Blaming Edward Snowden
It's always amusing to see miscreants blaming others for their own failings; somewhat akin to killing the messenger for the message he delivers. (To remind our amoral readers, the messenger neither composed the contents of the message, nor does he have any responsibility in responding to said contents of the message, thus making him an innocent party to whatever transactions might be going on.) A drastic decline of some $1.7 billion in technological equipment sales to Asia, 'as a result' of Snowden's revelation, was recently revealed.
"Its Edward Snowden's" fault, almost seems to suggest the headline.
No it is not. Its YOUR FAULT, for not having foreseen the impact of such an egregious violation of public trust. YOU SHOT YOURSELVES IN THE FOOT.
Anyone who knows about the history of technology can easily explain why this should be the case, specifically when we look at the history of the air conditioner.
The air conditioner prior to WWII was a very different beast from what it is today. In contrast to the typically wall mounted unit on some window, the "air conditioners" of yesterday truly 'conditioned air' in the sense that they were built to control the many different elements of a room's atmosphere. It was not just about controlling temperature as today's cheap units, but also about humidity.
The early air conditioners were complex systems that were specifically engineered to a particular architectural structure's layout, and 'air conditioning companies' were composed not of technicians but of engineers who proceeded to undertake realtime analysis of wind-flows and other of their project's air space.
One particular trait of these companies was that their analysis led them into the very bowels of a companies domain, making confidentiality one of the key components of a successful business's culture. It came with the game given the intimate nature of their business, and any company who violated this implicit 'public trust' quickly found themselves out of clients and a market, and ultimately in bankruptcy.
It should have been particularly obvious to technology corporate leaders that, given the intimate nature of their digital business (constituting what might be termed the 'nervous system of modern society') that any violations of this public trust would have enormous business repercussions--the likes of are only beginning to be seen. It was presumed that US companies were abiding in good faith by this public trust, and any explicit queries to this regard were always vehemently denied--as many are still doing so now-days.
It also should have been pretty obvious that there was an inherent contradiction between the notions of 'secrecy' and 'outsourcing' (or 'privatization') that characterized the NSA's administrative policies. As the NSA had been forced to employ many outside contractors, the number of persons with access to NSA information ballooned from what it usually had been. (Snowden worked for one such contractor rather than directly in the NSA per se.) It is pretty obvious that if it had not been Snowden, then someone else surely would have used that information in some manner, probably less ethically than the manner in which Snowden acted. The Cold War, and the the large number of 'spy secrets' that were sold during this period, is another indication of its heightened probability.
One cannot pretend to honestly believe that such a blatant violation of civil rights over such a large scale would have never emerged into the public scene. (Certainly, Edward Snowden's extreme courage in making this information played a role.) This is particularly in the case in the culture of open information that is so pervasive throughout the United States, and what has become one of its most endearing national traits--perhaps to a fault in its extreme.
It also should have been equally obvious, as one would tell a five year old child, that lying about it prior to the detection would imply that any public claims announced after the detection would simply lack any credibility whatsoever. 'If you so blatantly lied then, how can I possibly know that you are telling the truth now'. Whatever claims made by US technology corporations will simply 'fall flat on their face', and will take a very long amount of time for their credibility to be reestablished.
To repeat, the full scope of the consequences still have not been felt, and it is equally likely that the entire ecosystem of the internet will gradually fall outside the sphere of influence and/or control of the US government.