Internet Cable from Brazil to EU

article = none , personal opinion


In the age of NSA ticking off all the non-americans greatly (especially Brazil, they got caught helping an american company try and win a bid on a contract ... we call that industrial espionage , not fighting terrorists) , Brazil has decided to run an internet cable from Brazil to Europe directly , without going through the USA at all, and thus avoiding NSA.
   There have been several responses to this , on the web , recently , one being the USA will just tap the new wire and continue business as usual (apparently a Sub named Jimmy Carter has already been trained and equipped for this particular mission) , another being that this is just a smoke screen , the cable through the USA has degraded to the point that it can only support voice calls so they would have had to replace it anyways, and a third objection commonly raised is that the lowered latency for a direct cable means data centers in brazil will be very useful to people in europe, very responsive, able to move a lot of data ,etc , thus they're competing for USA business.

As a Canadian who doesn't much like the NSA , and openly confesses to feeling shame over the actions of NSA and it's little tiny Canadian brother CSEC who apparently is following faithfully in the footsteps of NSA , I would like to make a few comments.

One . You can't just go tap an undersea data cable. In this day and age of outrage at NSA ? They are watching you. What exactly do you think is going to be the political consequences of you getting caught tapping a brand new cable ? They won't be war, USA is the largest military power in the world, but you can expect trade boycots galore. 
   Having already been caught red handed in industrial espionage , in helping americans win commerical contracts , USA is not far from a situation where European (and Brazliian) Governments simply start adding a clause to their contracts that USA based corperations need not bother to submit a bid , they are not eligable to win this contract. 
   If the fight for contracts is not a fair fight , if one side is cheating so that they always win , and everyone else always loses, everyone else is going to pick up their marbles and go play somewhere else , and leave the "winner" to go play with himself.

I would like to say Canada will follow this tactic , but I'm probably wrong. The government and both major opposition political parties (ie: all three front runners) have been amazingly quiet on the entire issue. The only hint we have is one of the governments ministors bad mouthing Snowden as a traitor and saying he deserves to be thrown in jail for a really long time.
   If this is the Canadian Government's opinion , it's pretty obvious they're obediently falling in line behind big brother USA and arn't going to lift a finger to protect even their own population. And threatenning to vote for the opposition gets you no where.

   So what do you do ?
   You must assume the attitude "If it's electronic , it's bugged" , "If you're competing with an american corperation , NSA is helping them". "If the product manufacturer is based in the USA , NSA owns their little behind and there's probably a back door, though they will deny that. They are legally required to for the first two years of any new prodect they come out with " (Obama's great "compromise" with american corperations ... not much of a compromise if you're non-american)
   Put dirt on your face book. Claim to love knitting , make friends with a few people you hate , mess up their metrics , and if the cops come calling , tell them you deliberately threw dirt in your profile because you knew they were watching. What can they do ? They're on your doorstep because they're watching ...

   Confusion to the enemies  !
   And stop buying American. We can't really stop them from spying on us , but we can at least hit them in the pocket book.