Protecting The National Interest

We've seen the various departments of the US government use and abuse their powers to target Wikileaks and those connected to it, all of whom claim to be acting in the best interests of the US; but are they?

The term "national interest" is thrown around a lot as a term for "the interests of the people" when in fact it's all about "the commercial interests of the wealthy people and corporations" who have people permanently stationed in government circles to pull the strings of their politician puppets, and shield those politicians from the riff-raff who will always seek balance.

When Amazon kicks Wikileaks off, when Paypal, Mastercard and others close accounts, when Google and Facebook (allegedly) hand over members data to the FBI meekly with no attempt to stand up for their users rights, when .com sites are seized with no charges brought and no court finding them guilty does ANY of this make US companies appealing partners to do business with?

If you know your private data is for sale to departments of an administration who don't care about the law, why would you continue to do business with them? There has already been an exodus of sites moving away from .com to others specifically so that they are not under the control of the US. Anyone who hosts a website in a US datacentre is vulnerable to an FBI demand on their host, bypassing the part of even informing you there's an allegation until it's too late for you to do anything.

If I know that I will be hounded and harassed by US government employees at customs, as they go through my Android smartphone and Linux netbook for any "stolen IP", with a very likely outcome of "well, we didn't find anything as such but this Linux thing, that's not Windows, it must be illegal". If I am put on a watchlist because I take an interest in organisations who stand up for the rights of consumers, end users, voters and citizens in general, why the hell would I visit the US? Why would I knowingly subject myself to the actions of a Police State when there are plenty of other countries to visit and spend my tourist and / or investment money?

Surely the "commercial interests" of US corporations would be to encourage people to do business with them, not rule them out as options. What impact would the corporate lobbyists have if they saw a sudden drop in users and customers from around the world, all citing "protecting their OWN interests by not doing business with US corporations".

This is one of the issues with cloud computing. Most of the large names offering cloud services are US corporations hosting your data on US soil, meaning it's subject to FBI interference and US laws. No matter where you are on the planet accessing your data, it's still stored on US soil. It's still vulnerable. This is in addition to the technical concerns about security, or the business model concerns about privacy; both of which would apply no matter where it's hosted.

Still have Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL etc accounts for things like mail? Still have a Twitter account for microblogging? In fairness to Twitter, they did stand up to an FBI demand for private data on an Iceland MP and co-founder of Wikileaks. That doesn't mean it was the first demand, nor that they always stand up for their users, merely that they did so on this occasion, and should be commended for it. If you have accounts with US corporations who roll over for the FBI, maybe it's time you switched.

Influencing government or corporate policy is very difficult for an individual user, money and connections will always drown you out. Those in power know that while a small but vocal number of people feel strongly enough to act, they can ride it out. If there is a mass exodus of customers for one reason; ie the backlash to a decision, it's something they will notice and have to act on.