This week there were two stories that can’t make the NSA happy. In the first, Rick Falkvinge reports that Brazil, upset over NSA spying, ditched their plans to buy Boeing jets and went with Gripen instead. This despite the fact that the JAS 39 Gripen-NG jet is still a prototype and not yet in production. Gripen is a division of the Swedish company SAAB. The loss of the Brazilian contract will cost Boeing and America 4 billion dollars.
The second story concerns the meeting between President Obama and several tech leaders. Although the official purpose of the meeting was to discuss ways to improve healthcare.gov, the tech executives viewed it as an opportunity to express their dismay about NSA spying and the blowback that American tech companies are experiencing as a result. During the meeting, one of those executives, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, pressed Obama to grant Edward Snowden a pardon. The NSA, of course, considers Snowden the ultimate traitor deserving of the harshest of penalties.
Obama would not, of course, commit to a pardon but it is clear that more and more Americans—and not just us nerds—are coming to see Snowden as a hero deserving of a pardon and more. That’s a fact that’s got to give the NSA heartburn.