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Comment by tomphoolery | Hacker News Reader

My only real fear is that some of these less-legitimate surveillance practices will discourage US companies from forming and people using US-hosted services, which would be a major blow to the United States' already volatile economy. The tech industry is the only industry that is/was actually doing well during the recession, and now our government is behaving dangerously with the trust that many international firms have given us. With that in mind, it's very alarming to hear that the NSA surveillance extends beyond admitted and known data collection in supposedly secure networks.

Seems like a bad idea to undermine the trust of most of the people (e.g. the tech industry) keeping your country afloat, if you ask me. And I really hope my fear here is unfounded...

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I don't understand the whole 'don't host in US'-thing. It doesn't make sense. The NSA/US gov made it clear that they have WAY less regard for foreign privacy vs. US privacy. If all major services move their data centres/servers overseas the NSA will do the exact same thing only this time they won't be dealing with spying on Americans issues as they're targeting overseas companies.

> I don't understand the whole 'don't host in US'-thing. It doesn't make sense.

By hosting in the US (or with something that the US claims jurisdiction over) you leave yourself open to other US agencies getting access, sometimes with valid legal documentation, or by just seizing the servers.

There's nothing you can do to stop the NSA having access, so you may as well assume that they've got it anyway. If you're worries about a targeted attack from NSA you're toast anyway, and if you're worries about them slurping the data - well, they're going to do it, so you can try to use encryption and hope everyone communicating with you is also encrypting. Obviously, this leaves you with metadata, which the NSA is also slurping.

But I agree that people saying "don't host in the US" seem to have it backwards quite often.

Not hosting in the US removes an attack vector, and a particularly nasty one. If I have to choose between being spied on passively, or having armed thugs with guns come in, ransack my house, and steal my equipment with the hosting provider's blessing.. well, you can see where I'm going with this.

It's not for protection from root kits and submarines hacking into fiber, it's for the National Security letters that require companies to spy on their customers and prohibit admitting it.

I don't think you understand how feudalism works. If you are based in the US, you have to tolerate NSA spying. But it's very likely that the NSA and FBI will be able to effectively root out foreign spies from the DGSE, PLA, etc, so that ONLY the NSA can spy on you.

If you are based in, say, Russia, you have the FSS spying on you instead of the NSA, but the NSA is still spying on you, perhaps even harder, and you have less protection from them and third parties.

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