Silicon Valley ready to fight back against intelligence agencies

In any popularity contest between the nerds and the spies, the nerds will always win. That is the conclusion Silicon Valley has come to following an extraordinary public attack from one of the UK’s chief spymasters.

None of the leaders of the biggest tech companies was prepared to take Robert Hannigan, the new head of GCHQ, the UK’s electronic surveillance agency, on publicly. But the reaction of the chief executive of one prominent Silicon Valley group summed up the behind-the-scenes response: that to be publicly criticised by the spy chief was “great propaganda” for the tech industry. Given the ham-fisted way agencies such as Hannigan’s had acted in their attempted mass surveillance of the internet, this person added, there was little sympathy for his position. Before jumping to the conclusion that users will always back their favourite consumer internet brands over spy services, though, it is worth considering the risks that flow from public confrontations like this.