The NSA's damage to America continues

Here's some damage that can be calculated in dollars and cents.  $15 Billion and counting:

An IBM shareholder is suing Big Blue, accusing it of hiding the fact that its ties to the NSA spying scandal cost it business in China – and wiped billions off its market value.

The Louisiana Sheriffs' Pensions and Relief Fund has filed the suit in New York, claiming that Big Blue "misrepresented and concealed" that its association with the NSA caused Chinese companies and the Chinese government to abruptly stop doing business with it, according to the shareholder's lawyers.

"When the company ultimately revealed the truth regarding the collapse of its business in China, the price of IBM stock fell almost $12 per share," the legal team said in a statement, while inviting other shareholders to join the suit.

...

In the following days, IBM shares dropped 7.4 per cent to $172.86, wiping $15bn from its market capitalisation.

This isn't the first time this has happened.  Remember Cisco's big earnings miss?  This isn't the last we've heard of this sort of thing.

NSA has lost the security geeks in Silicon Valley.  They look like they're fixin' to lose the big money types there as well.  Neither of these events will help them, but they seem not to be smart enough to figure out that this is happening.  But we'll know that it's having its impact when Senator Feinstein starts publicly complaining about the NSA.  So far she's been on their side, but it shouldn't take too many of the big tech firms telling her that they're going to donate to someone else's campaign to get a different song played.  The Congress is, if nothing else, coin operated.

And it's all for nothing.  Literally, nothing has come out of this program in terms of stopping terror attacks (unless you believe NSA Director Alexander, which I don't).  And in fact, nothing can come out of it:

Perhaps the NSA’s tests are more accurate than I have assumed. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that the NSA’s tests have astronomically high accuracy, with sensitivity and specificity of 98 percent. Then the NSA would be justified in spying if more than 65,300—think Portland, Maine or Lynchburg, Virginia—Americans were terrorists.

Don’t forget that the TSA is only at 40 percent. The TSA also has an easier job screening passengers and their bags. The NSA has a more difficult job with snatching electronic snippets out of the ether. If the NSA’s tests are merely as accurate as the TSA’s, the NSA would only be justified in spying if more than 4.7 million Americans—the population of South Carolina—were terrorists.

He has math and everything.  You have to posit an absurdly large number of terrorists for this program to have any chance at all of catching them.  The program does in fact seem to be effective in catching large Congressional appropriations, but that will be cold comfort to Senator Feinstein and her cohorts when all the Silicon Valley filthy lucre starts to dry up during campaign season.

The guys with the coins are mad enough to go to court.  This will not end well for Ft. Meade.