Internet technologists say that the global data network that was once a competitive advantage for the United States is now increasingly outside the control of American companies.
Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States.
The risk, Internet technologists say, is that upstarts like China and India are making larger investments in next-generation Internet technology that is likely to be crucial in determining the future of the network, with investment, innovation and profits going first to overseas companies.
"Surveillance is the business model of the Internet," as technologist Bruce Schneier has said, and the NSA and other state agencies piggyback on these private sector practices.
Carter waxed lyrical about the "garages and dorm rooms and home offices and research laboratories" of tech-sector giants and pledged to "preserve access to a free, open and secure internet" that technologists say the FBI will undermine by compelling Apple to write software that rolls back the company's user-security features.
To meet the booming demand, a functioning agency needs internet designers, technologists, data analysts and mobile specialists of all kinds to staff the work.
"The Net's going to go fumbling along until there's a massive intrusion," said Dave Farber, an Internet pioneer and chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission.
Steven M. Bellovin, Internet pioneer, FTC Chief Technologist, 2012-2013.
"These revelations demonstrate a fundamental attack on the way the Internet works," senior staff technologist Joseph Lorenzo Hall wrote in a statement.
But day by day he is a technologist (computers, Internet and all that good stuff) and a hobby filmmaker (good stuff too).
