That never happened. The NSA tapped Google's fiber without Google's knowledge, but there's no evidence that Google ever willingly participated. As soon as Google found out about the taps, it accelerated a program to get the data on all those fibers encrypted, to lock the NSA out.

Google trades the right to target ads to you in exchange for services, and enables you to opt out of the trade if you want, even providing the necessary tools for you to do it. Google has never given the NSA an "unaccountable back door". See David Drummond's numerous public statements on this issue. From my personal perspective as a Google security engineer, I think it would be virtually impossible for such a back door to exist in Google's systems without my having noticed some trace of it. Take that as you will.

You're coming to this question with a whole bunch of inaccurate assumptions, which are seriously skewing your perspective. You should take a breath, look into what really happened (as much as is public information anyway) vis a vis the NSA, PRISM, etc., and then re-evaluate.

Or not, that's your choice. I'll merely point out that time will prove me right with respect to any purported military-focused work by Google X and leave it there.

no, and you could have found that out by reading this thread.

Of course you can. There's lots of ways to do that, including hacking into the audio hardware. I'd probably just use an old phone though, and not a whole tablet. You don't need that much screen for that job. Most devices have some GPIO on board, which can be used with some effort, but using the audio hardware is much easier. Use one of the many phones with USB OTG, and connect up a cheap MCU to do the USB-to-GPIO work.

Nonsense. They claimed to be generally open, hardware and software. Then it was pointed out that important parts of the software were so closed you couldn't even use them. Eventually it was opened up enough so that you could use them, but all the important parts except the interface (which was originally closed) remain secret sauce. They also claimed to use all documented interfaces, but provided inadequate documentation for the display and camera connectors for a seriously long time as well.

They absolutely claimed to be promoting an open platform originally. They also made lots of other claims they never came through on, like that they would release Android for the device.

Yes, you can, unless it's patent-protected.

but this is Ford installing a Motorcraft oil filter which was designed not to open if it was connected to a Frod, not one which just happens to not open in that condition. There's a massive difference there, and the difference is one of intent.

Or your OS, which will refuse to deal with the device, assuming that it has failed or is otherwise exhibiting bad behavior.

Most of those manufacturers will just close their doors, change their name, and open them again, and the users will end up contacting FTDI, or just giving up.

Reverse engineering for the purposes of interoperability is critical to scientific development. Here in the USA, it is an activity which is explicitly protected.

It's not theft, because they're not depriving them of it.

The user uses the FTDI driver.

Yes, but a war on users, some of whom deliberately set out to buy FTDI hardware. They won't make that mistake again.

That's probably true. However, they're going to have a whole lot of lawsuits coming their way in response, and those lawsuits will be from users of their chips.

No, they won't. If they were prepared to do that, they would be doing it already. They're not even distributing drivers in most cases, and it's left as an exercise to the user to download it, or the manufacturer of the device which uses the chip to include it. They're counting on not getting busted for the copyright violation of marking FTDI on top of the chip, and not risking getting busted for distributing the driver.

Reliable? Meh. Best drivers? Definitely a lie. They screw those up all the time. Additional features? That part is very true, and it's the reason why you need a real FTDI chip anyway. A lot of stuff won't work right if you don't have one.

The DMCA doesn't cover this issue. The closest it comes is explicitly protecting reverse engineering for the purposes of interoperability. Creating a chip that works just like the FTDI chip is not illegal. Putting FTDI's marks on the top of your chip is a violation of trademark law. Distributing FTDI's driver would be a violation of copyright law. Downloading FTDI's driver without permission is also a violation of copyright law, so who distributes/downloads the driver affects who violates copyright there. Finally, using the driver without permission is also a violation of copyright law. AFAIK there is no legal precedent (and certainly no applicable laws) which cover the use of someone else's USB ID, unless you are doing it with the intent to cause some kind of harm, or cause harm through negligence.

Any possible claims over these clone chips center around driver copyright or misuse of trademarks. Or, of course, patent abuse, but that seems relatively unlikely here. FTDI is in extremely well-traveled territory.

If you take your fake Ford in for service, they detect that it's a fake, and instead of telling you that it's fake (and possibly removing your emblems) they reflash your PCM, deliberately causing your car not to start, how will you feel about that? Will you solely blame the manufacturer of your fake car, or will you be angry at the dealership for disabling your car?

There's no good reason for them to do that. Their chip implements the same interface as the FTDI chip, and applications are expecting to talk to the FTDI driver. That's a battle they can never win. But they can see what the hardware interface looks like.

FTDI's deliberate intent is to damage people's equipment. How is that not illegal? I'd bet that it is.

I'm going to be pissed off at both, and I hope FTDI dies and someone else takes over for them. They're not very good at their job anyway.

Let's play a game, you name a 80s geek hero movie for every 80s action hero movie I name, ok?

Do we have to start or do you agree that I win?

Yes, there were a few "geeky" movies. But claiming that they have anything to do with women avoiding computer science is ridiculous. If anything, the 80s movies were misogynic in general. Women were stereotypically abused as either the love interest for the hero, the dumb idiot that gets the hero in trouble or needs to be rescued by him or the inefficient example of how women just can't do what the hero later has to fix.

Women in anything but romance/love stories were basically the same as geeks in 80s movies: The bumbling idiot that makes the hero look so much better.

Nobody could complain if they simply went and made their driver incompatible with the forged chips. If there is no working driver, then the customer would have to complain with the original maker of the hardware and demand a working driver. That's quite within FTDI's rights.

The point is that they attack the firmware of the device involved, which is by no accounts ok anymore. This isn't locking out a competitor, it's destruction of a competitor's hardware. Yes, that competitor didn't act correctly by trying to get a free ride. No doubt about that. By that logic, though, it's just a-ok for any printer maker to trash the printer (e.g. by hosing it with printer ink) should they detect that you use anything but their overpriced original stuff.

Like putting system config in /etc and user config in $HOME, you mean?