Cisco Letter to Obama Objecting to NSA Implants

by
Anonymous Coward
in security on (#3MD)
Listen, do you hear something? It's " waaa, waaaa, waaa, waaaa ." It's the sound of Cisco executives crying to the Whitehouse that their business is being ruined now that the public knows their hardware is being sabotaged by the NSA with listening devices .

I'd feel sympathetic for them, but I'm too busy buying other manufacturers' hardware. This PDF is the letter Cisco executives have sent to President Obama. Or have a look here. The Washington Post reports Cisco John Chandler wrote :
Absent a new approach where industry plays a role, but in which you, Mr. President, can lead, we are concerned that our country's global technological leadership will be impaired. Moreover, the result could be a fragmented Internet, where the promise of the next Internet is never fully realized.
More interesting than the complaint is this graph showing the difference between what Cisco's predicted and actual growth, potentially due to this revelation . Who needs a diaper change and a nice bottle of warmed milk?

[Ed note 2014-05-20 12:10: update with a new, interesting link: http://www.infowars.com/cisco-ceo-sends-letter-to-obama-complaining-about-nsa-surveillance/ ]
Ed note: 2014-05-20 16:20 Link in the first ed note has been fixed.
Reply 21 comments

forever and ever and ever (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-20 10:35 (#1SA)

http://www.infowars.com/cisco-ceo-sends-letter-to-obama-complaining-about-nsa-surveillance/

Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 2, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-20 13:43 (#1SH)

That's two Infowars links in the same day, guys. Are you trying to turn away what little intelligent traffic we're getting here?

I really like it here, but if this is going to be a conspiracy site I'm not going to stick around.

Re: Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 1)

by lhsi@pipedot.org on 2014-05-20 14:13 (#1SP)

The link in the summary doesn't work as it has put a ] on the end.

Re: Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-20 14:16 (#1SQ)

No, no, I meant this was the second such link after the preceding Intel VPro article, which was built around Infowars crapola.

Re: Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 2, Insightful)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-05-20 16:19 (#1ST)

Editor here: your point is well taken. I paused, but thought it would be worse to not submit a link an author had taken the time to post to the pipeline. Hopefully, when we get more submissions coming in this will be less of an issue. I too would like this to not be a site that simply mirrors the infowars site (or any other site, for that matter). But today, that's what the pipeline mailman carried in.

Would love some of your article proposals, by the way - we're trying to publish just about everything that comes in that is serious.

Re: Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-20 16:45 (#1SW)

Thanks, I did one. :) Hasn't made it to the FP yet.

Re: Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-05-20 17:22 (#1T0)

Lavabit? Man, isn't that only one step removed from the NSA and Intel snoop chip stories? I'll post it a bit later tonight.

Re: Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-20 17:32 (#1T1)

Yes, you're quite right. :) But at least this one is real, involving someone who really did (it seems) get pressured by the feds.

Still, please don't publish it if you don't like it / think it's worthy. No skin off my nose. I'd rather see this place keep good editorial control. I was mainly impressed by the crypto angle. Delete away!

Re: Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 2, Insightful)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-05-20 17:42 (#1T2)

Let me see if I can work some magic. I really want to encourage people to post articles and anyone who takes the time to do so clearly feels it's a worthwhile thing to discuss. When editors start deleting articles, readers stop taking the time to contribute and the sense of cameraderie takes a hit.

Re: Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-21 10:24 (#1TB)

can you disprove the information within the Infowars article? If not, please pipe down. (lol!)

Re: Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-21 14:18 (#1TH)

Can you disprove that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is controlling your arm right now? No, you can't.

What a tool. Be at least a LITTLE choosy in the garbage you allow to enter your brain.

Re: Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-21 23:05 (#1TS)

can you disprove the information within the Infowars article? If not, please pipe down. (lol!)

Re: Infowars Links = Bye Bye, Pipedot (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-21 23:06 (#1TT)

i like how they answer a question with a question, like a suspect, criminal or politician would.

In short, we're making sure the world won't buy anything american. (Score: 2, Interesting)

by entropy@pipedot.org on 2014-05-20 14:07 (#1SN)

And if given a choice(which most companies have) they won't produce anything here, either. It started with encryption export restrictions: This made sure that all relevant encryption would have a tendency to be developed outside america.

Now we've made everything "Made in america" completely insecure. We export our skillsets, we destroy our own education.(FCAT, seriously?) America already only produces two things: Drugs, and Computer chips. This is an attack on half our production. America used to produce three things: Dollars(as a export), drugs, computer chips, and education. We've significantly eroded 2 of the 4 already.

I suppose we'll find a way to legislate destruction of our medicine exports next. Perhaps we can backdoor them?

Re: In short, we're making sure the world won't buy anything american. (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-20 14:19 (#1SR)

You mean like seeds genetically engineered to stop growing after a generation? Yeah, we do that.

"Common core" is also destroying modern US education. (It essentially requires that every child be a theoretical mathematician rather than learning how to multiply as we've learned for a thousand years, ensuring failure for most.)

We finally get somewhat reasonable health care just as everything else turns to crap.

Re: In short, we're making sure the world won't buy anything american. (Score: 1)

by entropy@pipedot.org on 2014-05-20 21:57 (#1T8)

Yes..common core is a great example of destroying our education. I've been given the example that knowing how to solve a problem isn't enough: You need to be able to solve it in a few completely irrelevant ways that have absolutely no use later in mathematics. Some crap about number lines? Anyway..Yeah.

Re: In short, we're making sure the world won't buy anything american. (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-20 16:01 (#1SS)

I'm wondering how long until we see products advertised with "Proudly NOT made in the USA". There are several people I know who are interested in buying grey market versions of electronics, though I'm the only one crazy enough to do it.

Re: In short, we're making sure the world won't buy anything american. (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-20 16:46 (#1SX)

For a lot of people that's exactly how the car market has worked for the last 20 years or so. American makes are immediately crossed off the list.

Re: In short, we're making sure the world won't buy anything american. (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-05-20 17:20 (#1SZ)

Yes, but for a different reason. It's quite reasonable to not consider a brand for perceived quality. It's a bit ridiculous that you need to not consider a brand because of regulations imposed on them.

Different strategy (Score: 1)

by nightsky30@pipedot.org on 2014-05-20 18:22 (#1T5)

The first company to change their factory to market plan and deliver to market with an unbroken, documented, chain of custody might make some decent money while securing the nation's infrastructure. It kills me to hear about this stuff. If the good guys know about this stuff and use it, the bad guys could as well.