Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

The blowback from this mess could very soon be more severe than everyone might think. I expect several foreign countries to ban American tech company operations in their jurisdictions.

The bans in the foreign nations could easily stem from foreign business owners pressuring their politicians to ban American-operated companies under the guise of national security, privacy, and anti-American-power-mongering, but their real motivation will be to gain market share. Their politicians can easily make it into a win-win for everyone involved - the politicians (campaign contributions), the local businesses (market share), and the population, who wouldn't mind seeing a global anti-America movement.

Thou doth jest. Most western countries are lap-dogs to the US, and almost certainly exchange spying data with the US so that they don't breach their own privacy laws. This will have little impact with US allies.

Even if the intelligence governmental agencies exchange that in the US (and many certainly do), that doesn't mean they can't impose rules on businesses (expanding the privacy laws you mention) and other state entities to avoid using US tech services.

Sure it'd be hypocritical, but when did that stop anyone?

Especially because there's been past concerns about US intelligence passing sensitive data to US companies to help them win contracts.

There's bound to be a lot of high level execs at European companies whispering in their governments ears at the moment about how this is putting them at a substantial disadvantage, whether or not they believe it to be true.

> I expect several foreign countries to ban American tech company operations

That will probably not happen.

But what will happen, and have a small but ultimately significant effect, is that American companies will lose some contracts, by the narrowest of margins in a decision... contracts they would otherwise have won by a narrowest of margins... due to the fallout from the NSA surveillance scandal.

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