Latest information on the NSA and related domestic spying issue.

[BelgianMadCow]

12. NSA Spying Crushes US Tech Companies in Emerging Markets (“An Industry Phenomenon")

From Testosterone Pit, an economics blog the DU Stock Market Watch threads pointed me to:

“Our top five emerging markets declined 21%,” Chamber said, “with Brazil down 25%, Mexico down 18%, India down 18%, China down 18%, and Russia down 30%.

“I’ve never seen that fast a move in emerging markets,” Chambers said. His industry peers were seeing the same thing. “Most of my CEO counterparts can almost finish my sentences in terms of what’s occurring,” he said. He even mentioned IBM. It’s “an industry phenomenon.”

The NSA’s reckless all-encompassing spying, and its hand-in-glove multi-billion-dollar collusion with US tech companies to accomplish it, is now wreaking havoc on these same tech companies. Revenues are getting crushed overseas. Emerging market governments and companies are looking at other options. Trust that has taken decades to build has evaporated. A study in early August estimated that the spying scandal would cost US tech companies $35 billion. Which might not even be enough for a down-payment: alone that 11% drop in Cisco’s stock today cost shareholders $16 billion.

It’s not a temporary issue. New revelations bubble to the surface all the time to complete the picture of a seamless, borderless, nearly perfect surveillance society. One dimension: the NSA and British GCHQ secretly break into the “clouds” of US companies to syphon off user data on a large scale. Illegal in the US. But the cloud is worldwide. Read….. NSA Secretly Breaks Into The Cloud Of US Tech Companies, Siphons Off Data, Fouls Up Revenues Overseas

I think this has to be filed under the "blowback" category. The relative silence of the tech industry on the issue has been rather astonishing. Germany is considering building its own internet backbone.

Another form of blowback: After the NSA revelations, who will listen to America on human rights? The comments are interesting as well. The author is heavily criticised for implying the US did have standing about human rights before Bush*.

Cross-posted in GD