
Why the NSA Prism Program Could Kill U.S. Tech Companies - cwan
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/why-the-nsa-prism-program-could-kill-us-tech-companies-15564220
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claudius
The only major market only served by US companies at the moment is search and
possibly videochats, in all other markets, there are already European service
providers (think United Internet or even DailyMotion). But then search is also
a field where it takes considerable investments to build an independent
solution – nevertheless it will be interesting to see how long it takes for
one to pop up.

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goostavos
Cloud storage is likely something that could make a dent into the US market
now. Surely they've got big players in Europe that would be happy to expand to
a new customer base. Give me something that has Dropbox's cross-platform
functionality, and throw in a fun tag line informing me that they _don't_ hand
over my data to the NSA, and yeah, I'd happily make the switch. If only to
feel .01% like I 'stuck it to the man.'

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jauer
Ultimately any sufficiently popular platform will attract the attention of the
local security services.

The question is who do you fear most, NSA or GHCQ, DGSE etc?

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anonyfuss
The EU (and Germany in particular) have data protection laws ... so, yeah: I
fear the NSA the most.

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rhizome
Is PM run by Demand Media or medium.com now? There's no way this author knows
what they're talking about.

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benologist
These sites write for traffic first, topic second.

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jbcurtin2
How can we recover from a 'recession' with government making decisions that
thwart the very essence of what our currency is? Trust.

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walshemj
I do wonder if the media panic over this will result in quickly passed laws
with untended consequences that will damage companys like Google that rely on
having huge amounts of personal data.

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vor_
Somehow, I won't feel bad if a multi-billion dollar advertising company has to
deal with privacy laws that make their data-harvesting a little harder.

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walshemj
True but as I got voted down sounds like some one doesn't like my thesis :-)
maybe by a cutlet.

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hannibal5
I think the most straight forward solution for most foreign countries would be
to insist that Google, Facebook etc. set up their servers within those
countries and limit the amount of data they can transmit to US.

Small countries can't do it alone, but EU for example has enough muscle to
make this happen and force all data to be stored within EU countries and be
staffed by people who are EU citizens. There are already several Google data
centers in in EU. They just need more.

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chmars
There are already several Google data centers in the EU. And there's also a
wide range of surveillance and legal interception in the EU.

The question for users is there not whether the can evade surveillance etc. or
not but which government they prefer to directly monitor them. And there is of
course data exchange too with many close US allies in the EU in particular the
UK, but also Germany and countries in Eastern Europe.

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betterunix
"The question for users is there not whether the can evade surveillance etc.
or not but which government they prefer to directly monitor them"

Except that users _can_ evade government surveillance. Encrypt your email. Use
anonymous remailers. Send broadcast messages to Usenet. When you need to
manage more than two people, there are things like attribute based encryption
that allow you to create access policies that are enforced cryptographically.
Etc., etc., etc.

The real issue is that people are far too apathetic to accept the momentary
inconvenience imposed by such cryptosystems.

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chmars
I am afraid that users cannot evade government surveillance.

Sure users can encrypt their mail and other content but many relevant parts of
user communication will remain public. The importance of metadata for
surveillance cannot be overestimated. In addition, encryption and efficient
communication bite each other – there is not just momentary inconvenience,
there is constant inconvenience.

Just an example: The OS X 10.8 version of GPGTools, essential if you want to
use GPG not just on the command line, just became available a few weeks ago.
Users who wanted to use the current version of OS X and GPGTools, had to
revert to a beta version. In a productive IT environment, beta versions are
not acceptable.

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betterunix
"The importance of metadata for surveillance cannot be overestimated"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_remailer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_remailer)

