The RNC resolution renouncing “unconstitutional” National Security Agency surveillance programs.
Both parties are hearing from the tech community, and the trigger appears to be four-fold:
1) First, the hijacking of the unencrypted feeds between data centers. And that little 'smiley face' next to Google on the document/PowerPoint image didn't help. That really pissed people off big time.
2) The NSA has made it personal. They (NSA) have single handedly did more damage to the corporate 'brands' in terms of trust than anything/anybody. Now, as a result, there's a lot of users (and I mean A LOT) who really question each company's commitment to privacy. There's corporate players who are seriously alienated over this issue. And they are making their views known - to everybody. I'm told that when Immigration reform came up recently at a meeting at the WH, a 'quid pro quo' came up from the tech community regarding some of the NSA issues. This is a very terribly serious issue for these folks.
3) Compromising hardware also has aggregated a whole lot of players in the industry. It's harder to figure out the impact, but it's not nothing. And that also applies to software encryption standards, which the NSA also apparently deliberately tried to weaken. Think about it - potentially every piece of their technology infrastructure is now potentially under suspicion. Has it been compromised?
4) Then you have got the last issue, and this one has kind of come out of the blue. And this one is kind of an unknown right now. Simply, "Since the NSA is spying on everything, and specifically communications going in/out of the USA to/from foreign nations, why didn't they discover the entire consumer fraud/theft for places like Target, Neiman-Marcus, etc.?"
It never seemed to occur to these people (NSA) that the theft of 40+++ mil credit cards, and maybe as many as 110++ mil logins/passwords might be one hell of an incredible threat to our national cybersecurity?
I mean, think about it. If terrorist related groups stole just $10 each from each credit card holder, that's $400 mil dollars. At $100 per, that's $4 bil dollars. Or worse, what happens if the bad guys just start making 'donations' on each stolen credit card to unsavory groups? Can you imagine some poor guy coming home to find Homeland Security camped out in his driveway because his wife just so-called 'donated' $50 to the Al Nusrah Front?
Put money on the fact that one way or the other, the RNC/Tech Community had some communications somewhere in the process. The message got across to the RNC. The NSA is fast losing friends.
IMO, Rand Paul knows an issue with staying power when he sees one.
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