Will the NSA Hurt US Cloud Revenue?

Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

Will the NSA Hurt US Cloud Revenue?

The whistleblower / traitor was revealed in the NSA scandal: Edward Snowden. I have been reading a lot about this whole situation.

Apparently, this story was broken last year, but no one paid attention. "William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the secretive agency, and one of the best codebreakers in NSA history" was interviewed by the NY Times. Why didn't anyone pay attention (including me)?

Why aren't more people outraged?

Abe Lincoln at Gettysburg said, "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

How did we get here? It started in 1978 with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Then in 1994, Clinton signed the CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) for wire-tapping VoIP calls. Then in 2001, after 9/11, Congress passed - but did not read - the 363 pages of the USA Patriot Act, which Congress has extended too! Then the FISA was amended in 2008 - to give it more powers.

Besides the AT&T Room 641A and ECHELON, there are Stellar Wind, PRISM and Boundless Informant - all programs that the NSA employs to spy on the world. It spies on US citizens too. And the NSA chief lied to Congress about it on video.

Since 2004, we have known that the NSA had links into telecom companies. But will all of this now hurt the US Cloud services revenue?

There was an article in The UK Register titled "Why I'm boycotting US cloud tech - and you should too." This backlash will result in real revenue dips, despite the UN stating that many governments spy on their citizens.

The Politico states it this way, "If these companies didn't know the government had this kind of access, how can they assure people their data is safe? If they did know, are they lying about their complicity? Either way, how will anyone be able to trust companies that have for years been insisting your secrets are safe with them?" Rock and a hard place.

We will see, but the buzzword encryption will certainly be used a lot soon. And real privacy will be a huge factor. Smaller companies will have a lever that larger companies won't.

Microsoft is already feeling the backlash as it releases details about Xbox One, which has a lot of restrictions - like DRM, the box has to be plugged into the Internet and the Kinect camera has to be attached. Please spend $500 so we can keep an eye on you - either with an iPhone, the Xbox One, or Chrome book. That is all.

ASIDE

Obama replied, "I think it's important to understand that you can't have 100 percent security and then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," he said. "We're going to have to make some choices as a society." Yeah, but you didn't give us a choice -- you gave us a top secret order.



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