NSA spying hits complicit US tech giants in their wallets

Nothing and I mean nothing gets the attention of US corporations like falling profits and a realistic threat to further falling profits.  They don't care about honesty or truth or fairness or loyalty or even the country.  They will sell all of those things down the river in a heartbeat if their profits are at stake.  They will all willingly cooperate with the NSA and the CIA and every other US TLA that comes along as long as nothing happens to their profits.  So when I saw that Microsoft and Google and Apple joining forces in order to rein in the NSA I knew something was happening to their profits because of the NSA demands.  I knew damned well that they didn't make any effort for altruistic reasons like Snowden did.  I knew it had to be something to do with money.  When I saw Microsoft naming TLA's and pointing fingers I knew it must be serious.  Usually they backpedal with grace.  They talk about new and more secure and other vague crap that hides the real purpose.  Not this time.  These guys are in full retreat.

And so while these multinational companies are joining arms and singing kum-ba-yah and acting like they give two $hits about their customers, USA Today reports the real reason for the sudden interest in pushing Obama to get the NSA in check: the spyware and back doors in their software and hardware is causing their international customers to look elsewhere for equipment that hasn't first been tainted by the corrupt USA NSA and CIA.  By failing to look after the interests of their customers here and abroad, these tech giants have stepped into a huge pile of stink and they did so at exactly the wrong time.

During deflationary times, profits are already more difficult to come by simply because of new nationalism and fake patriotism that springs up.  The crys come up: get rid of immigrants, buy American, everyone else in the world is dumping their products and cheating so add tariffs to them, etc.  Corporations in each country cry foul and beg for protectionism. Of course, local tech providers are fanning those flames so that local business and government will give them a chance instead of going with the "safe" multinational leaders like Microsoft and Apple and Google and IBM.  The buyers are not so easily convinced that going local is safer because these other multinationals have so much good history associated with them.  And folks, their is nothing that a herd values more than safety.

Enter the NSA.  Like a predator it went after all US tech and told them either put in a back door or you are a treasonous traitor.  Oh sure, when the CEOs are still making money, they don't really care if the treacherous NSA hands them these edicts.  They think that nobody will ever know about these oversteps and if someone does find out then they can always fall back on the "I had no choice" excuse.  Well, I call BULLSHIT on that excuse because when the tables are turned and it becomes clear that profits WILL be affected, these same tech giants grow a set of cahones and begin to self organize and then to lawyer up and lobby up.  That's right, when it was just the rights of the citizens being trampled, big deal.  But when people won't buy your crap anymore because they have the real concern that it provides a direct line back to the NSA then all of a sudden it becomes a VERY BIG DEAL.

This is a perfect example of how the feedback mechanism of the free market works to correct disturbances in the system.  There is no easy backpedaling from this.  Billion, perhaps 10s or hundreds of billions of dollars will be lost to US multinationals because of it.  The international customers won't have any choice because the end users of these customers will demand an "NSA FREE" sticker on the front bezel going forward.  In other words, it will not do to tell those end users "oh, it's all OK now, we took out the bad stuff from the bad men" and then lay low only to turn it all back on later.  The customers are once bitten.  They will be twice shy.  They will be looking for the treachery should it be enabled in the future.  Their foreign government and foreign corporation customers will DEMAND it.  And that's AFTER the big multinationals fall on their swords and clean all of the crap out of the EXISTING products.

In fact, I predict that this new need will be so strong that it will actually create a new industry: product assurance testing that guarantees a product to be free from any kind of NSA threat, corruption, back door, etc. along with devices that monitor the traffic to and from said devices in real time for the life of the product to ensure that this has not changed.  Norton and McAffee should immediately start developing their government threat remover/detector and call it NSA (Nobody's Safe Anymore) Edition (tm).  Even people who don't care for spyware would eat it up.

Hmmmm.  Who says the government doesn't create any jobs!