For those of you that have been following this battle – no, war – regarding net neutrality, well, we(those who care about our privacy and find the idea of someone spying on us creepy)are on the brink of losing. The U.S Government (of course it’s always the guys in expensive suits and fake smiles) is poised to announce a draft bill that imposes civil fines on tech companies that refuse to create “back-doors” into their devices. You might say, a fine is not too much of a price to pay(pun intended) for your customers’ privacy, but, you’d be wrong, it is outrageous. Considering the amount they might impose as this “fine” even a multi-billion dollar company could go bankrupt in a matter of months. I am no conspiracy theorist but if what Edward Snowden said is anything to go by, back when Yahoo was hesitant in joining the PRISM program, they faced the risk of paying fines of about $250,000 per DAY! and that fee was to double every month. Let’s do a little math here, making the following assumptions:
- Taking Alphabet as a case study
- There are 30 days in a month
- The fine is still pegged at $250,000 – which is very unlikely
As at February 2016, Alphabet was worth $551 billion.
$250,000 per day gives roughly $7.5 million in the first month, $15 million in the second month, $30 million in the second month and so on. If my math is correct, Alphabet would be bankrupt in about a year and a half or so. I don’t think any company would be willing to go bankrupt on account of me or you. This might lead to things like Premium Users who are not to be spied on, more like diplomats you see. But this would just make these guys look very guilty. Yes, like the diplomats look with their diplomatic bags, ugh! I’ll let you read up on the details here. God help us all, folks.
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