NSA Surveillance Methods Harming U.S. Economy

by JASmius

So charges outgoing Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) for reasons other than the ones he asserts:

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden is investigating the economic harm he said is being caused by the U.S. National Security Agency’s surveillance methods.

Wyden, a persistent critic of the NSA, is using his perch as the panel’s chairman to broaden his attack on the agency’s practices, he said in an interview with editors and reporters at Bloomberg News headquarters in New York.

“Nobody has looked at it from an economic standpoint, purely economics, dollars and cents,” said Wyden, an Oregon Democrat. “If a foreign enemy had inflicted the damage on the American economy — these cutting-edge, innovative companies — that the overreaching by the NSA surveillance brigade had done, people would be up in arms all over the United States.”...

U.S. technology companies may lose as much as $35 billion in the next three years from foreign customers choosing not to buy their products because of concerns they cooperate with spy programs, according to Daniel Castro. He’s a senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit group.

Wyden is largely correct, as far as it goes.   Barack Obama's "fundamental transformation" of the NSA from, well, a national security agency aiding homeland security against jihadist infiltration to a branch of his Hydra-esque Obamastapo turned loose on our former allies hasn't been a public relations boon for the U.S. technology sector.  Companies including Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have been waging a public-relations battle for more than a year in response to the Edward Snowden "leaks" and the German government (remember the NSA tapping Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone?) recently dumped Verizon.  It is the wages of literal fascism.

Senator Wyden's problem is that he doesn't have the committee portfolio to pull a Rand Paul and gut the NSA directly (like he could), so he's making do with what he has, as well as aiding and abetting the Regime's relentless shakedown of U.S. businesses by banning "inversions," the practice of purchasing a foreign entity and transferring one's corporate headquarters there, reducing the acquiring company's U.S. tax burden.

We'll have to wait for next January, when Utah's Orrin Hatch takes Wyden's gavel, to see what genuine and legitimate steps Senate Finance can take to rein in NSA's "extracurricular activities".

Like Hatch could, either.