NSA spying is costing the U.S. tech industry tens of billions of dollars. And see this and this. <\/p>\n
It also undermines trust in U.S. companies, fellow Americans and our government. Given that trust is the foundation for a prosperous economy, this is really bad for our economy. <\/p>\n
But there might be another big cost to mass surveillance: loss of worker productivity. <\/p>\n
Specifically, top computer and internet experts say that NSA spying breaks the functionality of our computers and of the Internet. It reduces functionality and reduces security by for example creating backdoors that malicious hackers can get through. <\/p>\n
Remember, American and British spy agencies have intentionally weakened security for many decades. And its getting worse and worse. For example, they plan to use automated programs to infect millions of computers. <\/p>\n
How much time and productivity have we lost in battling viruses let in because of the spies tinkering? How much have we lost because their computer programs conflict with our programs? <\/p>\n
Indeed, Microsofts general counsellabels government snooping an advanced persistent threat, a term generally used to describe teams of hackers that coordinate cyberattacks for foreign governments. It is well-known among IT and security professionals that hacking decreases employee productivity. While theyre usually referring to hacking by private parties, the same is likely true for hacking by government agencies, as well. <\/p>\n
And the spy agencies are already collecting millions of webcam images from our computers. THATS got to tie up our system resources so we cant get our work done as fast. <\/p>\n
Moreover, the Snowden documents show that the American and British spy agencies launched attacks to disrupt the computer networks of hacktivists and others they dont like, and tracked supporters of groups such as Wikileaks. <\/p>\n
Given that the spy agencies are spying on everyone, capturing millions of screenshots, intercepting laptop shipments, creating fake versions of popular websites to inject malware on peoples computers, launching offensive cyber-warfare operations against folks they dont like, and that they may view journalism, government criticism or even thinking for ones self as terrorism and tend to re-label dissidents as terrorists its not unreasonable to assume that all of us are being adversely effected to one degree or another by spy agency operations. <\/p>\n
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