Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. cloud firms face backlash from NSA spy programs

computerworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 86 posts

Re: U.S. cloud firms face backlash from NSA spy programs

#41

Post by s_q_b »

rodgerd wrote: post #39
s_q_b wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a well-organized lobbying effort to support the interests of United States internet companies. Those survey numbers are actually astounding. The most surprising thing about lobbying and donation efforts is that they aren't really all that expensive. All it takes is a few hundred thousand to a million to swing a tight election. The amounts aren't that large. Maybe a crowdfunding campaign for a Free Internet PA…

From my perspective outside the States, there is already government support, which is the full-court press US ambassadorial staff have been running in Australia and New Zealand to categorise privacy and data sovereignty laws as unfair and illegitimate anti-competition laws whose sole purpose is to prevent companies like Amazon gutting the local IT markets. I imagine they are running the same line in Europe. I wonder…

Sure, there are some interests that run in the opposite direction.

But domestically, the amount of power Silicon Valley and tech centers across the country hold in Washington is not commensurate with their economic and cultural clout. Certainly it is time for that to change.

Re: U.S. cloud firms face backlash from NSA spy programs

#42

Post by computer »

stfu wrote: post #37
deegles wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, what makes you think that you will have more rights/privacy by hosting somewhere else? It's been my impression that there has been (comparatively) little backlash within the US regarding foreign data acquisition. Maybe all this attention on the NSA's activities will be the trigger for other countries to create or ramp-up their own data snooping efforts.

Just by the way bureaucracy works you can make it a lot more inconvenient for them by using services of a bunch of different countries just to put your profile together. By rotating free email providers such as mail.ru, free.fr, and so on you can pretty much create a bureaucrat's nightmare - assuming of cause the unlikely cause that this is the weakest link in the chain.

Off-topic, but a fun way to take this to the next level: if you have your own domain, you can set mx records with the same priority at different services to randomly scatter your incoming mail. You can then pull them in with pop3 with your mail client or getmail with something like Dovecot to provide a self-hosted IMAP interface.

You get the added benefit of having automatic fallbacks if one of your mail services is down.

Re: U.S. cloud firms face backlash from NSA spy programs

#43

Post by MikeKusold »

temp453463343 wrote: post #31
beloch wrote: post #18

After SOPA, it became clear that the U.S. info sector could no longer neglect its lobbying efforts in Washington. The MPAA and RIAA represent comparatively tiny (in terms of revenue) interests but were only thwarted by the unpredictable (and unreliable) intervention of the public. Now this. The info sector has become big industry and is going to play a correspondingly big role in U.S. politics going forward. They're…

Is the EFF really strapped for cash? If their budget was 2 or 3 times bigger, would they really be able to do a lot more?

Unlikely. And I believe that the issue is that some politicians still have an old school boy mentality where nerds/geeks are somehow lesser than them.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) famously said "Bring in the Nerds" during SOPA hearings. He then continued to call people in technology nerds multiple times. Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrrj9Wc2L84

Rep. Mel Watts (D-NC) made it a point in his opening statement during the SOPA hearings to mention that he "is not a nerd" and therefore doesn't understand the technological parts of the bill. Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6x1sYYqKLY

Until congress starts to realize that nerds are not basement dwellers, and instead are pop culture (Facebook, The Internship) they will continue to roll their eyes at any sort of lobbying.

Re: U.S. cloud firms face backlash from NSA spy programs

#44

Post by sesqu »

Nrsolis wrote: post #26
computer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For whatever I self-host, I use open source software I trust (and sometimes contribute to). For other services, I either encrypt as much as possible (i.e. encrypted storage, OTR for chat, PGP for email) and accept that anything non-encrypted is virtually public. I could also host these encrypted things in the US, but here in Europe I have lawful rights, and my government does not torture, nor does it kill citizens wh…

I'm sorry, but you are displaying a remarkable level of naiveté about how the world works. I'm not excusing the NSA, but the reason why the USA is exceptional is precisely BECAUSE things like this are an aberration and not accepted as a matter of course. We discuss them as a society and change our government when it gets out of line. Lets not forget that it was a democratically elected government in Europe that start…

That's... not quite true.

I'm not excusing WWII, the reason Europe is exceptional is precisely BECAUSE things like that are an aberration and not accepted as a matter of course. They discuss them as a society and change their government when it gets out of line.

Let's not forget that it was a democratically elected government in the USA that started...

Re: U.S. cloud firms face backlash from NSA spy programs

#45

Post by fargolime »

barking wrote: post #4

What this tells the US Gov't is that you can have money or you can have PRISM, but you can't have both. Money (aka 'the pursuit of happiness') medium of exchange and shield against tyranny

If US tax revenues fall, then tax rates rise (with concomitant loopholes for the wealthy). Gov't wins either way. The general public takes the hit, as always.

Re: U.S. cloud firms face backlash from NSA spy programs

#46

Post by Andrex »

s_q_b wrote: post #29
beloch wrote: post #18

After SOPA, it became clear that the U.S. info sector could no longer neglect its lobbying efforts in Washington. The MPAA and RIAA represent comparatively tiny (in terms of revenue) interests but were only thwarted by the unpredictable (and unreliable) intervention of the public. Now this. The info sector has become big industry and is going to play a correspondingly big role in U.S. politics going forward. They're…

We need a well-organized lobbying effort to support the interests of United States internet companies. Those survey numbers are actually astounding. The most surprising thing about lobbying and donation efforts is that they aren't really all that expensive. All it takes is a few hundred thousand to a million to swing a tight election. The amounts aren't that large. Maybe a crowdfunding campaign for a Free Internet PA…

> We need a well-organized lobbying effort to support the interests of United States internet companies.

Was launched after SOPA: http://internetassociation.org

Re: U.S. cloud firms face backlash from NSA spy programs

#47

Post by sudonim »

computer wrote: post #42
stfu wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just by the way bureaucracy works you can make it a lot more inconvenient for them by using services of a bunch of different countries just to put your profile together. By rotating free email providers such as mail.ru, free.fr, and so on you can pretty much create a bureaucrat's nightmare - assuming of cause the unlikely cause that this is the weakest link in the chain.

Off-topic, but a fun way to take this to the next level: if you have your own domain, you can set mx records with the same priority at different services to randomly scatter your incoming mail. You can then pull them in with pop3 with your mail client or getmail with something like Dovecot to provide a self-hosted IMAP interface. You get the added benefit of having automatic fallbacks if one of your mail services is…

Would you really get a random distribution if MX records all had the same priority? Sounds like a fun test & experiment.

Re: U.S. cloud firms face backlash from NSA spy programs

#48

Post by sixothree »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #34

Incidentally, I just had a new customer call to ask about hosting services, because he needs a new mail account and, in his words, "can't trust Google after all the recent news." This guy is an attorney and very far from the tech echo-chamber. I've got a pretty small business in a small town, so when I start hearing about stuff like this from customers, it's usually a pretty good indication that it's gone mainstream.

Using google just makes me feel dirty. When it's decision time at my company there are a number of us who will be lobbying against google, skype, dropbox et al.

Re: U.S. cloud firms face backlash from NSA spy programs

#49

Post by sudonim »

bigiain wrote: post #36
vmarsy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at http://www.ovh.co.uk/cloud/public-cloud.xml EC2-like instances are supposed to be released at the end of august.

I notice they've now got a US based datacenter. With my overly-paranoid hat on, I wonder how much that places their entire business under risk of NSA pressure?

They have a North American datacenter in Canada, but nothing in the US. The website makes it seem like they do presumably for marketing reasons.

Re: U.S. cloud firms face backlash from NSA spy programs

#50

Post by computer »

sudonim wrote: post #47
computer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic, but a fun way to take this to the next level: if you have your own domain, you can set mx records with the same priority at different services to randomly scatter your incoming mail. You can then pull them in with pop3 with your mail client or getmail with something like Dovecot to provide a self-hosted IMAP interface. You get the added benefit of having automatic fallbacks if one of your mail services is…

Would you really get a random distribution if MX records all had the same priority? Sounds like a fun test & experiment.

As far as I know that's the expected behaviour. I also saw it in practice, although I did not study the exact distribution in much detail.

The reason for this behaviour would be that you would normally use this for load balancing.

You can normally get the same behaviour by setting one MX record to a local A record (mail.example.com), and then serving several IPs for that A record in a round-robin/random fashion.

Post reply on HN