Yes. Look at the Snowden revelations, the NSA spy catalog, etc. Recall Dick Cheney's personality while in office. Ask yourself if you really believe that the monied interests are not powerful enough to, on a smaller number of cases basis perhaps, have access to that level of espionage technology and capability. Then ask yourself if that kind of a 'grand conspiracy' jives with Obama's verbal track record. It really isn't that complicated. It really does make sense. We need more Snowdens.

Ecuador answered your question a few comments away- http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4671761&cid=45967943
"
  Imagine if instead of malware you attempted to host copyrighted content on Amazon or GoDaddy or whomever else. Immediate takedown of the content and people coming after you. If you host malware on the other hand, meh, as long as Amazon gets paid they can host it without getting into trouble.
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What is the protocol (currently used procedures) when instead of spam coming from such a geographic location on the internet it is simply a (non distributed) DoS attack?

My point is that you should respond to the attack at its point of ingress into your jurisdiction, and not at the last mile. Local last-mile ISPs should not tolerate unwanted traffic coming into their network like that. Spam/DoS traffic should be battled as close to its source as possible. Why have 100 local(ha) ISPs across the country mitigate one-by-one a threat that can be tackled at a single source of entry into the network?

And you know what would happen then? The spammers would be prosecuted, because customers don't like being charged for bandwidth that wasn't desired or initiated by them. The current method of spam-fighting that involves the ISP having arbitrary power to boot whatever speech from its wires that it finds 'undesirable' is HORRIBLE from a global free speech perspective. If the situation you feared came about, the instant a few people saw a few dollars on their ISP bill due to bandwidth, or a flood of spam in their inbox due to this- the spammers would be _sought out and prosecuted as they always should have been_. The current method is like making it legal (or an unenforced law) to pollute chemicals into a river, since all the downstream water treatment plants can just filter out the pollution. The right thing to do is to go after the polluters to stop polluting, and not depend on the last mile infrastructure to mitigate the consequences of the core problem. And given the free speech issues at hand, it is all the worse doing things this way on the internet.

I spent over a year complaining to the FCC, and the Kansas Attorney General about this. To this day the FCC hasn't uttered a single sentence analysis of either my original 1000 character complaint, or the 53 page escalation-manifesto that the KS-AG threw back at them like a hot potato. The backing off came after a period of time - measured in hours - after pictures like these hit the web (children who probably don't know the issues holding picket signs)

http://crossies.com/IMAG0778.jpg

The subsequent backing off into 'no commercial servers' allowed only bolsters my arguments that the issue was from the beginning, entirely about suppressing commercial home-hosted server competition from the internet services marketplace, and nothing at all about protecting the internet with 'reasonable network management' from the inherent danger of the 'server-ness' of any particular device. The real bottom line issue has always been simple fraud about the 'no data caps' claims. There is a cap, it is just arbitrarilty and selectively enforced by restricting whatever devices Google doesn't want off of its network. In this case, servers that commercially compete with the millions of servers Google has connected to it's endpoints of 'the internet'.

Sorry, but it was announced last year here on slashdot that the Lawyers have long since taken control. Seriously-

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3106555&cid=41288357 (quoted entirely here-)

Posting anonymously for reasons that will be obvious.

Larry Page is really annoyed by the "no servers" clause. In an internal weekly all-hands meeting he repeatedly needled Patrick Pichette about the limitation, and pointedly reminded him that the only reason Google was able to get off the ground was because Page and Brin could use Stanford's high-speed Internet connection for free. Page wants to see great garage startups being enabled by cheap access to truly high-speed Internet. Pichette defended it saying they had no intention of trying to enforce it in general, but that it had to be there in case of serious abuse, like someone setting up a large-scale data center.

I don't think anyone really has to worry about running servers on their residential Google Fiber, as long as they're not doing anything crazy. Then again it's always possible that Page will change his mind or that the lawyers will take over the company, and the ToS is what it is. If I had Google Fiber I'd run my home server just as I do on my Comcast connection, but I'd also be prepared to look for other options if my provider complained.

I believe you are naive, and buying or regurgitating the plausible denial that has been crafted by Google. Even if Google truly is that innocent in intent, they have been negligent in securing that data so that it can't be stolen from them, even if they themselves aren't selling it. My oldest brother is an engineering VP at Google. There has been some serious kool-aid drinking there and in silicon valley over the last 10 years. And it's not so much that I believe he was misinformed, but rather, secretly informed, and doing a very good job of towing the public line which was a conspiracy to keep the public disinformed about the real state of security.

Again, this is the naive line. Look at my epic saga over the past year complaining about GoogleFiber's terms of service that first "prohibited any kind of server" and now merely prohibit any kind of "commercial server". This is a conspiracy by Google, the NSA, and others, to keep the kinds of tools it would be necessary for people to secure their data at home - *as if it were their 'papers' (per 4th ammendment) - out of the marketplace. Call me a kook all you want, but the idea that chilling the market for commercial home server software (open source and otherwise), is consistent with what network neutrality was designed for... I mean really. You seriously believe you're employers line? Oh, that's right, enjoy your nice fat paychecks twice a month, and don't dare 'bite the hand that feeds'. Good luck to you brother.

The reason that in 2013 IPv6 isn't the simple answer is IMHO conspiracy. This new alliance reeks of "don't look over there at just obviously using the 'internet protocol' as designed and intended and independent of our existing transnational corporate influence. Instead, use this shit we 'invent', and in a few years, the ISPs will be filtering everything else because they consider it 'reasonable network management', and they are fellow establishment players like us.". This is just an extra taxation of the internet by an establishment rightfully afraid of 'disruptive technologies' such as IPv6 combined with any sense of an ISP as an agent of free speech, rather than mainstream media control (as the internet was supposed (/long advertised) to do to the prior cable network).

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/google-we-can-ban-servers-on-fiber-without-violating-net-neutrality/

And welcome to the hell of the neo-Kompromat the NSA (no doubt with wider geopolitical collaboration) has created for every human on earth. I.e, they love to break security and pick locks to have all the info on everyone they can, in case targeted defamation or provocation becomes tactically useful. But the worse hell is that they themselves, though they may think, and perhaps even temporarily are "informationally dominant" - they are not invulnerable. So in the end, they damage the fabric of human security even more than they intended. Yes, this is just redundantly making a less succint point. But it's a damned important point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kompromat

And then the next moment deciding to create and use a Kompromat database to prevent any undesired changes to the system. A revelation like this leads me to these sorts of philosophical and ethical ponderings- Would the sorts of NSA employees that decided to engage in these sorts of 'political ratfucking campaigns' also have thought that it would have been ethical to- e.g. pay a million dollars to a monica lewinski to seduce a president, in order to discredit him? I mean, after all, it's just a little victimless 'penetration testing' to increase the security of the overall system right? Just like breaking a little law against cruel and unusual punishment of a fellow human being in order to serve a greater good against terrorist criminals? Or would it make a difference depending on whether or not Hillary gave the thumbs up to the operation? Just musings on justice...

In addition,"The Final Cut" is a gem of a Robin Williams movie on this subject many may not have seen-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Cut_(2004_film) (below is wikipedia summary)

The Final Cut is a 2004 film written and directed by Omar Naim. It stars Robin Williams ... ... The story takes place in a near future in which people can pay to have their babies implanted with memory chips. These "Zoe Implants", developed by EYE Tech company, record every moment of their lives, so that they may be viewed by loved ones after one's death. The plot centers on Alan Hakman, a "cutter", whose job it is to edit the Zoe footage into a feature-film length piece, called a "Rememory".

The Final Cut is about subjectivity, memory and history; posing the question, "If history is what is written and remembered, then what happens when memories are edited and rewritten?"

The film won the award for best screenplay at the Deauville Film Festival and was nominated for best film at the Catalonian International Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival.

Good point. We're going to need more canaries. A lot more canaries. Like a canary per user. Or per piece of user's data even. Hmm... sounds like a new piece of metadata........

While you may have a technical point here, practically it is far less relevant. Those that are on the other side of this are vulnerable to the light such a prosecution would bring to their actions. They know that what they are doing is so completely fundamentally illegal for so many reasons, that even if they are 100% right legally about the situation you describe, their system of injustice could never withstand actual litigation in such a scenario. Sadly, this means that they will result to less above-board tactics of coercion to achieve their ends.

The problem you aren't paying enough attention to is the relationship between "feasible" and "profitable". Real security could come about through Google leading the industry away from server-prohibition terms of service for residential ISPs. Or the recently modified "commercial-server-prohibited" terms. Once people en-masse are allowed to host their own data (and encryptedly replicate their friends), that will remove the real crux of the issue- An internet services architecture that is fundamentally flawed in that it piles the majority of users data in places with thousands of employees, and drastic vulnerability to economic leverage. Such data piles are trivial, and always will be trivial for the gestapo to infiltrate and copy for themselves. So, is it "feasible" for Google to get a freaking clue and take my side agreeing that there is absolutely nothing inherently interesting about a "server" (commercial or not) that is damaging to the network? Well, doing so opens up the floodgates for residential servers to compete with their countless servers. So no, to your management, it is not 'feasible'. There is no hope in Google. The only hope would be that these tech-smarts you describe in your workplace persist after the decent tech workers abandon the company which is 'too big for the NSA to allow it to fail'.

My older brother is a VP-Eng at Google (maps). I can assure you that the whole thing is utterly corrupt. The day after active duty U.S. Navy Information Warfare Officer Dave Schroeder posted publicly here that he thought my GoogleFiber "Right To Serve" Manifesto[1] was "very good" and that he agreed with everything I wrote about the core net neutrality argument, my brother finally said he agreed with some part of my arguments. To this day he has never clarified which part, though still asserts that I should have gone about my complaint in "the better way", namely submitting myself subserviantly to the Google technocratic leaderships opinion. The fact of the matter is, IMHO, that being able to host server/s on your residential internet connection, and being able to expect the user/customer base of all "internet service" to have the same basic right, is a key aspect of reclaiming our informational privacy and security on the internet. No, it's not bulletproof, but it's the foundation with which to have a fighting chance. I personally wish the EFF would get some guts and go further in their call. The fact of the matter is that I am right about my Net Neutrality argument, though certainly resolved to believe that after the forthcoming verizon ruling, that is not legally likely going to be relevant. But I think to reclaim our ability to use the internet, rather than being used by it, we need to demand that hosting servers that control our own data, is something everyone ought to be able to do from home. And in order for the residential server software market to thrive, there can't be arbitrary bullshit raqueteering loopholes like Google's new "no-commercial-servers-allowed" activity. I mean, why the fuck is it ok for residential users to commercially profit on transactions with a 3rd party like ebay, but not if they independently run their own LAMP stack and accept payment by check via USPS? I mean seriously, what the fuck?!?

[1] http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121024.pdf
http://www.provobuzz.com/google-fiber-now-allows-home-servers/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/google-neutrality/
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/google-fiber-continues-awful-isp-tradition-banning-servers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/08/01/198327/googles-call-for-open-internet.html