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

computerworld.com

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

#71

Post by notimetorelax »

pessimizer wrote: post #25
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.

That you don't know if another country is monitoring as deeply as the U.S. isn't a good reason for considering the U.S., who we know is monitoring as deeply as the U.S.:)

For many purposes it is a reason.

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

#73

Post by yuhong »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #70
tippytop wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful what you wish for, Google is now one of the biggest spenders in Washington [1], $18.2 million on lobbying in 2012. Needless to say, big business in the tech sector will have plenty of say in the future (if that was ever a worry), but, as always, civil liberties will continually need to be fought for. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/4/4394234/google-eight-bigges...

And what does Google lobby for? Amongst other things, getting the EU to relax it's privacy protections . Yeah, those are really the guys I want on my side when it comes to fighting for civil liberties...

I wonder what would happen if EU privacy protections was relaxed such that Google's infamously controversial new privacy policies was allowed.

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

#74

Post by jacquesm »

perlpimp wrote: post #62
j-g-faustus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two reasons for non-Americans: - the snooping is explicitly targeting foreigners. In USA I'm a foreigner, by hosting in my own country I have at least the protection of being a citizen. - if I don't like the snooping my own government does, I can call my representatives, vote for "less snooping" political candidates, start lobbying etc. In a foreign country like USA I have no rights or leverage whatsoever.

NSA and CIA has been used for Industrial espionage purposes in the past, so I wouldn't be surprised if this whole PRISM program was in part for enriching the wealthy and connected even more (and their enterprises). We already moved our servers & data back to Germany right now evaluating few replacements for Google Apps.

> evaluating few replacements for Google Apps.

Curious about your eventual decision.

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

#75

Post by pinaceae »

so this might happen in the SMB space. but any slightly global corp? just how will that US office be connected? will BMW cut off all of the US? Nestle? Sanofi-Aventis? Heineken? Toyota?

if it's on the internet, everyone is snooping it. your traffic crosses swedish borders? swedish intelligence has the right and means to copy everything. haven't seen new routing tables being adjusted to avoid sweden. facebook has their EU datacenter there.

it's kneejerk-ish IT admins who are pulling these things right now. who don't understand what having anything connected to the internet really means. any un-encrypted email plus their attachments? that pricelist you just sent your colleague? public. chatting with partners over g2m or skype? public.

but sure, the NSA is listening in on your little bikeshop which is using basecamp or mailchimp. core interests of the USA in peril.

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

#76

Post by bobwaycott »

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…

> Lets not forget that it was a democratically elected government in Europe that started WWII. And killed millions for nothing more than being born who they were. Systematically, and with the full acquiescence of the favored population.

I'm sorry, but you are displaying a remarkable level of naiveté and outright stupidity about how history happened.

Hitler was not democratically elected. Hitler had only been a legal German citizen, permitted to run for office, for less than one month. Hitler ran for President with the intention of using the office to destroy the constitution and establish a dictatorship (under which it is extremely dubious to justifiably assess 'full acquiescence' of the population). He assumed the presidency after losing the election because Hindenburg died two years after defeating Hitler, and Hindenburg ran for re-election expressly to prevent Hitler from becoming president. After Hindenburg reluctantly appointed Hitler as Chancellor, the 1933 elections were an inarguably undemocratic election, in which new "elections" were held after Hitler urged dissolution of the Reichstag. The Nazis relied on widespread violence and intimidation, culminating in the Reichstag fire and subsequent laws that eviscerated civil liberties and imprisoned political opponents. The Nazis even "monitored" the elections to ensure they achieved a majority.

Slavery, Jim Crow, McCarthyism, sexism, paternalism, COINTELPRO, etc.--all these have strong places in American history of being the norm, not the aberration, and being accepted as a matter of course.

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

#77

Post by krbbltr »

tteam wrote: post #40

At Tonido, we got a following mail from a customer a week back. " We are sorry but recent developments and news in regard to the NSA PRISM program and the Patriot Act have made us decide no longer to use any cloud solution developed or hosted by a US company. You can remove our information from your database." Even though, Our Tonido software is a self hosted one and totally orthogonal to Google Drive or dropbox in p…

At this point I think it's not entirely unreasonable to assume that your company might be forced to incorporate hidden backdoors into your software should the NSA ever decide that your customer's data is of value to them.

Not your fault, sure. But that's the reality.

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

#78

Post by krbbltr »

bhauer wrote: post #28

This is why in my recent rant about how Microsoft could re-establish its relevance [1], one recommendation was that Microsoft differentiate itself as the only tech titan to champion a decentralized cloud. I fairly strongly feel that would be a competitive advantage. (Of course if all self-managed security implemented on Microsoft operating systems can be subverted by the NSA, it's a moot point.) [1] http://tiamat.tso…

I feel that Apple was in a unique position to do that. As we all know, they make their money from hardware and don't have much interest in taking control of users' data (beyond what is necessery for some nice vendor lock-in of course; not unlike the Microsoft of the distant past).

Better yet, they already had popular consumer hardware in place on which they could have built a decentralized cloud service: Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme. They could have just iterated on those devices.

But no, they chose instead to build that stupid, useless iCloud thing with the faux linen website. And while they were at it, made their networking hardware worse than before.

Maybe there were sound technical reasons for not going the decentralized route (like crappy bandwidth and latency, or increased complexity), but it still feels like a missed opportunity.

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

#79

Post by dragonwriter »

Silhouette wrote: post #56
dragonwriter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can't the NSA spy on foreign operations without any legal oversight Yeah. It would be kind of bizarre to have a military signals intelligence service where spying on foreign electronic communications was some kind of exceptional activity. The whole point of the NSA is spying on foreign operations. The legal restrictions involving a "secret court" (the two courts themselves aren't secret, though their proceedings te…

Yeah. It would be kind of bizarre to have a military signals intelligence service where spying on foreign electronic communications was some kind of exceptional activity. And then international travel became a routine occurrence, and countries made "alliances", and international commerce became one of the most powerful forces driving the global economy, and the Internet arrived, and the kind of black and white world…

Travel doesn't really change things. The issue is sovereignty; relations between nations remain stuck in a place very close to the Hobbesian state of nature. Insofar as this is a problem to solve, the solution is popularly accountable governments with broader geographic scope than existing nation-states.

Note, however, that, there's not much movement in this direction (EU expansion is pretty much it) anywhere in the world, and some movement in the other direction.

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

#80

Post by Silhouette »

dragonwriter wrote: post #79
Silhouette wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. It would be kind of bizarre to have a military signals intelligence service where spying on foreign electronic communications was some kind of exceptional activity. And then international travel became a routine occurrence, and countries made "alliances", and international commerce became one of the most powerful forces driving the global economy, and the Internet arrived, and the kind of black and white world…

Travel doesn't really change things. The issue is sovereignty; relations between nations remain stuck in a place very close to the Hobbesian state of nature. Insofar as this is a problem to solve, the solution is popularly accountable governments with broader geographic scope than existing nation-states. Note, however, that, there's not much movement in this direction (EU expansion is pretty much it) anywhere in the…

Travel doesn't really change things. The issue is sovereignty

I don't know how meaningful "sovereignty" is any more, though. We live in very literally a global community today. People visit each other's countries for work and pleasure, some for a short time, some making a relatively permanent move. Even without physical presence, in the age of the Internet and easy international shipping, everyone's economy depends deeply on those outside their own country.

The kind of "us and them" mentality we've seen in recent debates about privacy and security is an anachronism, a work of fiction based on romantic notions from a different time and place. The key difference between political vs. financial influences reigning in that mentality is that the established ruling class in each "us" group can still exert considerable control over the political landscape, but the financial landscape is shaped by reality and has therefore adapted faster to modern life. You can spin your surveys showing that 99.97% of $YOUR_COUNTRY's citizens have no problem with $ABUSE, but if the reality is that the abuse is unpleasant and people don't like it, the money is still going to show it. Ask anyone in the air travel industry who has the option of using various controversial security measures or not.

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