The problem that people like you don't seem to understand is that online communications can be secure, unless the companies owning the servers themselves cooperate and companies have to cooperate if they have to do so by law.
It's only the US that has such a huge budget for spying on people's communications and the US is also part of a select handful of countries going to such great lengths to suppress the freedom of speech about it.
If I were to start a company in Romania (which is part of EU btw), the NSA can suck my dick as there's absolutely nothing they could do to make me cooperate and keep my mouth shut while doing it.
What really bothers me about this is not the actual spying - I always assumed that governments do engage in whatever spying they can get away with.
What really bothers me about this is that U.S. companies and individuals have to keep their interactions with the NSA a secret, while obeying whatever demands the NSA has, including the installing of back-doors.
Trust is a fragile thing and we rely on trust for conducting business and for living our lives. My trust in U.S.-based companies has been shaken. Even if the affected companies (such as Google, Microsoft, Apple) want to be trustworthy for their customers, they can be coerced by law to obey whatever the NSA demands and they must also keep it a secret, with absolutely no transparency - they aren't even allowed to say "yes, the NSA demanded some things and we unfortunately complied". Even worse, they can be coerced into making public statements that are full of lies.
I can no longer trust any U.S. based company again.
For example, right now I'm using Skype. But what if the Skype client has a backdoor allowing one to open and listen to my mike any time they want (it's a proprietary blob, we'll never know). What if this backdoor gets hacked and used by people that are not part of the U.S. government? So in spite of the best intentions of the people working on Skype and the NSA; even if I've got "nothing to hide", Skype is all of a sudden a security liability and nothing (short of an open-source client that I can compile and run) can prove otherwise, because Microsoft isn't allowed to be open about it. And I can no longer rely on the fragile trust I've had for Microsoft, because Microsoft can be coerced into being untrustworthy.
See how it goes? We'll see how this unfolds over the next years, however the damage done to U.S. companies will prove to be massive.
This is the most well reasoned argument i heard - and reflect my sentiments perfectly. Its not that i am too afraid the NSA can read my email or listen to my phone convo, but that they can coerce, "lawfully", the ISP/telco to do things against my wishes, and keep it secret from me.
These gag orders are the kind of things that creep into society and they are the first weapon against would-be activists that's perceived to be against the corporate interest (or the interest of the elite). It doesn't take much for chilling effect to set in. Fight it now, or it will be too late when it has the power to threaten the laymen.
It probably already has, in lieu of current European rattling.
I don't expect that GOOG or MSFT will suffer any damage in short term. But in long term they have proved unreliable. This erodes confidence. And if it keeps eroding, it will eventually cause them to collapse.
I'll be doing my earnest to move away from any non-OS tool. And will advocate others to do so as well.
The problem that people like you don't seem to understand is that online communications can be secure, unless the companies owning the servers themselves cooperate and companies have to cooperate if they have to do so by law.
It's only the US that has such a huge budget for spying on people's communications and the US is also part of a select handful of countries going to such great lengths to suppress the freedom of speech about it.
If I were to start a company in Romania (which is part of EU btw), the NSA can suck my dick as there's absolutely nothing they could do to make me cooperate and keep my mouth shut while doing it.