10 ms·

Why I'm boycotting US cloud tech

151 points by cdvonstinkpot 13y ago

apineda 13y ago
This is the same absurdity as boycotting airlines because of TSA. Boycott your government.
- siddboots 13y ago
  I don't think it's absurd at all. If the leak is an accurate depiction of reality, then it doesn't matter how culpable I think Google and Facebook are. What matters is that I can't use the services of those companies if I want my data to be private.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Why is it absurd? And which government?
- chmars 13y ago
  I actually boycott certain airlines. Yes, there are TSA rules but their implementation is very different. American airline staff ('airline', not 'Airlines') seems to operate on a paranoia level that is simply not compatible with the service level I expect from an airline. I want to be treated as a customer and not as a potential terrorist … other airlines flying to the US (and worldwide anyway) manage to do that.
- Ma8ee 13y ago
  Your government is owned by your corporations. Thus, the best way to get to your government is doing something the hurts your companies' bottom line.
  - zobzu 13y ago
    Because.. yours isn't, maybe. ha ha ha.
- gasull 13y ago
  You can boycott traveling to the US, what a lot of people are doing because they don't want a pat-down.
ihsw 13y ago
You might as well try boycotting US customers as well -- both are phenomenally impossible to accomplish but the end-goal is still the same.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Have actually read it all the way through, or are you just reacting to the title?
- 1morepassword 13y ago
  Boycotting US customers should be easy. After all, US companies have perfected the art of boycotting non-US customers... Anyway, boycotting US cloud tech is not that hard, albeit a bit inconvenient in some cases. In many cases putting data within legal reach of the US government is simply illegal, so an entire market has sprung up to offer services that guarantee non US ownership and no data and services within US jurisdiction. And this is just for the sake of regulatory compliance. In fact, it's probably the #1 selling point for non-US cloud services already. The NSA shitstorm is not exactly going to have a negative impact on that market...
  - alan_cx 13y ago
    Isn't it already being done? Don't gambling sites have to block US users?
- brudgers 13y ago
  That is the nature of disruption - it starts with imagining something contrary to the conventional wisdom. Anyway, there's no need to boycotte them, just let them live with latency in exchange for privacy. After all, the past dozen years have shown that US customers don't yet place much value on privacy. Incidentally, the scale for disrupting the US's state sponsored dominance of the internet could readily be implemented at the state sponsored level in another country, and claims and disputes over access to markets made at the WTO level. Among the BRIC's, Brazil and India are particularly well placed - neither has a massive security apparatus. Mexico by proximity is also positioned to serve the US from "offshore."
waps 13y ago
Since this is probably the 20th PRISM story today, here's a pitch for a new startup: darkness.io is a incredible startup that is a complete game changer. I founded darkness.io after realizing that there is an untapped 383221 billion dollar opportunity in removal of prism stories from the web. I can't tell you the details about our platform because we are currently in stealth mode, but we are the only player in removal of prism stories which we will completely disrupt in 3 months. At darkness.io we believe that everyone deserves less prism stories. Our product will bring together prism annoyance, anti-prism and boredom to introduce synergies that will democratize, and revolutionize removal of prism stories. This idea is so potent yet so deceptively simple that it has the capacity to produce an unlimited amount of profit. We haven't created our product yet, so we are looking a real javascript samurai to join our team so they can build it for us. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you to be a part of the next big thing. We have free food, unlimited vacation, generous equity compensation. Also each week we give you a new iSpy just for being amazing. If know javascript and 'want in', just tweet me and you'll be on our uber game-changing, revolutionary, disruptive team in no time, helping us change the world!
- brudgers 13y ago
  The alternative is much simpler. Base the business in Europe or elsewhere outside the US. The US is a big and important market, but there is nothing preventing cloud services on the scale of AWS moving offshore just as manufacturing has and professional services are. If it introduces latency and "credit card call center" style interface barriers, that doesn't mean it cannot be profitable. There is a large market which sees itself as receiving no benefit from the American military-industrial complex as it is manifesting itself on the web. The laws which enable PRISM may place US companies at a disadvantage. PRISM affordance is not a feature in most people's minds. Indeed, it is a bug in many.
  - alan_cx 13y ago
    Europe yes, UK no. Our government will happily funnel over anything the US asks for, including actual people(1). I'd go French. Because as Eddie Izzard put it (roughly), "the French are so.... French " (1)Yes, I am aware of the one single exception. Who I'm not so sure the US Government wanted to really that bothered with. Bad PR and all that.
chmars 13y ago
'Not subject to American law' might not be possible if you want to use today's Internet in a global manner. US citizens for example get taxed worldwide and banks worldwide have to comply with American law if they want to remain part of the global banking system (and don't want to go out of business). That's possible because the heart of the global banking system is located in the US or at least under American control. Today's Internet is very similar and American companies are the dominating forces on the Internet anyway. And with regard to surveillance and interception, the US even has many supporting allies worldwide, just think of Echolon …
- brudgers 13y ago
  I am an American. But I don't think that the world of business will always revolve around that fact. US domination of the internet is subject to disruption, and laws which require the implementation of state sponsored spyware may place US based companies at a disadvantage in the global marketplace. To put it another way, given a choice Gmail-private will come to be preferred to Gmail-PRISM should the user facing feature sets be comparable. And it is likely to be easier to implement Gmail-private if the company providing it is located outside the US - i.e. is not Google. The same applies to search, maps, and eventually mobile communication.
  - chmars 13y ago
    I like your – very American! – optimism. An unpleasant fact is that the Internet outside the US is under heavy surveillance too, think of China and the Arabic world but also Europe. From a user perspective, you cannot opt against surveillance, you can mainly choose who can directly intercept your communications. And in this regard and although I don't like to be under any surveillance, the US is usually the lesser evil.
    - brudgers 13y ago
      I have no optimism over the matter. I just believe in change. That your comparison of the US is to China, suggests how ripe the world of online services is for disruption - less oppressive than China is damnation by faint praise.
decasteve 13y ago
I want my private files and private communications to be private. We should all be boycotting centralization of private communications and unencrypted file storage in the cloud as a precautionary measure. In light of NSA/Prism, especially when communicated across national borders, we should insist on end-to-end encryption: GPG/PGP, S/MIME, HTTPS, RSA/DES/etc, i.e. nothing sent in the clear. For public services like Google+ or Twitter, the information is public anyway. Unless Google, Apple, Microsoft, et al, start implementing back doors on my devices for the NSA I don't think boycotting is the answer. The pressure has to be primarily on the politicians, hold their feet to the fire until FISA/PATRIOT acts are repealed.
cseelus 13y ago
Any email provider out there in a 'safe location' that can compete with GMail? I'd really like to move the GMail Acc. I use for some of my mail, but every option kinda feels like moving from smoke to smother.
- cdvonstinkpot 13y ago
  I use Fastmail, owned by Opera Software- out of Australia. Been with them for a decade, always been extra happy with it.
  - chmars 13y ago
    Australia should not be considered a 'safe location'. Australia closely cooperates with the US and is even one of the core members of Echolon. And the FastMail server are located in the US anyway …
    - cdvonstinkpot 13y ago
      Good to know- I didn't know. Thanks.
      - personlurking 13y ago
        Good to know Fastmail location for me, too. In recent weeks, I was considering Fastmail over Gmail and upon receiving the NSA news, I was more inclined to make the switch.
nraynaud 13y ago
I have always ridiculed those big European programs aimed at removing or limit the presence of google from Europeans citizens everyday life, but somehow, even if the European administrations can't manage software programs, their premises were right all along. Some friends were looking for providers outside of the Patriot Act because their customers would not accept US spying on their data, I was telling them I didn't really care, I was wrong. We might have to cut some links across the pound because our "ally" is turning less and less rational and he's massively weaponized, and take a sane route for ourselves (which is a big fight on its own).
- cdvonstinkpot 13y ago
  So if the theory holds true that things need to get worse before they get better, this could be good news in that it could be the motivating event in the global market for truly private cloud services. Perhaps some European startup has a solution to our US based privacy problem that we could all migrate to for our cloud services.
  - chmars 13y ago
    As much as the US should be blamed for Prism etc., it should not be ignored that very similar programs exist in Europa as well – often in direct cooperation with the US. There might be a privacy advantage in Europe on paper but not much of that remains in daily life and business reality, it is mostly 'cover your ass' in the end.
    - nraynaud 13y ago
      They don't share everything, for example when they spy on a foreign company in advance for a big RFE, they won't share. But they are most likely to share real threats, because they are being judged on what they share. Then you have the game of powers, like when Europe had to surrender plane passengers personal data. Being foreigner's data, they are perfectly game for every spilling or abuse since only US citizens are a political issue, and there is mostly no way to get the US Government accountable for any international treaty.
spindritf 13y ago
If you live outside of the States, aren't you already boycotting US clouds because of the latency? I think I only use Tarsnap for any remotely sensitive data. Otherwise, I keep it as close to home as possible. It's a pain to use a VPS in America for example. Even with Mosh.
- _delirium 13y ago
  Here in Denmark, use of Google services is extremely common, even in companies and universities. Lots of people are slowly migrating everything to Google Docs and Gmail, latency notwithstanding. There is some worry that this is de-facto watering down rules around things like privacy of student data, since that data is now ending up on services that don't implement European data-protection rules. Gmail was disqualified from the bidding to provide a hosted email solution for the university I work at, for that reason, but Google services are nonetheless pretty widely used by individuals, even for official purposes. The contract eventually went to Microsoft's Office 365, which claims to comply with EU data-protection best practices (I believe the servers are also physically hosted in Europe): http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/business/office-365-trust-center-eu-model-clauses-faq-cloud-privacy-FX104033856.aspx http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/business/office-365-trust-... I would guess that the promise is not particularly solid if the U.S. government wants to siphon off data from Microsoft, though. In practice I think it does provide some protection, but mostly against commercial use of the data: Microsoft has contractually agreed to certain rules about data-mining and data-sharing that Google hasn't.
- icebraining 13y ago
  By US clouds, it's meant "clouds owned/run by US companies". Most of them have datacenters in Europe.
- kawsper 13y ago
  Heroku and Engineyard is used a lot, also even before EngineYard had european hosting. Lots of companies use Google Apps in Denmark. I think the US Cloud is used by lots of europeans.
AlexeiSadeski 13y ago
And how will the author boycott the NSA's cloud tech?
rdl 13y ago
Code, not laws. Most foreign governments are just as bad, just with fewer resources and often with less explicit protections for privacy. The ultimate solution would be to only use cloud servers which make verifiable technical claims about security and privacy to the level you require; otherwise, boycott the cloud. I'm personally fine with Twitter as a publishing platform (and essentially treat my dm as "stuff which is too spammy for even an at reply".) Facebook kind of skirts the line. It is really useful as both a way to get newsfeed updates and a messaging system. In the long run, I'd really need something like OTR to continue using messages. My email is too private for me to want it on a cloud service without serious technical controls. No one offers this yet, so I self-host. IM with OTR is ok for privacy, but sucks for traffic analysis still, and there are serious problems with OTR and mobile/multi client, still. My password manager is too sensitive to live on public servers even with crypto, since I can't audit every single update to the package thoroughly enough. Same goes with "secure notes" (safe combos, etc). A belt and suspenders approach of both using crypto and maintaining access control on the file is about the best I can do so far; something like an HSM in the future. Cellphones and voice (and presence/location) are the sacrifice I hate the most (along with finance, I guess). If I had a way to get analog one-way pager notifications of incoming messages and a wifi-tunneling tablet, I'd consider ditching cellphone entirely. This would be a moderately big deal to develop, though. Ultimately anonymous ecash (chaumian blinded tokens or Zerocoin or something else) is the solution to financial privacy (probably not straight Bitcoin, since there will be a jihad against mixes, and without mixes, Bitcoin privacy is horrible.)
- polemic 13y ago
  No no no. Firstly this is just an arms race between you and the most sophisticated, well resourced and technically savvy surveillance organisation that has ever existed. Secondly, this strategy might temporarily protect a tiny knowledgable fraction of the population, which is of no real consequence to society in general.
  - jfoutz 13y ago
    Yes, we all know who will win in an arms race between me and google.
mosselman 13y ago
"but the truth of the matter is that the entire Western world owes the very foundation of its modern beliefs to the US Constitution, in my opinion." What are those 'modern beliefs' then? Modern democracy, philosophy and human rights are not American products, but European, starting with ancient Greece, further expanded during the Renaissance and the reformations after the 2 world wars. The fact that America is so young allowed them to choose from many of the time's political ideas. Saying what you said is like saying 'all smartphone users owe Samsung for the user experience, because they created the Galaxy S4'.
- btilly 13y ago
  What are those 'modern beliefs' then? Modern democracy, philosophy and human rights are not American products, but European, starting with ancient Greece, further expanded during the Renaissance and the reformations after the 2 world wars. How Eurocentric of you. As http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2004/September/20040924120101AKllennoCcM9.930056e-02.html http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2004/September/20... points out, the US Constitution took some of its inspiration from the Iroquois. They provided inspiration for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, a 2 state legislature, a federal system, the requirement for an annual state of the union address, and so on. Of course the influences you cite were also hugely important. However the USA introduced important ideas from the native Americans that had not previously been part of the European tradition.
  - claudius 13y ago
    Freedom of religion and freedom of speech were already common in at least some European governmental systems and certainly in the philosophy of enlightenment. I am not quite sure what you mean by ‘2 state legislature’, if you refer to two chambers/houses of parliament: Britain had two chambers since at least 1706, and ancient Greece and Rome often also had two chambers. The Holy Roman Empire was a strongly federal state/union with very independent member states. The annual state of the union address can be found in basically every remotely civilised form of government, be it the speech from the throne in monarchies (e.g. the UK) or those in the Roman republic. I don’t think ideas from native Americans were of particular importance, or, even if they were, substantially newer than those from Europe.
personlurking 13y ago
If you boycot US cloud, you surely will come into contact with it and therefore have your info stored by US tech companies. Ex. I live in Slovakia and I send an email from XYZ email service to someone who uses Gmail, does that not fall into the US cloud spider web?
- gwright 13y ago
  You've touched the web long before getting to a Google server. National borders have always been special demarcations and so any crossing, physical or digital, is subject to special examination. The nature of modern digital communication has blurred the borders somewhat and perhaps more significantly has made it easy to forget when your digital actions are transgressing those borders. In the physical world we've accepted that there are border control stations on roads, at airports, and ports. Some of the surveillance mechanisms that have been in the press lately are the digital equivalent. Some seem to be much more than that. It is going to take some serious public debate and some enlightened leadership to reign in our surveillance state and to come to a better public consensus regarding what privacy standards we want to embed in domestic and international law.
- kalms 13y ago
  Yes, but you're money is being spent elsewhere. I guess that's the main idea behind the original post.
mtgx 13y ago
Maybe it will force Google (and others) to at least add OTR and ZRTP to Hangouts (enabled by default), for chats and video, and "one-click" local encryption for Google drive, to make it easy for everyone to use storage encryption (it will probably need to use a plugin). But even then this will only solve the chatting and storage problem (somewhat), but not the Gmail problem. Even with local encryption available as one-click, it seems very unlikely more than 1% of the users would use it, because they'd need to send the key to their friends, and that's just too cumbersome. And if only so few use it, then it's as good as useless, and Google still can't be fully trusted for e-mails (thanks to the US government). What I'd like to see Google do now, is become very pro-active about this, and to implement measures like this to "give the privacy control back to the people". Then maybe, just maybe, I'll begin to trust Google again. But I'm not holding my breath. I doubt it's illegal for them to do all of this, but especially if there's a legal grey area here to make it easy for their customers to encrypt stuff locally, I don't see them bothering to fight for this. The only way they might do it if there's a significant threat to their business, much like SOPA was. That's why I'm hoping the theory put forward by the author will become reality, and this NSA story will hurt US companies' bottomlines badly, and their international relationships, because only then we'll have true competition in privacy. It's also probably the only way to convince the government to stop doing it to this extent, because from what I've noticed they listen a lot more to money and lobbying than to citizen outrage.
- stefanix 13y ago
  Google can't offer proper encryption because most of their business model is based on analyzing all the personal data they store. At least it's very unlikely and I wouldn't hold my breath.
graycat 13y ago
Long ago I concluded that any of my personal data or business data outside the locked doors of my own facilities would be an open, engraved invitation for lawyers and big government to get between me and my data and cause me no end of time, effort, and money wasted, so much waste that the lawyers and big government could easily ruin both my business and my life, even if there is absolutely nothing at all wrong. Here's the real situation: Lawyers and big government, especially the second, have unlimited time, money, effort, and powers and nothing much else to do but cause trouble, and I just do not have the resources to defend myself against them. To them a false alarm is just another project at the office; to me their false alarm is likely the death of my business and a big torpedo below the water line of my little boat in life. So, my 'tactic' is just to do nothing wrong, certainly have nothing wrong in my data, try to remain mostly anonymous, stay the heck below their radar, and keep my data inside my own four walls. I can still be vulnerable to various false alarms. And if my business is at all successful, I may have to become something of a 'public person', that is, not so anonymous, and, then, be on the radar of various people who would like to cause me trouble. There could be news reporters looking to 'manufacture' a scandal for a 'scoop'. There could be politically motivated attackers. And there could be just common shakedown artists who want me to give them something and else trigger some false alarm to have big government cause me trouble. One false alarm could cost me my business, years of time, millions of dollars in legal fees, all for nothing substantive at all. Just as for anyone, any of my data outside my four walls is just raw meat for lots of people who could do me harm. So, no 'cloud' servers; no 'cloud' file backup; little or nothing on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+; all blog posts anonymous; mostly don't let browsers accept cookies,; etc. Let lawyers and big government go after easier targets. I remember the old joke that don't have to outrun the angry bear; instead, just have to outrun the poor other guy trying to outrun the angry bear.
- turbojerry 13y ago
  This is what I term "Professional Paranoia" and as long as you can be unemotional about it, it can be an exceptionally useful mindset. I have internalized the Moscow Rules[1] and I constantly remind myself of what Bruce Lee said, "Be like water". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_rules
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- polemic 13y ago
  This is pure pretext. No one denies that the US has made itself any friends in the Muslim world, but the security apparatus in the states has achieved levels far beyond a reasonable level given the threat.
- ameister14 13y ago
  That's a pretty shallow reading of Western European/Middle East relationships. I don't really want to start a big argument about international political history, because that's not what HN is for, but your reason for anger (a hundred years of meddling) isn't the real one. If you were going to make that argument, by the way, you should pick up a history book pre-1900 and see that Western Europe has been 'meddling' in the Middle East for a few thousand years.
- honzzz 13y ago
  I am not sure about this. For example Israel is probably in much bigger danger than the US and they certainly do some questionable things while trying to keep it safe. Yet it seems to me that they handle it way more reasonably. Maybe it's just because the US is bigger and better media target or maybe Israelis hide their secrets better... I don't know. But if Americans - the whole nation - were a person I would think that person suffers from some kind of post-traumatic disorder after 9-11, hysterically seeking safety at all cost.
runjake 13y ago
You can be assured that the partner nations of the UKUSA not only have access to these NSA programs, but probably also participate. And then what non-shady nations are you left with? Israel? Please. This isn't just the US folks.
eksith 13y ago
Suddenly, the rush to abandon private forums for "social media" seems, foolhardy doesn't it? Of course discussion of specialized topics were spread out over a million places, but that was a million places - many of which were spread over different countries - someone would need to look (and get a warrant) to access data. The down side to homogeneity is that it takes just one infection to bring down the lot.
guelo 13y ago
What's funny is only China was smart enough to keep Sillicon Valley surveillance out of their country. Though it was only because they wanted to control the surveilance themselves.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >What's funny is only China was smart enough to keep Sillicon Valley surveillance out of their country. Though it was only because they wanted to control the surveilance themselves. I wouldn't call it "only". That's a very important distinction. It means that on the internet, they can be a (more) sovereign state -- not depended on third countries for their internet services and life.
gasull 13y ago
> 'Not subject to American law' - the next desirable IT feature We have seen in the past how the US Government overreaches to take down any website no matter where it's hosted. If you want to be "not subject to American law" you need to build an .onion torsite.

151 points by cdvonstinkpot 13y ago

apineda 13y ago

This is the same absurdity as boycotting airlines because of TSA. Boycott your government.

siddboots 13y ago
I don't think it's absurd at all. If the leak is an accurate depiction of reality, then it doesn't matter how culpable I think Google and Facebook are. What matters is that I can't use the services of those companies if I want my data to be private.
alan_cx 13y ago
Why is it absurd? And which government?
chmars 13y ago
I actually boycott certain airlines. Yes, there are TSA rules but their implementation is very different. American airline staff ('airline', not 'Airlines') seems to operate on a paranoia level that is simply not compatible with the service level I expect from an airline. I want to be treated as a customer and not as a potential terrorist … other airlines flying to the US (and worldwide anyway) manage to do that.
Ma8ee 13y ago
Your government is owned by your corporations. Thus, the best way to get to your government is doing something the hurts your companies' bottom line.
- zobzu 13y ago
  Because.. yours isn't, maybe. ha ha ha.
gasull 13y ago
You can boycott traveling to the US, what a lot of people are doing because they don't want a pat-down.

ihsw 13y ago

You might as well try boycotting US customers as well -- both are phenomenally impossible to accomplish but the end-goal is still the same.

alan_cx 13y ago
Have actually read it all the way through, or are you just reacting to the title?
1morepassword 13y ago
Boycotting US customers should be easy. After all, US companies have perfected the art of boycotting non-US customers... Anyway, boycotting US cloud tech is not that hard, albeit a bit inconvenient in some cases. In many cases putting data within legal reach of the US government is simply illegal, so an entire market has sprung up to offer services that guarantee non US ownership and no data and services within US jurisdiction. And this is just for the sake of regulatory compliance. In fact, it's probably the #1 selling point for non-US cloud services already. The NSA shitstorm is not exactly going to have a negative impact on that market...
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Isn't it already being done? Don't gambling sites have to block US users?
brudgers 13y ago
That is the nature of disruption - it starts with imagining something contrary to the conventional wisdom. Anyway, there's no need to boycotte them, just let them live with latency in exchange for privacy. After all, the past dozen years have shown that US customers don't yet place much value on privacy. Incidentally, the scale for disrupting the US's state sponsored dominance of the internet could readily be implemented at the state sponsored level in another country, and claims and disputes over access to markets made at the WTO level. Among the BRIC's, Brazil and India are particularly well placed - neither has a massive security apparatus. Mexico by proximity is also positioned to serve the US from "offshore."

waps 13y ago

Since this is probably the 20th PRISM story today, here's a pitch for a new startup: darkness.io is a incredible startup that is a complete game changer. I founded darkness.io after realizing that there is an untapped 383221 billion dollar opportunity in removal of prism stories from the web. I can't tell you the details about our platform because we are currently in stealth mode, but we are the only player in removal of prism stories which we will completely disrupt in 3 months. At darkness.io we believe that everyone deserves less prism stories. Our product will bring together prism annoyance, anti-prism and boredom to introduce synergies that will democratize, and revolutionize removal of prism stories. This idea is so potent yet so deceptively simple that it has the capacity to produce an unlimited amount of profit. We haven't created our product yet, so we are looking a real javascript samurai to join our team so they can build it for us. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you to be a part of the next big thing. We have free food, unlimited vacation, generous equity compensation. Also each week we give you a new iSpy just for being amazing. If know javascript and 'want in', just tweet me and you'll be on our uber game-changing, revolutionary, disruptive team in no time, helping us change the world!

brudgers 13y ago
The alternative is much simpler. Base the business in Europe or elsewhere outside the US. The US is a big and important market, but there is nothing preventing cloud services on the scale of AWS moving offshore just as manufacturing has and professional services are. If it introduces latency and "credit card call center" style interface barriers, that doesn't mean it cannot be profitable. There is a large market which sees itself as receiving no benefit from the American military-industrial complex as it is manifesting itself on the web. The laws which enable PRISM may place US companies at a disadvantage. PRISM affordance is not a feature in most people's minds. Indeed, it is a bug in many.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Europe yes, UK no. Our government will happily funnel over anything the US asks for, including actual people(1). I'd go French. Because as Eddie Izzard put it (roughly), "the French are so.... French " (1)Yes, I am aware of the one single exception. Who I'm not so sure the US Government wanted to really that bothered with. Bad PR and all that.

chmars 13y ago

'Not subject to American law' might not be possible if you want to use today's Internet in a global manner. US citizens for example get taxed worldwide and banks worldwide have to comply with American law if they want to remain part of the global banking system (and don't want to go out of business). That's possible because the heart of the global banking system is located in the US or at least under American control. Today's Internet is very similar and American companies are the dominating forces on the Internet anyway. And with regard to surveillance and interception, the US even has many supporting allies worldwide, just think of Echolon …

brudgers 13y ago
I am an American. But I don't think that the world of business will always revolve around that fact. US domination of the internet is subject to disruption, and laws which require the implementation of state sponsored spyware may place US based companies at a disadvantage in the global marketplace. To put it another way, given a choice Gmail-private will come to be preferred to Gmail-PRISM should the user facing feature sets be comparable. And it is likely to be easier to implement Gmail-private if the company providing it is located outside the US - i.e. is not Google. The same applies to search, maps, and eventually mobile communication.
- chmars 13y ago
  I like your – very American! – optimism. An unpleasant fact is that the Internet outside the US is under heavy surveillance too, think of China and the Arabic world but also Europe. From a user perspective, you cannot opt against surveillance, you can mainly choose who can directly intercept your communications. And in this regard and although I don't like to be under any surveillance, the US is usually the lesser evil.
  - brudgers 13y ago
    I have no optimism over the matter. I just believe in change. That your comparison of the US is to China, suggests how ripe the world of online services is for disruption - less oppressive than China is damnation by faint praise.

decasteve 13y ago

I want my private files and private communications to be private. We should all be boycotting centralization of private communications and unencrypted file storage in the cloud as a precautionary measure. In light of NSA/Prism, especially when communicated across national borders, we should insist on end-to-end encryption: GPG/PGP, S/MIME, HTTPS, RSA/DES/etc, i.e. nothing sent in the clear. For public services like Google+ or Twitter, the information is public anyway. Unless Google, Apple, Microsoft, et al, start implementing back doors on my devices for the NSA I don't think boycotting is the answer. The pressure has to be primarily on the politicians, hold their feet to the fire until FISA/PATRIOT acts are repealed.

cseelus 13y ago

Any email provider out there in a 'safe location' that can compete with GMail? I'd really like to move the GMail Acc. I use for some of my mail, but every option kinda feels like moving from smoke to smother.

cdvonstinkpot 13y ago
I use Fastmail, owned by Opera Software- out of Australia. Been with them for a decade, always been extra happy with it.
- chmars 13y ago
  Australia should not be considered a 'safe location'. Australia closely cooperates with the US and is even one of the core members of Echolon. And the FastMail server are located in the US anyway …
  - cdvonstinkpot 13y ago
    Good to know- I didn't know. Thanks.
    - personlurking 13y ago
      Good to know Fastmail location for me, too. In recent weeks, I was considering Fastmail over Gmail and upon receiving the NSA news, I was more inclined to make the switch.

nraynaud 13y ago

I have always ridiculed those big European programs aimed at removing or limit the presence of google from Europeans citizens everyday life, but somehow, even if the European administrations can't manage software programs, their premises were right all along. Some friends were looking for providers outside of the Patriot Act because their customers would not accept US spying on their data, I was telling them I didn't really care, I was wrong. We might have to cut some links across the pound because our "ally" is turning less and less rational and he's massively weaponized, and take a sane route for ourselves (which is a big fight on its own).

cdvonstinkpot 13y ago
So if the theory holds true that things need to get worse before they get better, this could be good news in that it could be the motivating event in the global market for truly private cloud services. Perhaps some European startup has a solution to our US based privacy problem that we could all migrate to for our cloud services.
- chmars 13y ago
  As much as the US should be blamed for Prism etc., it should not be ignored that very similar programs exist in Europa as well – often in direct cooperation with the US. There might be a privacy advantage in Europe on paper but not much of that remains in daily life and business reality, it is mostly 'cover your ass' in the end.
  - nraynaud 13y ago
    They don't share everything, for example when they spy on a foreign company in advance for a big RFE, they won't share. But they are most likely to share real threats, because they are being judged on what they share. Then you have the game of powers, like when Europe had to surrender plane passengers personal data. Being foreigner's data, they are perfectly game for every spilling or abuse since only US citizens are a political issue, and there is mostly no way to get the US Government accountable for any international treaty.

spindritf 13y ago

If you live outside of the States, aren't you already boycotting US clouds because of the latency? I think I only use Tarsnap for any remotely sensitive data. Otherwise, I keep it as close to home as possible. It's a pain to use a VPS in America for example. Even with Mosh.

_delirium 13y ago
Here in Denmark, use of Google services is extremely common, even in companies and universities. Lots of people are slowly migrating everything to Google Docs and Gmail, latency notwithstanding. There is some worry that this is de-facto watering down rules around things like privacy of student data, since that data is now ending up on services that don't implement European data-protection rules. Gmail was disqualified from the bidding to provide a hosted email solution for the university I work at, for that reason, but Google services are nonetheless pretty widely used by individuals, even for official purposes. The contract eventually went to Microsoft's Office 365, which claims to comply with EU data-protection best practices (I believe the servers are also physically hosted in Europe): http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/business/office-365-trust-center-eu-model-clauses-faq-cloud-privacy-FX104033856.aspx http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/business/office-365-trust-... I would guess that the promise is not particularly solid if the U.S. government wants to siphon off data from Microsoft, though. In practice I think it does provide some protection, but mostly against commercial use of the data: Microsoft has contractually agreed to certain rules about data-mining and data-sharing that Google hasn't.
icebraining 13y ago
By US clouds, it's meant "clouds owned/run by US companies". Most of them have datacenters in Europe.
kawsper 13y ago
Heroku and Engineyard is used a lot, also even before EngineYard had european hosting. Lots of companies use Google Apps in Denmark. I think the US Cloud is used by lots of europeans.

AlexeiSadeski 13y ago

And how will the author boycott the NSA's cloud tech?

rdl 13y ago

Code, not laws. Most foreign governments are just as bad, just with fewer resources and often with less explicit protections for privacy. The ultimate solution would be to only use cloud servers which make verifiable technical claims about security and privacy to the level you require; otherwise, boycott the cloud. I'm personally fine with Twitter as a publishing platform (and essentially treat my dm as "stuff which is too spammy for even an at reply".) Facebook kind of skirts the line. It is really useful as both a way to get newsfeed updates and a messaging system. In the long run, I'd really need something like OTR to continue using messages. My email is too private for me to want it on a cloud service without serious technical controls. No one offers this yet, so I self-host. IM with OTR is ok for privacy, but sucks for traffic analysis still, and there are serious problems with OTR and mobile/multi client, still. My password manager is too sensitive to live on public servers even with crypto, since I can't audit every single update to the package thoroughly enough. Same goes with "secure notes" (safe combos, etc). A belt and suspenders approach of both using crypto and maintaining access control on the file is about the best I can do so far; something like an HSM in the future. Cellphones and voice (and presence/location) are the sacrifice I hate the most (along with finance, I guess). If I had a way to get analog one-way pager notifications of incoming messages and a wifi-tunneling tablet, I'd consider ditching cellphone entirely. This would be a moderately big deal to develop, though. Ultimately anonymous ecash (chaumian blinded tokens or Zerocoin or something else) is the solution to financial privacy (probably not straight Bitcoin, since there will be a jihad against mixes, and without mixes, Bitcoin privacy is horrible.)

polemic 13y ago
No no no. Firstly this is just an arms race between you and the most sophisticated, well resourced and technically savvy surveillance organisation that has ever existed. Secondly, this strategy might temporarily protect a tiny knowledgable fraction of the population, which is of no real consequence to society in general.
- jfoutz 13y ago
  Yes, we all know who will win in an arms race between me and google.

mosselman 13y ago

"but the truth of the matter is that the entire Western world owes the very foundation of its modern beliefs to the US Constitution, in my opinion." What are those 'modern beliefs' then? Modern democracy, philosophy and human rights are not American products, but European, starting with ancient Greece, further expanded during the Renaissance and the reformations after the 2 world wars. The fact that America is so young allowed them to choose from many of the time's political ideas. Saying what you said is like saying 'all smartphone users owe Samsung for the user experience, because they created the Galaxy S4'.

btilly 13y ago
What are those 'modern beliefs' then? Modern democracy, philosophy and human rights are not American products, but European, starting with ancient Greece, further expanded during the Renaissance and the reformations after the 2 world wars. How Eurocentric of you. As http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2004/September/20040924120101AKllennoCcM9.930056e-02.html http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2004/September/20... points out, the US Constitution took some of its inspiration from the Iroquois. They provided inspiration for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, a 2 state legislature, a federal system, the requirement for an annual state of the union address, and so on. Of course the influences you cite were also hugely important. However the USA introduced important ideas from the native Americans that had not previously been part of the European tradition.
- claudius 13y ago
  Freedom of religion and freedom of speech were already common in at least some European governmental systems and certainly in the philosophy of enlightenment. I am not quite sure what you mean by ‘2 state legislature’, if you refer to two chambers/houses of parliament: Britain had two chambers since at least 1706, and ancient Greece and Rome often also had two chambers. The Holy Roman Empire was a strongly federal state/union with very independent member states. The annual state of the union address can be found in basically every remotely civilised form of government, be it the speech from the throne in monarchies (e.g. the UK) or those in the Roman republic. I don’t think ideas from native Americans were of particular importance, or, even if they were, substantially newer than those from Europe.

personlurking 13y ago

If you boycot US cloud, you surely will come into contact with it and therefore have your info stored by US tech companies. Ex. I live in Slovakia and I send an email from XYZ email service to someone who uses Gmail, does that not fall into the US cloud spider web?

gwright 13y ago
You've touched the web long before getting to a Google server. National borders have always been special demarcations and so any crossing, physical or digital, is subject to special examination. The nature of modern digital communication has blurred the borders somewhat and perhaps more significantly has made it easy to forget when your digital actions are transgressing those borders. In the physical world we've accepted that there are border control stations on roads, at airports, and ports. Some of the surveillance mechanisms that have been in the press lately are the digital equivalent. Some seem to be much more than that. It is going to take some serious public debate and some enlightened leadership to reign in our surveillance state and to come to a better public consensus regarding what privacy standards we want to embed in domestic and international law.
kalms 13y ago
Yes, but you're money is being spent elsewhere. I guess that's the main idea behind the original post.

mtgx 13y ago

Maybe it will force Google (and others) to at least add OTR and ZRTP to Hangouts (enabled by default), for chats and video, and "one-click" local encryption for Google drive, to make it easy for everyone to use storage encryption (it will probably need to use a plugin). But even then this will only solve the chatting and storage problem (somewhat), but not the Gmail problem. Even with local encryption available as one-click, it seems very unlikely more than 1% of the users would use it, because they'd need to send the key to their friends, and that's just too cumbersome. And if only so few use it, then it's as good as useless, and Google still can't be fully trusted for e-mails (thanks to the US government). What I'd like to see Google do now, is become very pro-active about this, and to implement measures like this to "give the privacy control back to the people". Then maybe, just maybe, I'll begin to trust Google again. But I'm not holding my breath. I doubt it's illegal for them to do all of this, but especially if there's a legal grey area here to make it easy for their customers to encrypt stuff locally, I don't see them bothering to fight for this. The only way they might do it if there's a significant threat to their business, much like SOPA was. That's why I'm hoping the theory put forward by the author will become reality, and this NSA story will hurt US companies' bottomlines badly, and their international relationships, because only then we'll have true competition in privacy. It's also probably the only way to convince the government to stop doing it to this extent, because from what I've noticed they listen a lot more to money and lobbying than to citizen outrage.

stefanix 13y ago
Google can't offer proper encryption because most of their business model is based on analyzing all the personal data they store. At least it's very unlikely and I wouldn't hold my breath.

graycat 13y ago

Long ago I concluded that any of my personal data or business data outside the locked doors of my own facilities would be an open, engraved invitation for lawyers and big government to get between me and my data and cause me no end of time, effort, and money wasted, so much waste that the lawyers and big government could easily ruin both my business and my life, even if there is absolutely nothing at all wrong. Here's the real situation: Lawyers and big government, especially the second, have unlimited time, money, effort, and powers and nothing much else to do but cause trouble, and I just do not have the resources to defend myself against them. To them a false alarm is just another project at the office; to me their false alarm is likely the death of my business and a big torpedo below the water line of my little boat in life. So, my 'tactic' is just to do nothing wrong, certainly have nothing wrong in my data, try to remain mostly anonymous, stay the heck below their radar, and keep my data inside my own four walls. I can still be vulnerable to various false alarms. And if my business is at all successful, I may have to become something of a 'public person', that is, not so anonymous, and, then, be on the radar of various people who would like to cause me trouble. There could be news reporters looking to 'manufacture' a scandal for a 'scoop'. There could be politically motivated attackers. And there could be just common shakedown artists who want me to give them something and else trigger some false alarm to have big government cause me trouble. One false alarm could cost me my business, years of time, millions of dollars in legal fees, all for nothing substantive at all. Just as for anyone, any of my data outside my four walls is just raw meat for lots of people who could do me harm. So, no 'cloud' servers; no 'cloud' file backup; little or nothing on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+; all blog posts anonymous; mostly don't let browsers accept cookies,; etc. Let lawyers and big government go after easier targets. I remember the old joke that don't have to outrun the angry bear; instead, just have to outrun the poor other guy trying to outrun the angry bear.

turbojerry 13y ago
This is what I term "Professional Paranoia" and as long as you can be unemotional about it, it can be an exceptionally useful mindset. I have internalized the Moscow Rules[1] and I constantly remind myself of what Bruce Lee said, "Be like water". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_rules

deleted 13y ago

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polemic 13y ago
This is pure pretext. No one denies that the US has made itself any friends in the Muslim world, but the security apparatus in the states has achieved levels far beyond a reasonable level given the threat.
ameister14 13y ago
That's a pretty shallow reading of Western European/Middle East relationships. I don't really want to start a big argument about international political history, because that's not what HN is for, but your reason for anger (a hundred years of meddling) isn't the real one. If you were going to make that argument, by the way, you should pick up a history book pre-1900 and see that Western Europe has been 'meddling' in the Middle East for a few thousand years.
honzzz 13y ago
I am not sure about this. For example Israel is probably in much bigger danger than the US and they certainly do some questionable things while trying to keep it safe. Yet it seems to me that they handle it way more reasonably. Maybe it's just because the US is bigger and better media target or maybe Israelis hide their secrets better... I don't know. But if Americans - the whole nation - were a person I would think that person suffers from some kind of post-traumatic disorder after 9-11, hysterically seeking safety at all cost.

runjake 13y ago

You can be assured that the partner nations of the UKUSA not only have access to these NSA programs, but probably also participate. And then what non-shady nations are you left with? Israel? Please. This isn't just the US folks.

eksith 13y ago

Suddenly, the rush to abandon private forums for "social media" seems, foolhardy doesn't it? Of course discussion of specialized topics were spread out over a million places, but that was a million places - many of which were spread over different countries - someone would need to look (and get a warrant) to access data. The down side to homogeneity is that it takes just one infection to bring down the lot.

guelo 13y ago

What's funny is only China was smart enough to keep Sillicon Valley surveillance out of their country. Though it was only because they wanted to control the surveilance themselves.

coldtea 13y ago
>What's funny is only China was smart enough to keep Sillicon Valley surveillance out of their country. Though it was only because they wanted to control the surveilance themselves. I wouldn't call it "only". That's a very important distinction. It means that on the internet, they can be a (more) sovereign state -- not depended on third countries for their internet services and life.

gasull 13y ago

> 'Not subject to American law' - the next desirable IT feature We have seen in the past how the US Government overreaches to take down any website no matter where it's hosted. If you want to be "not subject to American law" you need to build an .onion torsite.