Yeah, this smells like NSA trying to hide that Snowden did in fact try to bring up the issue through official channels, before he leaked documents to the public.

It's not in Germanys interest to weaken the American economy... That would hurt them just as bad...

I'm pretty sure no European country even wants to indicate that they want to mess with the US economy... Not because they are scared of a US response. But because they don't want to weaken the world economy, upon which many European countries depend.

If Germany made thebUS dollar fall even more. That would hurt the European economy and weak EURO economies would need further bail outs...

This is an appropriate and proportional response... It's not enough, I agree, but it's pretty good start! A European country deporting US officials is a big thing.

It sadness me that American politicians can't see that this inhibits competitions as employers use healthcare benefits to retain employees... It's very close to a lock-in, which hinders the powers of the free markets. Seriously, when you read ads for employers to provide healthcare, the ad is all about how the employer can retain his employees... Tsk tsk...

Compared to other countries, this is also a major blocker for start-ups, etc... Long term these things are going to keep the US behind.

I'm an H1B worker here... and I get paid enough - just don't tell my manager :)
But a fact is that without H1B I would be working from Toronto, London or home somewhere else in Europe... For the same company, doing the same thing.


All you're going to change is the location of the worlds largest tech cluster... without immigration silicon valley is nothing.

I don't dispute that this is the case under US law... My problem is with this practice of doing this... In the US the same happens to taxi drivers and pizza delivery drivers.
I find it distasteful to cut costs on people who have very little income. Sometimes these people makes below minimum wage. It seems to me like they are trying to exploit the little man. Because people do drive taxies, uber and deliver pizzas for a living, making them contractors is a distasteful way to cut money from people who make very little.

When I decide to archive a lot of files I put them in a tarball and generate par2 files... That way a single bitflip or two will be okay :)

SF cab drivers aren't the worst IMO... But uber drivers are much better, not speeding up like crazy, etc...
The shared shuttle rides from SFO though is the most crazy thing I've every tried, constantly speeding like crazy and going hard on the breaks at every stop sign, as if every single stop sign as a surprise :)

True, and calling the drivers self-employed, which is also a lie that moves more liability to the drivers and in the US frees uber of having to pay benefits etc...
That said, I'm pretty sure uber requires drivers to be insured, also uber does have insurances that covers the passenger, etc. google it for details.

Another, big cost saving that uber does is letting people use their private vehicles, which does make sense from a cost cutting perspective. And enables drivers to offer better service. For example by keeping their car clean.

Note, cost cutting is not the only reason uber is nice. Ordering and paying through an app is really nice too. So is the rating system, which holds drivers accountable.

Armed robbery of people on a train haven't been a profitable profession for at least 150 years :)
And I'm basing that fact that it ever as profitable on movies :)

s/employment/desperate measure/

By the way, criminals being caught is not a new thing... close to 1 percent of the prison service eligible US population is behind bars.

Mod parent up...

Yes, free to be poor... :)

Indeed, cheap guns and poverty is a cocktail only for the brave :)

So because my private life is utterly uninteresting, you suggest that I shouldn't care about giving up my human rights?

The right to privacy is a human right...

One might as well ask, why you should care about fair trails or torture, if you're not a criminal then why should you care? After all why should anybody want to torture a confession out of you?
This is not about being personally targeted or affected, it's about basic human rights.

Before Snowden we used to say the same thing about NSA messing with encryption standard bodies, or NSA conductive widespread warrant-less surveillance of everybody.

We used to think people wasn't subjected to secret trails in the US. That's no longer the case, we now know by fact that the US doesn't honor basic human rights, not for it's citizens or anybody else.

Do we really need more proof. This isn't the worst thing the NSA have attempted yet.

Well, that's just boring... He he :)

I see a future where teenagers jump infront of cars to see who dares wait the longest :)