Cisco is untrustworthy, that's absolutely true, but it's a bit of a stretch to tie this to the China stuff. They enthusiastically jumped at the chance to sell

Cisco is untrustworthy, that's absolutely true, but it's a bit of a stretch to tie this to the China stuff. They enthusiastically jumped at the chance to sell Chinese-law-enabling hardware to the Chinese government. Juniper or Extreme would certainly have done the same, and Cisco probably got a promise to clamp down on counterfeit hardware out of the deal. It's beyond my personal threshold for ethical behaviour, but corporations don't always have the luxury of standing on principle. Neither do individuals, for that matter. I'm not absolving them. They did the wrong thing and it makes them untrustworthy. They did what the Chinese government asked them to do, and took the carrot offered. In other countries, it might have been done with a stick instead. But the inherent difference here is that the government will always get your packets (and voice datagrams) if they want them. Carrot or stick, hardware manufacturer or service provider or common carrier, they will get them. You have to accept that on some level to exist on the Internet. This Cisco TOS scandal is something else entirely. They think they can do something valuable (for Cisco) with your data, and your permission (not necessarily your awareness). This is just run of the mill abuse of customer privacy -- which we see everywhere and usually tolerate -- and very typical almost boilerplate content restriction rules for any image-conscious hosting service. The important difference is that customers don't get or expect anything of personal and specific value out of their Linksys router. Contrast to Facebook, Google, etc. Cisco really really doesn't want to be commoditized, either. They have spent many years in their enterprise markets going up-stack. They aren't satisfied with being easily replaceable in consumer markets either now, apparently. This is new, and troubling.