice are ultimately built upon the monstrously unjust platform of "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".

What Schmidt actually said, from the article:

> "The simplest outcome is we're going to end up breaking the Internet," said Google's Schmidt. Foreign governments, he said, are "eventually going to say, we want our own Internet in our country because we want it to work our way, and we don't want the NSA and these other people in it."

Google (and others) has a simple solution to this: encrypt everything end-to-end. If Google can't know what the user's data is, then neither can the US government (supposedly). That should increase the trust other countries put into Google and other tech companies.

Then how do I search my GMail?

EDIT: Fat clients

This is where Apple's and Google's respective computing strategies start showing their strengths and weaknesses. Apple has put a lot of effort into creating the best "fat" client platforms around. From iOS to Mac OS X, the majority of the functionality exists at the endpoint, augmented by optional cloud services with fairly narrowly-scoped purposes.

By contrast, Google delivers an end-user experience by pushing their platform closer to end users. Google operates on the basis that the network is cheap (RIP Sun, "The network is the computer"), and that it can economize by providing functionality at the data center.

I'd argue that Google reflects a more modern way of thinking, and that Apple's approach is somewhat anachronistic. However, as far as surveillance goes, Apple is perhaps at an advantage. All things equal, it's easier to attack a few datacenters than to individually attack millions of reasonably secure endpoints.

This is doubly true when we consider business models of the two companies. In order for Google to monetize your information, it needs to see your information in some sense. That makes Apple's business model of mostly doing cost recovery through device sales even more beneficial in a surveillance-averse world.

EDIT 2: If Apple wanted to be proactive about divesting Google from some of its monetizable data collection, it would extend something like iMessage encryption to Apple users on Gmail. Send email from Apple's client to another iDevice user over gmail? Give them the option of encrypting it. Don't let Google peek in.

It's funny because even though the headline is hyperbolic, I feel that it's not far from the truth... except it's not going to end up breaking the internet. The internet has been broken from the outset. It wasn't originally designed for high security, it was designed for collaboration and it's only as we start retrofitting security on top of it are we realizing just how inadequate it is. It just goes to show that when you leave security as an afterthought, this is what happens... so all those companies that are still designing software with security as an afterthought, take note - because you're walking down the same path. Security should be at the forefront of your mind with every development task you complete.

There is a term for this - it is "peak internet". I suggest that peak internet occurred in 2010, give or take:

http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/12/peak-internet.h...

How does it follow that companies will turn to building a new network due to concerns about the NSA in the US? This takes for granted that the privacy concerns outweigh the economic ones. Foreign countries have just as much to lose as the US if internet-based commerce across borders is stopped.

I worry more about the internet breaking up due to foreign governments' desire to censor and isolate their internal networks, not because they are worried about the NSA.

Eric Schmidt:

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.

I can think of a ton of legal things that I don't want anyone to know about that I should be doing. Eric Schmidt will say anything to advance his own agenda, regardless of truth.

How would things change if Schmidt held political office? What if all big time VCs we're politicians too. Basically, what I am wondering is whether this is a policy problem or a technology problem.

Well, it's fairly cheap to "invest" in politicians through campaign contributions, it's just that the tech VC industry doesn't use its money that way.

It's both.

"With only a bare majority of Americans opposed to U.S. government anti-terrorism surveillance," it's first and foremost a political one [1].

[1] http://www.people-press.org/2013/07/26/few-see-adequate-limi...

More specifically, a public opinion problem.

Techies tend to think that the US government has gone rogue and is defying the people, who universally want to tone this stuff down. But really, the government is just responding to the will of the people here. Many Americans are terrified of terrorism and approve of these sorts of government efforts to fight it.

As communities become more and more siloed, people will increasingly assume that their social bubble's opinions are the opinions and will of the majority. They will then look to the behavior of legislators and see "the will of the majority" being disregarded. This bodes ill for representative democracy, especially in a two-party system like the US.

I could see where you're coming from, but the two objective arguments I see that argue for the toning down of government surveillance, or at least major changes to our surveillance system would be:

1. The current policies and attitude are [seemingly] going to have negative economic impacts of enormous proportions.

2. Surveillance will always be a cat and mouse game as technology improves, and surveillance will become increasingly difficult, perhaps impossible.

I agree, and I think the surveillance should be drastically reformed. I just think that the only way to accomplish this is to convince a large chunk of the population to change their minds on the issue, not to try to start at the top of government.

I guess eventually those people will be at the top of government, which is really cool to think about.

The US government's propaganda machine is what made Americans "terrified of terrorism" in the first place. The government is sowing terror propaganda quite intentionally in order to claim and retain (historically, in the US) exceptional powers to control its own citizens. If the propaganda was toned down to 1/1000th its current volume, I think we'd suffer far less intrusion into our lives and would be no less safe, but the government would be the loser, with all of these mechanisms of control vanishing.

Schmidt is not trustworthy when it comes to privacy. His views are stoneage. Seriously, would you trust any politician that said "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." because that's Mr Schmidt's well documented position.

Google has contributed to that nicely. Google undermined privacy wherever possible. They make money from having access to as much other peoples data as possible.

What's involved in say an alliance of nations (-USA) creating a 2nd Internet? Is it too hard. I know it won't stop surveillance but just wondering.

The problem is that the entire West is working together on intelligence.

Eric "if-you-nothing-to-hide" Schmidt slams NSA?

Year later and people still misquote that, you should look up the reality of your quote.

The misquote is close enough.

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

Years later and people are still defending the indefensible by calling into question the messengers instead of responding to his actual message.

> The misquote is close enough.

No it isn't, you proceed to misquote him again by missing out half of his point.

> Years later and people are still defending the indefensible by calling into question the messengers instead of responding to his actual message.

Then quote his goddamn message, instead of cutting it in half.

He's pretty terrible at sound bites apparently. See the full quotation in this case in comments, and if you are curious, look up the CNBC interview you are citing. His basic statement in that case was that Google and other services have to fulfill valid warrants and maybe you shouldn't post incriminating information on online services.

While we're playing word games...

"The fact that you got caught spying on everyone is making it harder for us to convince the world to hand over their personal data to us!"

What a pathetic farce. A bunch of feet stamping masquerading as actually giving a crap. Only interesting part is the Forrester study about potential revenue loss, which I can't imagine will be as much of a driving force as people think it should. And people like Merkel aren't who offer these seemingly poignant anecdotes, I'm sure they'd rather aid the competition to American companies more than actually effecting real change.

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