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Patriot Act Clouds Picture For Tech

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-data-is-safe-except-from-us dept.

Harperdog writes "Politico has a piece on how the Patriot Act is interfering with U.S. firms trying to do business overseas in the area of cloud computing. Here's a quote: 'The Sept. 11-era law was supposed to help the intelligence community gather data on suspected terrorists. But competitors overseas are using it as a way to discourage foreign countries from signing on with U.S. cloud computing providers like Google and Microsoft: Put your data on a U.S.-based cloud, they warn, and you may just put it in the hands of the U.S. government.'"

4 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Probably, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...you put it anywhere on the "cloud", and it's one mis-step away from being everywhere.

  2. Yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Doesn't matter if you comply with EU data protection rules, we still don't trust you.

  3. Goes both ways by Pozican · · Score: 5, Insightful

    American companies are scared their data might land in china and copied. This is only news in that the US is turning into the same crazy police state that we've thought was limited to china and north korea.

  4. Who can blame them? by Calibax · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Four thoughts:

    They may well be right in thinking their data will be more accessible to the US government.

    If I were an overseas competitor, I'd certainly use this as a reason to not to use a US provider. In a heartbeat.

    The law of unintended consequences bites the US yet again.

    This wouldn't be an issue if the US government hadn't acted the way it has over the last 10 years. The US government has so little trust overseas that people have no trouble thinking the worst of it. Karma is a bitch.