NSA Blowback #1 - America's rapidly deteriorating relations with the rest of the world
America does not have a lot of friends left in South America after the latest spying fiasco's.
Basically treating the President of Bolivia as a criminal, mass surveillance of Brazilians etc.
Uruguay is now considering offering asylum to Snowden.
Chile has already signed non USD trade deals with China.
Brazil is part of the BRICS who are discussing replacing the USD as the world's reserve currency and replacing the Federal Reserve private bank as the major influencer on global monetary policy.
Basically America only has Colombia left as an ally in South America - due to America propping up it's current regime.
Europe is angry at America over the mass surveillance of their citizens, diplomats and officials.
Europe is slowly waking up to what Obama is really like.
On his recent visit to Berlin, basically 4,000 supporters had to be bussed in.
In 2008 he got 200,000 who voluntarily wanted to see him.
America didn't have many friends in Africa and Obama has recently made it a heck of a lot worse, by :-
The Egyptian debacle
The war in Mali
The drone base in Niger
The moving of US troops into 35 more African countries.
Meanwhile China is successfully wooing Africa with things like :-
Including infrastructure improvement in natural resource deals - rail/road/communications etc.
Building a huge factory complex in Ethiopia which will employ 10,000 Ethiopians and export $4bn worth of cheap shoes a year. A few more factories like that and Ethiopians will be able to afford to but shoes themselves.
Offering 12,000 scholarships a year for free study at Chinese Universities - Africans will be able to take more of the higher paying jobs in the future, instead of Chinese engineers and managers.
China is offering jobs, the extraction of wealth from the ground and improved education.
America is offering bullying, bombs, bullets, conflict and war.
Australia and Japan are moving away from America and towards China, by signing non USD trade deals etc.
Japan says it is going to change it's military to be more reliant on itself instead of America.
The rest of SE Asia is moving more into the sphere and influence of China and away from America.
They can see which way the wind is blowing.
Pretty soon the only friends that America will have left are Israel and the UK.
And what the hell use are they going to be against the rest of the world?
Obama's Foreign Policy has made around 200 million more enemies just in the Muslim world.
So there is no respite there either.
It is a great pity that America's leaders are acting directly against the sage advice of the Founders :-
"Trade and friendly relations with all nations, entangling alliances with none."
"Trade makes nations wealthy, war and excessive military spending makes nations poor."
America is now spending 8% of GDP on the military - $1,219bn in 2012.
No nation can survive that for a prolonged period.
That's how the USSR finally went bust.
Neither can any nation withstand the stealing of over 15% of GDP from it's ordinary citizens and giving it to Oligarchs. (Corporate Welfare in America is now over $2.5tn a year.)
The USSR was also an oligarchy - they were called senior party officials.
Meanwhile China is only spending 2% of GDP on it's military and is making new and better and closer friends across the entire globe.
Anyone with half a brain can see which way this is heading.
Basically treating the President of Bolivia as a criminal, mass surveillance of Brazilians etc.
Uruguay is now considering offering asylum to Snowden.
Chile has already signed non USD trade deals with China.
Brazil is part of the BRICS who are discussing replacing the USD as the world's reserve currency and replacing the Federal Reserve private bank as the major influencer on global monetary policy.
Basically America only has Colombia left as an ally in South America - due to America propping up it's current regime.
Europe is angry at America over the mass surveillance of their citizens, diplomats and officials.
Europe is slowly waking up to what Obama is really like.
On his recent visit to Berlin, basically 4,000 supporters had to be bussed in.
In 2008 he got 200,000 who voluntarily wanted to see him.
America didn't have many friends in Africa and Obama has recently made it a heck of a lot worse, by :-
The Egyptian debacle
The war in Mali
The drone base in Niger
The moving of US troops into 35 more African countries.
Meanwhile China is successfully wooing Africa with things like :-
Including infrastructure improvement in natural resource deals - rail/road/communications etc.
Building a huge factory complex in Ethiopia which will employ 10,000 Ethiopians and export $4bn worth of cheap shoes a year. A few more factories like that and Ethiopians will be able to afford to but shoes themselves.
Offering 12,000 scholarships a year for free study at Chinese Universities - Africans will be able to take more of the higher paying jobs in the future, instead of Chinese engineers and managers.
China is offering jobs, the extraction of wealth from the ground and improved education.
America is offering bullying, bombs, bullets, conflict and war.
Australia and Japan are moving away from America and towards China, by signing non USD trade deals etc.
Japan says it is going to change it's military to be more reliant on itself instead of America.
The rest of SE Asia is moving more into the sphere and influence of China and away from America.
They can see which way the wind is blowing.
Pretty soon the only friends that America will have left are Israel and the UK.
And what the hell use are they going to be against the rest of the world?
Obama's Foreign Policy has made around 200 million more enemies just in the Muslim world.
So there is no respite there either.
It is a great pity that America's leaders are acting directly against the sage advice of the Founders :-
"Trade and friendly relations with all nations, entangling alliances with none."
"Trade makes nations wealthy, war and excessive military spending makes nations poor."
America is now spending 8% of GDP on the military - $1,219bn in 2012.
No nation can survive that for a prolonged period.
That's how the USSR finally went bust.
Neither can any nation withstand the stealing of over 15% of GDP from it's ordinary citizens and giving it to Oligarchs. (Corporate Welfare in America is now over $2.5tn a year.)
The USSR was also an oligarchy - they were called senior party officials.
Meanwhile China is only spending 2% of GDP on it's military and is making new and better and closer friends across the entire globe.
Anyone with half a brain can see which way this is heading.
NSA Blowback #2 The coming economic backlash against America
Lower Corporate profits, less jobs, higher unemployment and more poverty in America
As hundreds of millions of more people around the world get to hear about what the American government has been doing with the NSA spying, there will be a backlash.
Only a very small percentage of people know very much so far - many more people will learn a lot more over the coming weeks.
There has already been a backlash in some very tiny ways.
Companies are now reconsidering any plans to use cloud computing - they now know it's not safe.
Google search traffic has gone down slightly.
A large proportion of large American Corporate profits are made in Europe.
Wait until the real backlash starts hitting :-
Less tourism to the US, Disney etc. will suffer
Less Christmas shopping trips to New York etc.
Boycotts of McDonalds or similar in Europe
Backlash against Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other tech companies.
Backlash against American banks - particularly in places like South America, where American banks have a large share of the market.
We are already seeing a transfer away from London to Paris from rich Chinese tourists, because the UK is America's poodle.
We will see the same thing from just about everywhere in the world against America itself.
All sorts of things are going to start happening to America and American businesses because of the spying scandal and criminal behavior of the American government.
And none of them will be good.
The trade negotiations between the EU and US which are supposed to be happening are already being threatened.
The UK and Sweden have managed to limit the scope of the EU questioning of the American spying - but questions are still going to get asked.
Angela Merkel is East German - she knows all about a Stasi surveillance state.
The UK and Sweden are trying to cover up their role in spying for the NSA as much as possible.
The UK and GCHQ are collecting large amounts of data for the NSA.
Sweden has been spying on the Russians for the NSA.
The large Corporations may have the US mainstream media locked down.
That's not the case so much in the rest of the world.
There is already sizeable amounts of anger in Europe.
A large proportion of large American company's profits are made in Europe.
When the backlash from the criminal behavior of the NSA and the US government starts hitting American companies profits - then we will start to see some pushback.
Unfortunately that is unlikely to be before it has caused significantly higher unemployment in America.
Unlike Americans, most other country's have a healthy disregard and suspicion of their own governments.
They have seen what out of control governments can do, e.g. Germany from 1933.
The worst of the criminal behavior of the American government and the NSA has yet to hit the mainstream.
When it does we can expect some much larger repercussions.
As hundreds of millions of more people around the world get to hear about what the American government has been doing with the NSA spying, there will be a backlash.
Only a very small percentage of people know very much so far - many more people will learn a lot more over the coming weeks.
There has already been a backlash in some very tiny ways.
Companies are now reconsidering any plans to use cloud computing - they now know it's not safe.
Google search traffic has gone down slightly.
A large proportion of large American Corporate profits are made in Europe.
Wait until the real backlash starts hitting :-
Less tourism to the US, Disney etc. will suffer
Less Christmas shopping trips to New York etc.
Boycotts of McDonalds or similar in Europe
Backlash against Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other tech companies.
Backlash against American banks - particularly in places like South America, where American banks have a large share of the market.
We are already seeing a transfer away from London to Paris from rich Chinese tourists, because the UK is America's poodle.
We will see the same thing from just about everywhere in the world against America itself.
All sorts of things are going to start happening to America and American businesses because of the spying scandal and criminal behavior of the American government.
And none of them will be good.
The trade negotiations between the EU and US which are supposed to be happening are already being threatened.
The UK and Sweden have managed to limit the scope of the EU questioning of the American spying - but questions are still going to get asked.
Angela Merkel is East German - she knows all about a Stasi surveillance state.
The UK and Sweden are trying to cover up their role in spying for the NSA as much as possible.
The UK and GCHQ are collecting large amounts of data for the NSA.
Sweden has been spying on the Russians for the NSA.
The large Corporations may have the US mainstream media locked down.
That's not the case so much in the rest of the world.
There is already sizeable amounts of anger in Europe.
A large proportion of large American company's profits are made in Europe.
When the backlash from the criminal behavior of the NSA and the US government starts hitting American companies profits - then we will start to see some pushback.
Unfortunately that is unlikely to be before it has caused significantly higher unemployment in America.
Unlike Americans, most other country's have a healthy disregard and suspicion of their own governments.
They have seen what out of control governments can do, e.g. Germany from 1933.
The worst of the criminal behavior of the American government and the NSA has yet to hit the mainstream.
When it does we can expect some much larger repercussions.
NSA blowback #3 the CIA and NSA's involvement in industrial espionage
Last edited Sat Jul 20, 2013, 02:17 PM USA/ET - Edit history (2)
and how US tech companies are mandated by law to facilitate it.
The "backdoors" that Cisco and other networking companies implement in their routers and switches for lawful intercept are front and center again at this week's Black Hat security conference. A few years ago, they were cause celebre in some VoIP wiretapping arguments and court rulings.
This time, an IBM researcher told Black Hat conference attendees that these openings can still expose information about us to hackers and allow them to "watch" our Internet activity. Backdoors are implemented in routers and switches so law enforcement officials can track the Internet communications and activity of an individual or individuals under surveillance.They are required by law to be incorporated in devices manufactured by networking companies and sold to ISPs.
In this report from Forbes, IBM Internet Security Systems researcher Tom Cross demonstrated how easily the backdoor in Cisco IOS can be exploited by hackers. When they gain access to a Cisco router, they are not blocked after multiple failed access attempts nor is an alert sent to an administrator. Any data collected through the backdoor can be sent to anywhere -- not just merely to an authorized user, Forbes reports.
What's more, an ISP is not able to perform an audit trail on whoever tried to gain access to a router through the backdoor - that nuance was intended to keep ISP employees from detecting the intercept and inadvertently tipping off the individual under surveillance. But according to IBM's Cross, any authorized employee can use it for unauthorized surveillance of users and those privacy violations cannot be tracked by the ISP.
Read more at :-
Companies should be aware that almost all tech equipment and services supplied by a US tech company isn't safe from secret NSA spying. Most companies aren't.
Or companies are blase about it and don't believe the NSA / CIA would ever spy on THEM.
However one of the CIA's specialities is INDUSTRIAL espionage on behalf of a paying US "client".
Industrial Espionage: The CIA's New Frontier | LA Times (from 1993 - should be well developed by now)
N.B. ex CIA Director James Woolsey, mentioned in the article above, is now an executive with Booz Allen Hamilton - a major private contractor for the NSA and Edward Snowden's previous employer.
NSA / CIA industrial espionage
Hewlett Packard admits to backdoors in storage products
It should do wonders for US tech company share prices when word on what the NSA and CIA actually do around the world gets out.
N.B. I shouldn't think any Chinese supplied network equipment is any safer.
The Chinese illegally stole Cisco's designs when they started up.
They are almost bound to have a back door for Chinese government spies.
There seems to be a gap in the market to supply SECURE network and other computer equipment/software.
A US company couldn't do it - they would be breaking current US law!
If there is no accountability to uphold the basic Rule of Law there is no limit to the potential abuses.
As we have seen and are seeing with the scandal over the NSA Mass Surveillance programs that have zero tangible oversight by Congress.
Advertising LIE of the century:
"Your privacy is our priority" Microsoft
Installed a back door for NSA spying in Windows in 1999.
One of the first (the first?) to sign up for Prism Mass data collection.
Handed the NSA access to encrypted messages, before the product was even launched - outlook.com
Update 09/19
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/brazil-plans-national-internet-redesign-in-order-to-avoid-us-web-surveillance-8823515.html
Update 12/15
Cisco has repeatedly lowered it's future revenue forecasts, a small taste of what is to come for American tech companies who collaborate with the NSA's Mass Surveillance programs.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/12/us-cisco-analystday-idUSBRE9BB0NG20131212
Update 12/18
Saab wins $4.5bn Brazil jet deal after NSA spying sours Boeing bid
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/18/brazil-jets-idUSL2N0JX17W20131218
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