Big Brother’s Damage

In the United States, they have begun evaluating the cost of the many collateral damage effects the National Security Agency has caused through its full-scale espionage. This regards the cost of the quality of democratic life and the financial cost.

It has impacted freedom of the press. In Canada, the government has forbidden the majority of its civil servants from discussing the files under their care with journalists, even if national security is not at risk. On top of this, in the United States, they have injected into the minds of officials the idea that, almost certainly, their telephone and email conversations are being intercepted and filed, and could be used against them at any given moment.

And then, they think about what Edward Snowden and the private Chelsea Manning — the WikiLeaks source for Julian Assange — went through, and they tell themselves that the same could happen to them. They think twice before giving information to members of the fourth estate.

Incidentally, it’s not only government officials who are scared of Big Brother. “People are more likely to speak candidly if they can be assured of speaking privately. Whether it involves a client confiding in a lawyer, a patient talking to a doctor, a source speaking to a journalist, or an adherent of an unpopular cause addressing other supporters, robust speech suffers when privacy is imperiled,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, on the organization’s website.*

In collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch recently interviewed around 50 journalists, who spoke about how sources have been more and more reluctant to speak with them. They fear losing their sense of security and even their jobs, or worse, having a bone to pick with the criminal justice system.

Journalists have adopted new methods of working: message encryption, computers that are not connected to cyberspace, and disposable telephones. “I don’t want the government to force me to act like a spy. I’m not a spy; I’m a journalist,” one reporter complained. Moreover, European journalists tend to use non-American email services more and more, thinking this lessens the risk of the NSA spying on them.

In hard cash, who is it that pays the great price of the damage the NSA has caused, or – if you prefer – because Edward Snowden revealed its dubious practices in plain sight? According to the New America Foundation, an American think tank, it is primarily the “cloud computing” industry and its associated sectors, including server manufacturers: This primarily includes Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Forrester Research, an American consulting firm, calculates that the losses for “cloud” service providers could reach up to $180 billion between now and 2016. We are not going to cry, but it’s an immense sum if the estimate confirms itself as realistic.

In China, Inspur, an IT firm, profits from fears provoked by Edward Snowden’s revelations to boost its server sales, swallowing market shares at the expense of industry giants like IBM and Hewlett-Packard. Several Chinese companies believe that their information has a better chance of being protected from the prying of the NSA if they stay within national “clouds.”

Because it’s a question of money, it should be noted that former NSA Director Keith Alexander recently founded a company and sells his services for close to $1 million a month.

*Editor’s note: The original quotation appears in The New York Review of Books.