NSA spying will shatter the internet, Silicon Valley bosses warn

I take heart in the old saying...

...the internet routes around damage

Now that we know what the NSA and the 5 eyes are up to, people are working on solutions.

We know they intercept kit and modify it, so people examine said kit.

The use of Tails Live CDs at wifi hotspots can be effective.

Apple and Google are making good moves.

More people today know what a "warrant canary" is...

We can win this fight. If we fight...

Guise

"Governments could start enacting protectionist trade laws under the guise of safeguarding privacy and deterring spies"

I don't see a guise, this seems like a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

NSA: Sure, we'll stop!

We'll stop you from being able to tell that we are spying on the Internet.

Does it strike anyone else as odd that the same guy who just said "The simplest outcome [of NSA spying] is that we end up breaking the internet," at the roundtable had previously said;

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place,"

"We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about."

"We need a [verified] name service for people, governments will demand it."

Schmidt's hypocrisy dial must go to eleven.

Whereas ...

... massive, systematic grabs of personal data by commercial organisations - many of whom are based i the USA - is quite OK? I suppose it's just a coincidence that the organisations that undertake personal data collection, tracking and exploitation on the largest scale are those complaining the loudest.

Too late USA.

No amount of "we're gonna be good now, honest" is going to allay the fears that what your TLOs* had been doing in the shadows won't still be happening in the shadows regardless of your public contrition.

*Three-Lettered Organisations.

all your base belong us

"US companies with large numbers of customers in overseas territories therefore would have to build data centers in each market"

The US is currently making the argument to Microsoft that if the datacenter is owned by a US company then it's subject to US law even if it's in another country - and the company must hand over the data.

In another article today about the Silk Road the FBI is taking the position that it's fair game to hack - without a warrant - into any server that it suspects might be of interest to them IF that server is outside the US.

In other news,

Dihydrogen monoxide revealed as world's wettest liquid. Film at 11.

Respect!

"Facebook's Colin Stretch added that having overseas data centers would cause massive privacy problems of their own: governments that don’t respect citizens' privacy would be within reach of large amounts of data."

Funny thing is that is why I wouldn't use a cloud service based in the US. Too close to the US government and it's been proved over and over again that they don't respect citizens' privacy. (Both foreign and their own.)

Anonymous because I'm a nobody.

Silver lining

Let them create their own Internet. If US government cannot respect privacy of own citizens (gaze them down from above the rule of the law), then what is wrong with the Russians or even Chinese. At least we will have healthy competition.

Wrong problem

It's kinda cute to see how they are trying to distract people with pointing at the NSA.

The NSA is NOT the problem. They are basically overpaid hackers with a massive budget (like any other government spy outfit such as GCHQ) and they are by definition illegal the moment they operate outside the US (that the US says it's OK has no effect). Your defence strategy for them is basically the same as for any other unwanted intrusion, provided you add man management and staff screening to the process.

The problem is the fantastic mess of laws they have that allow practically any official to walk into your preferred US service provider and demand access to your data without much in the way of probably cause and due process and no restriction on dragnet style surveillance. Even if said US company has servers abroad, as far as US law is concerned, if the HQ is in the US they are obliged to cough up that data too.

Now before anyone starts telling me that that will be hard if it's all encrypted: if you as a US company have provided that encryption, you may be forced to either break it or stop providing the service. The "unbreakable crypto" argument has actually not yet been tested in court as a valid defence, and until there is a firmly set precedent on that I would not touch a US based provider with a barge pole.

Friend of mine runs a small-ish company that is growing quite quickly on the back of orders from companies doing business with EU governments that require all work to be done by staff located within the EU and for software/data to stay within the EU.

Of course it will all go titsup if UKIP get their way.

I am going to start sending random encrypted utter nonsense

on a randomly timed script to randomly selected targets.

That should keep the NSA busy for a while.

Australia's new laws are scarier than anything in the USA

"The new bill also allows ASIO to seek just one warrant to access a limitless number of computers on a computer network when attempting to monitor a target, ...this would effectively allow the entire internet to be monitored, as it is a "network of networks" and the bill does not specifically define what a computer network is.

ASIO will also be able to copy, delete, or modify the data held on any of the computers it has a warrant to monitor.

The bill also allows ASIO to disrupt target computers, and use innocent third-party computers not targeted in order to access a target computer.... j

Anyone - including journalists, whistleblowers and bloggers - who "recklessly" discloses "information ... [that] relates to a special intelligence operation" faces up to 10 years' jail.

Any operation can be declared "special" by an authorised ASIO officer

"

What's that ? America's moral authority ??

There's none of that left, my good man. Your government has been chipping away at that block for the past half century - aught is left but pebbles now. Only an American can go on about America's moral authority and believe in it.

As for the fear that "small start-ups will not have the ability to operate overseas", I ask : where's the problem ? They're start-ups. When you're small, you start small. Only on the Internet have companies got the habit of considering a world market. Every company that deals with actual goods and/or services knows that expanding overseas is a costly option that can only be realized when success has graced the local operation.

In other words, not going worldwide immediately seems to me to be a pretty good guarantee that, once a company does get to that stage, it has ironed out the kinks in its administrative and production processes. A good thing, in other words.