The NSA overreach poses a serious threat to our economy

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/20/jim-sensenbrenner-nsa-overreach-hurts-business

The NSA overreach poses a serious threat to our economy

"I don't care if the NSA steals my information because I have nothing to hide." This is a typical quote from a huge amount of Americans regarding the recent NSA information scandal. The National Security Agency basically told all of our nation's information giants that they needed to hand over private consumer information to the government for "security reasons." With this force applied by the government, our tech giants had no choice but to hand out private information about not only American consumers, but also foreign consumers. Apple and Google are not restricted to just America. Users all over the world buy, use, and trust our companies, until now. This serious lack of trust that will come from the NSA scandal will most certainly impact not only our nations information pioneers, but also our workers and eventual consumers. People getting paid by these giant companies are many times consumers of technology products.

In foreign nations, if a consumer "does not like" the product from America they often have another option. Other than a few circumstances, our American companies produced a superior technology product in comparison to one produced by Russia or Brazil. Now that the people heard about the NSA scandal and know that A FOREIGN NATION is looking at all of their information through these products, the foreign consumer may be less willing to buy that product. In fact, with Cisco Systems we have seen just that. Cisco is projecting that revenue will drop up to 10%. Cisco has also seen new orders decline by 25% in Brazil and 30% in Russia. This market increased by 8% in the previous quarter, so it is no coincidence that the drop and the NSA issue were synchronized. With this huge projected decrease in revenue, the company will have less money. With less money, the amount of employees that can be paid to work decreases. When people are out of work, they have less money. When people have less money, they don't buy as many things. When people don't buy as many things, businesses have less money. Attention businesses and consumers: don't have less money. By not allowing the NSA to continue its power search, we can protect big business and save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.

FYI - Yes, that was a very bad attempt at a Geico advertisement in case you caught on.   

- David Gerhart