the whole IT world watches america, next choice critical

If you're an IT guru, it would be a good time to start non-American search engines and the like to cater to the rest of the world..

reply to post by XPLodER


I don't know. I believe most companies understand the problems with the internet and privacy, and The US is probably not any worse than any other country, they are just on display at the moment.

The internet is such a marvel of information and misinformation. A notorious cesspool where any impute is subject to being noticed, cataloged, interpreted, stolen, misused and open to any of many abuses of privacy.

This the price we pay for admission.

I have one question not being really fluent on this, Are only the internet providers in the United States affected? Are there internet provides out side The United States that are not subject to the request for data? If so that may force some relocation of that business but I don't see much other effect.

reply to post by NewAgeMan


i think its already happening

here is the EFF story on it

In a letter sent today to the United States Congress, an international coalition of non-profit organizations called upon the U.S. government to protect the privacy and freedoms of not only its citizens, but of people everywhere. As news of the alarmingly broad reach and scope of America’s surveillance program reverberates around the globe, now is the time for the United States to pass formal privacy safeguards to protect the billions of foreign Internet users whose communications are stored in U.S. servers or whose data travels across U.S. networks.

www.eff.org...

good to see ya buddy

hope you are smilin

xploder

As someone in IT who serves fortune 500 companies, I can tell you I have already seen personally 2 non US based (fairly large companies that everyone would recognize) take their data off US soil even before this recent mess unfolded. Forget all the end to end or data as rest encryption, or any other safe guard you have in place. Reasons provided to move off of US soil was simply the patriot act. This has been around awhile, but you can tell they have recently lost confidence in US government.

Whether or not patriot act really gives the government access to their data is irrelevant. Fact is, its their data and they don't trust it on US soil, they do not need to justify their reasoning to move it. We still support the client programs, its just not "here" anymore. This topic does raise an eyebrow, but I do not see a mass exedus out of US in the near future but there will be a shift.

Originally posted by Bilk22
I gave you a star and a flag because you are right in what you're saying about privacy, but unfortunately, probably wrong in your conclusion. Yes there would be companies and even countries that pull up roots or disconnect from the US infrastructure, but it's my guess that still wouldn't prevent the access to the data these entities collect and or maintain. The US intelligence community and military more than likely have the ability to overcome the safeguards. Additionally, unless you disconnect from companies such as Apple, Intel, Microsoft and the like, there are no safeguards.

Keyhole and Mentor / Advanced Orion satellites. CRT monitors and other equipment like fax machines actually "transmitted" the images they received (or they could be decoded from the changes in the electromagnetic field surrounding them:

www.topsecretwriters.com...

en.wikipedia.org...(codename)

This led to the design of buildings with Faraday cages built into the walls so that no signals would leak out.

Great thread and thanks for highlighting.

You are right about "duty of care" and it would make interesting situation in the UK if either an individual takes a company through the courts on this (unlikely) or one of the governing bodies recommends not using the US- even though I expect the UK to be in bed with the US on this one.

All the international posturing in relation to PRISM is just for show. The world has known about the capabilities of the US government in this arena for years. But what's more ironic is that most nations have very similar laws to the US's Patriot Act which allow them to monitor data of foreign (from said country's perspective) individuals:

However, the U.S. is not alone with laws reminiscent of FISA or the Patriot Act. The researchers note that such wide-ranging provisions able to access cloud-stored data outside of their respective jurisdictions are not limited to the U.S. And continue to say, "Other nation states, including the Netherlands, have comparable provisions in place for access to data in the context of law enforcement and national security." For instance, the report notes the Dutch Intelligence and Security Services Act, which give the Dutch security and intelligence services, "the power to process the personal data of a wide range of persons." One of the sections of the law specifically carries FISA-like provisions in the Netherlands, which, "authorizes them to carry out, using a technical aid, targeted tapping, reception, recording and interception of any form of conversation, telecommunication or data transfer by means of an automated activity, irrespective of where this takes place."

Similarly, the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act "replicates" much of the provisions in the U.S.' Patriot Act. Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian said in a recent report that the Act's provisions are part of the normal data-sharing process between governments.

As a result, many countries can also theoretically acquire data stored by companies in another country without a mutual legal assistance request -- used by governments to request help in obtaining evidence from another jurisdiction to assist in investigations in another -- if the company is required by that country's domestic law to assist, in spite of any protection offered by a third country's legal system.

This could include cloud-stored medical data, financial information provided by banks, and business documents or corporate secrets, all the way down to an ordinary user's cloud-stored iTunes music collection or the cloud-stored photos taken on a recent vacation. Because the U.S. is home to the global powerhouses that run major cloud services -- not limited to Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft -- the research increases the scope of relevance to cloud users. Conversely, the report notes that the company may not have to be headquartered in the U.S. to be supposedly susceptible to a data access request.

www.cbsnews.com... patriot-act-can-obtain-data-in-europe-researchers-say/

Now it would be interesting if all the criticism flying at the US government caused Congress to get its act together and come up with real solutions to the transparency and oversight problems concerning surveillance programs, and this in turn caused the rest of the world governments to eat their vegetables and follow suit to avoid looking hypocritical. But that is unlikely to happen.