How about "they're mostly open source" because that's the only real way you're not going to be nuked out of business by established players weilding patents etc... anyway. It's also interesting that such companies as Apple, Google, FB... and even Microsoft (Skype/Linux) and HP these days are building a lot of their value on open source.

Because commercial espionage isn't unknown? Why else was Germany revealed to be so spied upon?

Budgets are huge but they are finite. Increasing the unit cost of seizures isn't wasted. Inside the US extra legal protections also come into play also. Why not push some political pressure into the system via cloud provider lobbyists too?

Considering one of the most spied on nations in the PRISM leak was Germany does commercial espionage seem a be drawing such a long bow?

Oh, and if you happen to live in pretty much anywhere the USA is pressuring everyone to get their ducks in a row with their screwed up laws.

ahhh.... that explains it then. Your employer takes the risks, and your work is not really your own anyway. If you put significant energy into something that was then you wouldn't be so casual.

You're probably trolling... but just in case: he designed his own cipher which was successful enough to resist attack and efficient/elegant enough to be included in standards and products. He has others to his name which get honourable mentions, so it wasn't a fluke. He's also an excellent communicator which exactly what the security field needs... society needs to get a feel for the issues.

*blink blink* ... nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

....security vs FREEDOM... *sigh*

There's a guy called Vilanor Ramachandran... he's a brain researcher who has some very interesting theories. VERY well worth looking up. His theory on humour is that it's an "all clear" signal left over from our monkey days. eg. screams to get everyone panicked, hypervigilant and/or up a tree, and laughter when it isn't a leopard at all but a kid shaking a bush. The simplest humour is basically a story with a twist at the end which causes a reinterpretation of what you just heard. Black, or trench humour is triggering this response to get all the feelgood hormones without things actually being all OK at the end. If you can't change your situation perhaps you can only change yourself, but at least that's something.

Let me break this down into human terms:

I have this aggressive friend (fighting actually put him through college) who told me a story. Duing highschool he picked a fight with this gentle giant and in a surprise attack broke his nose. The guy wasn't knocked out as my friend would have hoped, and in a powerful grip grabbed and held my friend off the ground. As my friend angrily struggled he kept asking "are we even yet?", and eventually my friend had to bow to the obvious. In this measured response he earned my friends complete respect - the guy could have destroyed, or at least humiliated my friend but did neither.

I can tell you now that if he'd beaten the sh*t out of my friend the fighting wouldn't have stopped. Also, if the guy had preemtively beaten up those he thought could be threatening in future... well... he'd be called a bully wouldn't he, and perhaps that friend of mine may have had some help. In this way dictators are destined to become prisoners of their own dictatorship and never get the safety they crave, and develop this strange and dark view of the world which is as terrible as it is self-fulfilling.

Still, even in the best case you'll get a broken nose occasionally, hence the oft repeated security vs safety quote.

Citizen... all patriotic coders will add THIS fine backdoor^k^k^kpanel to their websites.

...and in the meantime become more security conscious and learn the ways of more secure technologies, and perhaps more secure and fedorated social networking platforms such as Diaspora*, Friendica etc... Duckduckgo for search (although who REALLY knows if these guys are honest). Any more tips for the SaaS (Spying as a Service) refugee?

Today is the day I start slowly cutting my ties with Facebook, learning the ways of secure chat, email etc... Unfortunately Slashdot is most probably part of the problem. Perhaps current governments honestly do think they're serving the greater good, but that's an an awful big carrot sitting there waiting for the next Napoleon, Hitler, lesser psychopath etc... I can make it less enticing in my small and probably largely ineffectual way, but we can only do what we can. I actually already have a Diaspora* account, though Friendica looks interesting. It's way past time I learned about these technologies anyway.

Surely it follows that as the most heavily armed society America would have some of the lowest violent crime rates in the western world... definitely not the case. This is the number the gun lobby always trotted out because the USA only measures aggrivated assault where just about everyone else measures ALL assault, but even using this metric the USA has been worse in recent years.