Exiled U.S. surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden recently spoke to an audience at Harvard University, via videofeed from Russia. The occasion was the Harvard Institute for Applied Computational Science’s “Data Privacy Symposium” on January 23, 2015. Professor Bruce Schneier joined Snowden for an enlightening discussion.
Snowden pointed to published media reports showing that the NSA is now intercepting American products and services before they are exported to consumers overseas so that the NSA can implant various “Trojans,” and U.S.-government malware into digital products. This implantation of malware allows the NSA or other U.S. government agencies to track, surveil and monitor all users of American tech products. The practice is so widely known by foreign purchasers that they are increasingly avoiding American exported electronics.
According to Snowden, this increasing worldwide avoidance of American tech products and services has already cost American tech suppliers between 35 billion and 185 billion dollars—an amount larger than the NSA’s budgets. And these losses are just what are known and reported on the surface. Actual losses to long-term American tech viability are undoubtedly much greater.
