NSA Spying Activities Have Costly Impact on Private Sector …

Every action has a consequence, and so does the NSAs mass surveillance efforts that dont seem to care about peoples innocence or need for privacy. In fact, a new study shows that there are large financial consequences to this type of activities.

Our findings indicate that the NSAs actions have already begun to, and will continue to, cause significant damage to the interests of the United States and the global Internet community, the study reads.

The Open Technology Institute has chosen to look into the effects the scandal has had in several areas. For instance, the NSA disclosures are affecting American companies by damaging their sales overseas and diminishing their business opportunities. This happens especially as foreign companies turn products that can protect users from the NSAs ever-seeing eye into advantages against competitors.

The cloud computing industry is particularly vulnerable and could lose billions of dollars in the next three to five years as a result of NSA surveillance, the study shows.

There are also potential costs to US businesses and to the openness of the Internet from the rise of data localization and data protection proposals from governments looking to fortify themselves against the NSA. Basically, the proposal to create local networks instead of relying on the worldwide Internet network is worrying because they can threaten free expression and privacy if they are implemented.

There are also some rather big costs to the United States foreign policy because the country has lost some of its credibility, especially for the Internet Freedom agenda set down by the government. Damages are also caused to broader bilateral and multilateral relations due to the fact that the NSA spies on all countries in the world, regardless if these are the United States strategic partners or not.

For instance, theres been an obvious strain between the United States and countries such as Germany and Brazil in the past year.

Perhaps the heaviest cost, however, is the one the scandal has had on cybersecurity. The NSA has done serious damage to Internet security through its weakening of key encryption standards, insertion of surveillance backdoors into widely-used hardware and software products, stockpiling rather than responsibly disclosing information about software security vulnerabilities, and a variety of offensive hacking operations undermining the overall security of the global Internet, the studys authors wrote.

While the United States government has started to take some steps to mitigate the damage and start rebuilding the trust in the countrys ability to be a responsible steward of the Internet, things are going slow because the reforms promised last year are yet to be delivered and the changes that were actually announced would have minimal impact on the NSAs powers.

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NSA Spying Activities Have Costly Impact on Private Sector ...