If you're in I.T. and touch the China market, that's your question. If you make handcuffs, don't expect any business from me.

'Reporter', if you don't tell me who the quote is from, I assume you made it up. What other lesson could Judith Miller teach me? No source means I can't evaluate motive or credibility, so I'll assume you made it up.

I trained network guys on installing our company's firewall (hardened Linux OS) for 18 years. I started every class by asking this question: "Is the purpose of the network security?" A few guys would nod, after all I'm the security guy, that must be the answer I wanted, right? NO! The purpose of the network is *getting work done*. Security is a feature, and it must be balanced against other features with one goal in mind: getting the work done at a level of productivity acceptable to management. Perfect security is an illusion. Doesn't exist, won't ever exist. You do the best you can in the environment you work in, and that's all you can do.

Let's hear what you say under oath and subject to cross examination Ed. I've heard all the self-serving comments to friendly reporters, they don't mean jack.

Don't become famous for your multi-year, ongoing, criminal conspiracy. You're not getting a warning if that happens and they've got enough evidence to bury you. Yes, lots of guys sold more drugs & guns than him over decades and aren't getting life in prison. You know what they have in common? Not bragging about it on the Internet and counting on l33t skillz to keep them out of prison.

What offends me about Manning and Snowden is they knew EXACTLY who they were going to work for, swore oaths to keep their mouths shut, and then didn't. Working for 20 years in network security, I don't share the pop media belief that they 'revealed' big things. No, they got the popular media to pay attention to something that any educated person knew was going on, and had been going on for a long time. But they had to lie, steal, and break oaths to do that, and my sympathy for their plight is all that it should be. The Patriot Act was wrong all along, and anybody smarter than a chimp knew exactly what intelligence agencies would do with it ... the same thing NSA, GCHQ and their counterparts around the world ALWAYS do: seek every gram of data they can get, because that's their job. It's our job, and our elected representatives' job, to prioritize liberty over security ... and we failed miserably at that post-9/11. Spooks do what spooks do, be sneaky SOB's ... it's the electorate and Congress that failed, miserably, but we find it too hard to look in the mirror and be accountable, so we blame spooks ... for doing exactly what we hire spooks to do. Convenient, but not a path to progress.

We sank the only submersible aircraft carriers around just to keep the Russians from having a look? I guess no Jack Ryan was there to have a better idea.

No, they just scan your computer to see if your girlfriend is Page 3-worthy.

On the list of 'last organizations on Earth' I'd trust with any personal data, they fall somewhere between the People's Security Bureau of China and Westboro Baptist.

... and common sense.

I've heard the accusations and the self-serving denials and the spin of crusading bloggers. Get someone on the stand, under oath, subject to cross-examination, and then we'll have something to talk about.

Probably not in any way. We don't know what the adoption rate will be, what the legislative changes will be. Personally, as an older Network Security guy you'll never find me with a car that communicates in any way, shape or form with the Cloud so no, there's no self-driving vehicle in my future. How other people will react is a guess we have no valid data for.

Is there a scintilla of objective evidence that it did? Self-serving statements from the suits does not count.

Welcome to '69 Mustangs being cooler than ever.

... because I'll never choose a vehicle that sends a single byte of data about itself or me to the Cloud.