
NSA Spying Risks $35 Billion in U.S. Technology Sales - puppetmaster3
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-26/nsa-spying-risks-35-billion-in-u-s-technology-sales.html
======
spodek
Who would have thought that acting like an asshole would drive people away
from you?

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.

~~~
noonespecial
I suspect they know. They just happen to be the types of people who would
"burn down the kingdom so long as they could be king of the ashes."

~~~
iwwr
There is no 'they' in this picture, nor a thing that can be personified (i.e.
an asshole). It's just a currently broken set of institutions. There's no
reason to be angry at institutions, only persons. Direct that anger at
particular elected officials, the president, congressmen, and at particular
people that act as enablers: people in the media, press or private persons in
some (corporate) power that are advocating surveillance.

~~~
camus2
> It's just a currently broken set of institutions.

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.

~~~
astrange
Have any leaked documents mentioned industrial espionage?

~~~
gmuslera
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/08/us-usa-security-
sn...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/08/us-usa-security-snowden-
petrobras-idUSBRE9870AD20130908)

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...](http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/11/23/nsa-
infected-50000-computer-networks-with-malicious-software/) ) have backdoors
installed by the NSA for the terrorists neither.

------
diminoten
Comments in here currently are on par with YouTube. It's disgusting - we get
it, you don't like NSA's spying programs. Breathless pontification on that
point is utterly worthless. Stop.

Source report for the article: [http://www2.itif.org/2013-cloud-computing-
costs.pdf](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.

~~~
sentenza
This is all nice and well, but here on the ground, the NSA scandal has really
bad consequences for tech companies.

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.

~~~
diminoten
Actually, what you can't do is expose that data to the Internet, period, if
you're attempting to be consistent with your, "NSA spying is causing me
problems" viewpoint, because the NSA is monitoring network traffic around the
globe, and decrypting what it can and storing what it can't.

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.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Exactly. There is _zero_ reason to suspect non-US clouds are any more secure.

------
salient
I don't think that's enough. It needs to be 10x more than that before the
government will start taking this issue seriously, and actually rein on NSA's
power. And you can tell by the actions of their insider, Dianne Feinstein,
that they have no intention of doing that right now.

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.

~~~
Zigurd
I think you can count on that happening. If Cisco sneezed last quarter, the
whole telecom infrastructure business in the US is going to have pneumonia.

------
puppetmaster3
It's crazy that people don't connect the NSA to their job. Their job
disappearing, like Detroit style.

Stage 1: denial.

------
wavefunction
Actually, for all you non-American persons why have been asking what can you
do about the NSA...

The way to do it is through the pocketbook.

------
forgottenpaswrd
Well, don't worry , the NSA is a 50 billion industry itself. So you could
always work for the government as Obama wants.

~~~
thisiswrong
"Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." \- Benito Mussolini

~~~
Amadou
_\- Benito Mussolini_

Probably not him.

[http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/02/07/fake-
quote-f...](http://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/02/07/fake-quote-files-
mussolini-on-fascism-and-corporatism/)

~~~
camus2
That's exactly what Benito Mussolini (and Adolf Hilter) did. + extra free
workers in death camps for the german industry.

------
DanBC
I'm gently surprised that people aren't looking at all the other terrible
privacy policies and laws in the US.

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.

------
vellum
There haven’t been any real political consequences to supporting surveillance.
Who’s lost an election over it? Until that happens, expect this to continue.
It’s like how now one gets fired for buying IBM. The politicians are worried
that if they did support rollback, and then some event happened, they’d get
primaried out of office.

------
malandrew

        "International anger over the National Security Agency’s Internet 
        surveillance is...and setting back U.S. efforts to promote Internet 
        freedom."
    

What?! A surveilled Internet is not a free Internet.

    
    
        'Salgado said. “This could have severe unintended consequences, such 
        as a reduction in data security, increased cost, decreased 
        competitiveness, and harm to consumers.”"
    

Uncorrected surveillance activity by the NSA likely will result in "unintended
consequences, such as a reduction in data security, increased cost, decreased
competitiveness, and harm to consumers"

Overall very strange journalism here.

------
vinceguidry
Between patent trolls and the NSA, if I'm going to start the software business
I've always wanted to start anytime soon, I'll find anywhere else to do it
other than here in the 'good ole' USA.

------
thisiswrong
> International anger over the National Security Agency’s Internet
> surveillance is hurting global sales by American technology companies and
> setting back U.S. efforts to promote Internet freedom.

Of course yea... because now we all know that the US (government)actively
promotes 'freedom'. God the MSM really sucks these days.

------
RRRA
Let's keep the loss above the NSA's budget so they can rationalize their
stupidity with the only thing they understand: $

------
andyl
Does Washington want a strong tech industry? Our own Senator Feinstein
regularly votes against the interests of Silicon Valley. I see a Washington
with lots of enthusiasm for Military and Oil/Gas, but not much for Technology.

~~~
davidw
> Our own Senator Feinstein regularly votes against the interests of Silicon
> Valley

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?

~~~
smokeyj
Why should we have to outspend established industries just to have our voices
heard? That sounds like a rigged game and a loosing battle to me. If any
energy is to be spend addressing the issue it should be to route around these
parasites, not greasing their wheels for adding no value to society.

~~~
davidw
> Why should we have to outspend established industries just to have our
> voices heard?

The world is not perfect or fair, sorry.

But you do have a chance to work to fix things.

~~~
CamperBob2
Also, if the Mafia threatens to burn down your business, the proper response
is not to call the police or pay the protection money, but to join the Mafia
and reform the system from within. Right?

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?

~~~
davidw
Oh, well if you put it that way, I guess bitching on Hacker News is definitely
the best option.

~~~
CamperBob2
I guess answering my question is too much trouble, huh. For the record, in
case you missed it, it was, "How do you expect the (legislative) outcome to 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?

~~~
davidw
Things can and do get better: when the United States' constitution was
written, slaves were considered 3/5ths of a human being. Now a black man is
president.

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.

~~~
CamperBob2
_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,_

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.

~~~
davidw
When I was talking about 'the problem', what on earth gave you the idea that I
was talking about anything other than severely limiting the powers of the NSA?

My whole point is that this is something people will need to work out - they
won't let go quietly.

------
dlsx
NSA is hurting: US citizens US economy US confidence US foreign relations US
privacy US law US

This isn't their government, it's ours. Take it back please.

1 person can make a difference. We are in this together.

