Wake up and realize this is global.
Snowden is a naughty boy and has upset his employer. He's trying to do the right thing and inform the general populous of what his employer has been up to. But those of you that think this is purely a problem for the US... wake up.
Since the birth of nations, organizations have spied on each other. Information is power and therefore anyone with an interest in their own empire will invest significant effort in getting information, both about its own citizens and it's enemy.
You think the US is alone in this practice? You don't think Russia, the UK, Germany, France, China, Iran, Israel has similar practices? The only big difference here is that the US is fortunate to have a massive amount of the worlds traffic flow across networks and systems owned by companies on US territory. You don't think that if Apple, Microsoft and Google were Russian or Chinese companies that this sort of thing wouldn't happen?
This whole conversation is going to end up with one fact. Everyone is doing covert stuff that is outside of the law. EVERYONE. And it's been happening for hundreds of years. What does that really mean? To your typical Joe, not much. A massive percentage of people in the world are not affected by this. The 99%? The 1%? The people this REALLY impacts, as in actually changing your life, is a tiny percentage. Sure your rights to privacy are violated and yes, that's not a good thing. But wadda ya gonna do? Move to a very remote location in the world, stop using email, quit posting to Facebook. That's your only way to get privacy nirvana.
What about corporations around the world who need to protect data, what do they do? Well they do what they've always done. Slowly increase their ability to monitor, classify and protect data and then evaluate risks of doing so versus the costs. Companies outside the US will be more adverse to using Office 365. So another company somewhere is going to benefit by providing similar capabilities or an alternate approach to the same benefits that reduces the risk (either real or perceived). That will come at a cost, and companies will decide if that cost is worth the risk.
Are Snowden's efforts going to stop the practices of the US and other nations? I doubt it. Imagine if this was about nuclear warfare. Pretend that Snowden had just gone public that the US has thousands of ICBMs hidden all over the US. You don't think Russia is in the same position? We all then realize that the countries who could afford nukes, have them. You think the governments would just get rid of them? We've been trying to go through the process of nuclear disarmament since the 80's and the US STILL has over 7,000 warheads with Russia beating them in the 8,000 region. And this is just about a deterrent. Information warfare is much more important, its essential. The same agencies everyone are now pointing fingers at have the same government mandate that led to the capture of the Enigma which helped end the second world war...
I think this whole discussion Snowden has created is a great thing. We are going to see more and more technological innovation around how we can protect data. Citizens are going to be a little more informed and will do a little more to protect their information and privacy. This is a long road people, we just hit a bump, but the end is not in sight.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
