Tech companies call for 'aggressive' NSA reforms at White House meeting

[Indi Guy]

Source: the guardian

The top leaders from world’s biggest technology companies called on the US to "move aggressively" to reform the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance operations after discussions with President Obama on Tuesday, resisting attempts by the White House to portray the encounter as covering a range of broader priorities.

Executives from 15 companies, including Google, Apple, Yahoo and Twitter, used a face-to-face meeting with Obama and vice-president Joe Biden to express their concern that the NSA’s wide-ranging surveillance activities had undermined the trust of their users.

The meeting came a day after a federal judge ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records was “almost Orwellian” in scope and probably a violation of the US constitution. Some of the tech companies represented at the White House have already expressed deep concern at the wide-ranging nature of NSA surveillance, and the way it apparently draws information from their systems without their knowledge.

There was a clear division in how the White House event was characterised. In statements before and after, the administration was determined to point out that other issues were on the agenda, including the troubled federal healthcare website.

By contrast the tech companies made no mention of the healthcare website discussions. "We appreciated the opportunity to share directly with the president our principles on government surveillance that we released last week and we urge him to move aggressively on reform," they said in a joint statement issued after leaving the White House...



Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/tech-companies-call-aggressive-nsa-reforms-white-house

[Enrique]

1. you know it's bad

when the White House wants to change the subject to the health care website.

[Hekate]

3. Lol--oh yeah

[Hekate]

2. Excellent news. I'm seeing some hairline cracks in Bush's legacy....

... and feeling a proportionate ray of hope.

[QuestForSense]

5. My eyesight isn't quite as sharp. I hope you're right.

[jtuck004]

4. Google said they didn't like the NSA snooping on their users.

Must be gettin' crowded in that surveillance room...

[Enthusiast]

6. This is telling.

And contrary to the assertions of NSA apologists.

[Helen Borg]

7. Let's be clear...

These people are pissed off because the information was leaked, not because what the Government is doing is unconstitutional. What they want is for the Government to do this more secretly so the customers will never get to know about it. Well, that is too late, isn't it? You cannot recover that kind of trust.

[L0oniX]

8. This is bullshit. They get paid by the US gov for data access. This is about making them look good.

"Hey we love you customers and we tried to stop the snooping but big daddy won't budge"

[Blue_Tires]

9. +1

[Dopers_Greed]

10. Exactly

Make no mistake. The tech companies were willing participants in our descent to fascism.

[Xithras]

11. Bullshit. US tech is losing a LOT more than they are making.

They may have gone along willingly in the beginning, but they're scared as hell at this point because the "worst case scenario" is actually happening (it's been widely reported in tech media, but the MSM has been strangely silent on it). Tech companies ranging from Apple to IBM are seeing very real financial losses, and the big infrastructure companies ranging from Cisco to Amazons cloud divisions are seeing contracts cancelled globally as overseas purchasers opt for Chinese and European tech products over American products because of fears over NSA backdoors. ITIF's report last month pegged the projected losses for U.S. cloud solutions companies at $35 billion over the next 24 months, and losses for the IT industry as a whole at $180 billion during that same period. Those are sales that would have gone to American companies that will now flow to their overseas competitors.

The NSA has utterly destroyed the trust that American technology companies once held among foreign companies and governments. There is a very real, non-paranoid understanding that allowing American technology into your country or company means that you may also be allowing the U.S. government to spy on your internal and external communications. For many large purchasers around the world, it's an unacceptable risk. For companies in Europe, who have to live under EU privacy rules and who can be held directly liable for data leaks, there are potential financial and criminal repercussions for taking that risk (if a U.S. company installs NSA spyware on their network and customer data gets revealed, the company is protected under U.S. laws...Germany and France extend no such protections to their companies).

I work for a software consulting company just outside of the Silicon Valley, and even we're seeing impact from it (a relatively minor one in the grand scheme, but an impact nonetheless). Two of our project groups are developing a software project for a foreign client, and they just reduced our contract amount by about $150,000. It was a tiny reduction in the budget of the overall project, but the REASON for the reduction was infuriating. They decided to hire some local consultants in their own country to audit our code after the project is done, just to verify that we haven't planted any "NSA backdoors". Because our companies own government has created this situation, the client bluntly told us that we'll either eat the cost of the audit, or they'll yank the whole contract from us. So we ate the cost.

It's a sad day when software and hardware from India and China are now considered more reliable and trustworthy than software and hardware from the USA. The NSA has done incredible, and possibly irreparable, damage to our reputation.

[L0oniX]

12. ...I should feel sorry for those corporations??? Fuck that!

[Xithras]

13. Considering that tech is a large part of the American economy, I think it's us that are going to get

DU cut off my title

[L0oniX]

16. Lets pump up the NSA because America needs the jobs.

[NobodyHere]

14. Can you feel sorry for the American jobs that will be lost?

nt

[L0oniX]

15. Pffft ...along with that I should feel sorry for soldiers who loose jobs for lack of wars.

Yea ...lets have more spying so the NSA can hire more employees too.

[Indi Guy]

17. Great post!

So much for the NSA's protection under the rubric of "national security", given that their own actions are creating economic instability.