Why the NSA Prism Program Could Kill U.S. Tech Companies | Hacker News Reader

Why the NSA Prism Program Could Kill U.S. Tech Companies

popularmechanics.com

72 pointscwan18 comments

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.

You reminded me that Skype was an European company until it was bought by eBay. Now I'm depressed. On the other hand, maybe WebRTC will save the day. If only W3C would make it completely decentralized, and without having to depend on a central server.

Well, some (read: United Internet aka GMX, Web.de, 1&1…) providers offer a XMPP-based IM solution[0], but I have to admit that I never used it so far, preferring to host my own ejabberds.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMX_Multi_Messenger

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.'

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?

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

There are various cloud storage companies, TUB apparently just installed ownCloud[0], aforementioned GMX[1] has some storage thing with iPhone, Android and Windows clients and then there is always git-annex which you can run against basically anything. But you are right, there is not quite a EUDropbox, yes.

There’s even a ‘Internet made in Germany’ initiative, promising, apart from others just that[2].

[0] http://www.tubit.tu-berlin.de/?131359 (though given my experience with tubIT, I would be a little wary…)

[1] http://www.gmx.net/produkte/mediacenter/

[2] http://www.1und1.de/internetmadeingermany/ (Curious logo…)

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

These sites write for traffic first, topic second.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

"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.

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.

"The importance of metadata for surveillance cannot be overestimated"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_remailer

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