As an Australian this is exactly how I feel. Over the past few weeks I've been moving many of my business systems off the cloud and onto self hosted servers and using less and less American servers because they clearly have no issue with taking foreigners information and with tens of thousands of contractors and employees able to access that information I wonder how long it's going be before big companies are able to effectively spy on competitors through having a 'friend' with access to prism.
"I wonder how long it's going be before big companies are able to effectively spy on competitors through having a 'friend' with access to prism."
How long? I think this has been happening for some time now. There's no mechanism for watching the watchers. Furthermore as software developers we know that there's always an unaudited path to the data and people _will_ access it for their own benefit.
Bloomberg had access to how Goldman-Sachs uses Bloomberg's terminals so Bloomberg employees took advantage. The NSA can see Bloomberg, Goldman-Sachs and every financial firms' queries and transactions, all telephone calls and all e-mails, all internet surfing (for starters), where they eat lunch and what road they drive home on. NSA employees will be tempted (or possibly allowed or even encouraged) to take advantage.
And what better way to get money to pay for unauthorized or secret black operations? There may be much happening right now that is completely unauthorized (even by NSA) and completely out of the purview of those who supposedly are in charge.
We may never, ever see the size of this iceberg. It could be spawning sizable financially autonomous mini-icebergs that continue to function even after this one has been melted down. This is a fscking nightmare scenario.
