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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’

#41

Post by raldi »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #14
brianstorms wrote: post #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:…

I guess I'm missing whatever distinction people are trying to make here. He says he thinks that fears of surveillance will lead to the breakup of the internet. Which is what the headline says. What am I missing here?

The headline makes it sound like the fears are the problem, as if they're unfounded. But the fears are legitimate; it's the actual surveillance that threatens to break the internet.

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

#42

Post by knorby »

dmix wrote: post #5

Eric "if-you-nothing-to-hide" Schmidt slams NSA?

He's pretty terrible at sound bites apparently. See the full quotation in this case in comments, and if you are curious, look up the CNBC interview you are citing. His basic statement in that case was that Google and other services have to fulfill valid warrants and maybe you shouldn't post incriminating information on online services.

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

#43

Post by raldi »

rayiner wrote: post #12
EthanHeilman wrote: post #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…

> 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? It's an irrelevant question. They don't have…

> The major powers don't do it, in turn, because they have more to gain from trade than from piracy.

Don't you think that applies to the Internet, too?

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

#44

Post by drderidder »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #25
brianstorms wrote: post #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:…

>>> He spoke more about the erosion of international trust because of American surveillance activities. The irony here is that the US is one of the most hacked countries on the planet. And where do you think those attacks originate? Yup, you guessed it. . . Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. One should not give trust when one has not earned it.

Well, the US is only second to China in terms of the number of attacks originating from it, so if you want to bring up where attacks originate, the US is right up there with the worst of them[1]. In any case, I think most people are capable of seeing that cyber-crime point-of-origin is really a separate issue from what this article is talking about. The point that the US tech industry has betrayed the global trust still stands. They're already losing business because of it.

1. http://www.networkworld.com/article/2366962/microsoft-subnet...

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

#45

Post by happyscrappy »

enlightenedfool wrote: post #19

What's involved in say an alliance of nations (-USA) creating a 2nd Internet? Is it too hard. I know it won't stop surveillance but just wondering.

The problem is that the entire West is working together on intelligence.

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

#46

Post by mikeash »

thrush wrote: post #31
mikeash wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More specifically, a public opinion problem. Techies tend to think that the US government has gone rogue and is defying the people, who universally want to tone this stuff down. But really, the government is just responding to the will of the people here. Many Americans are terrified of terrorism and approve of these sorts of government efforts to fight it.

I could see where you're coming from, but the two objective arguments I see that argue for the toning down of government surveillance, or at least major changes to our surveillance system would be: 1. The current policies and attitude are [seemingly] going to have negative economic impacts of enormous proportions. 2. Surveillance will always be a cat and mouse game as technology improves, and surveillance will become…

I agree, and I think the surveillance should be drastically reformed. I just think that the only way to accomplish this is to convince a large chunk of the population to change their minds on the issue, not to try to start at the top of government.

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

#47

Post by spacefight »

higherpurpose wrote: post #27
brianstorms wrote: post #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:…

Washington Post (or is it Jeff Bezos himself?) seems to really take the government's side lately.

This. And this combined with no words whatsoever about the Bezos' other big venture in the Snowden files.

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

#48

Post by raldi »

higherpurpose wrote: post #28

Google (and others) has a simple solution to this: encrypt everything end-to-end. If Google can't know what the user's data is, then neither can the US government (supposedly). That should increase the trust other countries put into Google and other tech companies.

Then how do I search my GMail?

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

#49

Post by hammock »

hahainternet wrote: post #24
waterlesscloud wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm missing whatever distinction people are trying to make here. He says he thinks that fears of surveillance will lead to the breakup of the internet. Which is what the headline says. What am I missing here?

I think the distinction is between "Fear of being surveilled" and "Fear of the NSA surveillance program"

"Fears resulting from surveillance" more precise than "fears of surveillance"

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

#50

Post by rayiner »

raldi wrote: post #43
rayiner wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? It's an irrelevant question. They don't have…

> The major powers don't do it, in turn, because they have more to gain from trade than from piracy. Don't you think that applies to the Internet, too?

Maybe. Spying is less invasive than piracy and less likely to dampen commerce. Is anyone not going to shop at Amazon because the government might spy on the transaction?
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