NSA Leak – Can We Trust US Tech Companies?

And more importantly do we have a choice?

As you browse through this story, hundreds of fans help cool servers at a Google data center in Mayes County, Okla. USA. Recently is has become a matter of great concern that companies based in US such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and others have been providing global user data to the National Security Agency. But as Indians, we now know that it is a big risk to give away your personal data to global companies such as Microsoft and Facebook.

This has come out in the open with the disclosure of previously secret US based National Security Agency surveillance programs has left a lot of people worried that the privacy responsibility of their personal data and communications is in wrong hands.

And for some American companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc the NSA revelations raise separate concerns. Their commercial fortunes in countries such as India could be at risk as a result of disclosures that the companies have been planning with the U.S. government’s sweeping data collection efforts on global scale and dimensions. For these reasons only, countries such as China and Russia have banned the usage of Google and Facebook etc long ago.

People around the world now know that these companies are turning over to the government some of the personal data they have gathered during the course of doing business. And as result, their reputation is at big risk now.

The earnings of such companies as Google and Facebook make that prospect clear. All that personal information, however, is also worth a fortune to intelligence and security agencies. The organisations that gather personal data, therefore, almost inevitably get pulled into the surveillance business.

Global reactions to the NSA revelations in the United States are certain to reverberate around the world, especially those concerning the monitoring of Internet communications at multiple levels And dimensions.