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Google’s Schmidt: Surveillance fears are ‘going to end up breaking the Internet’

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Google’s Schmidt: Surveillance fears are ‘going to end up breaking the Internet’

#3
Schmidt did NOT say that surveillance fears are going to "end up breaking the internet." That is the Washington Post's misleading headline. He spoke more about the erosion of international trust because of American surveillance activities.

To hear what Schmidt did say, watch the actual video.

He starts talking at around the 21-minute point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-P4Q-M1tW8

The actual quote is at around 24:00: "I think the simplest outcome is that we're going to end up breaking the internet. Because what's going to happen is that governments will do bad, bad laws of one kind or another and they're eventually going to say 'we want our own internet in our country because we want it to work our way and we don't want these NSA and other people in it.'"

Re: Google’s Schmidt: Surveillance fears are ‘going to end up breaking the Internet’

#4
post #2

How would things change if Schmidt held political office? What if all big time VCs we're politicians too. Basically, what I am wondering is whether this is a policy problem or a technology problem.

Well, it's fairly cheap to "invest" in politicians through campaign contributions, it's just that the tech VC industry doesn't use its money that way.

Re: Google’s Schmidt: Surveillance fears are ‘going to end up breaking the Internet’

#6
>"The simplest outcome is we're going to end up breaking the Internet," said Google's Schmidt. Foreign governments, he said, are "eventually going to say, we want our own Internet in our country because we want it to work our way, and we don't want the NSA and these other people in it."

This age of Nation-States, and their private agents, attacking other countries companies through the internet reminds me of the age of piracy in which nations employed privateers acting under a letter of marque to harass and destroy enemy commercial shipping interests. How does any nation think this is an acceptable non-warlike behavior to do allies and friendly nations?

Re: Google’s Schmidt: Surveillance fears are ‘going to end up breaking the Internet’

#8
post #2

How would things change if Schmidt held political office? What if all big time VCs we're politicians too. Basically, what I am wondering is whether this is a policy problem or a technology problem.

"With only a bare majority of Americans opposed to U.S. government anti-terrorism surveillance," it's first and foremost a political one [1].

[1] http://www.people-press.org/2013/07/26/few-see-adequate-limi...

Re: Google’s Schmidt: Surveillance fears are ‘going to end up breaking the Internet’

#9
How does it follow that companies will turn to building a new network due to concerns about the NSA in the US? This takes for granted that the privacy concerns outweigh the economic ones. Foreign countries have just as much to lose as the US if internet-based commerce across borders is stopped.

I worry more about the internet breaking up due to foreign governments' desire to censor and isolate their internal networks, not because they are worried about the NSA.

Re: Google’s Schmidt: Surveillance fears are ‘going to end up breaking the Internet’

#10
What Schmidt actually said, from the article:

> "The simplest outcome is we're going to end up breaking the Internet," said Google's Schmidt. Foreign governments, he said, are "eventually going to say, we want our own Internet in our country because we want it to work our way, and we don't want the NSA and these other people in it."

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