Even though we probably don't know what level of access the NSA has today, it's likely it will want more tomorrow. This is probably not a situation the tech giants want to be in. So what's the solution?
If any individual Internet company stood up to the NSA and refused access, its CEO would be risking a fate similar to Joseph Nacchio. However, the Snowden leak provides a way for the Internet companies to bring PRISM to public light in a unified way -- where everyone is implicated -- while reducing the blowback risks to each individual company.
In the Snowden interview, he says that the only thing that prevents the NSA from doing something is policy -- not legality.
In the short run, bringing PRISM to light may hurt the tech companies, but it hurts them all equally. However, in the long run, it may be the necessary catalyst to build public demand for policy changes to prevent these type of programs from escalating.
If the tech companies wanted out, this may be the way out.
I agree, the publicity now may be bad, but the focus is mostly on the government anyway. I have no doubt that the companies would prefer transparency and keeping the data to themselves (Google has been pushing for that all along), but perhaps they aren't making it front page like sopa* because want to draw the bad publicity back to themselves.
*except Mozilla I guess, but they weren't targeted in the NSA slides
Mozilla is encrypting user data using a user provided passphrase/PIN as part of Firefox Sync. Personna also has it's own browser-based crypto. Both systems have public specifications.
Joseph Nacchio (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio) was the only telcom CEO to refuse the NSA's demands for access, and now he is in prison.
Even though we probably don't know what level of access the NSA has today, it's likely it will want more tomorrow. This is probably not a situation the tech giants want to be in. So what's the solution?
If any individual Internet company stood up to the NSA and refused access, its CEO would be risking a fate similar to Joseph Nacchio. However, the Snowden leak provides a way for the Internet companies to bring PRISM to public light in a unified way -- where everyone is implicated -- while reducing the blowback risks to each individual company.
In the Snowden interview, he says that the only thing that prevents the NSA from doing something is policy -- not legality.
In the short run, bringing PRISM to light may hurt the tech companies, but it hurts them all equally. However, in the long run, it may be the necessary catalyst to build public demand for policy changes to prevent these type of programs from escalating.
If the tech companies wanted out, this may be the way out.