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NSA Internet Spying Sparks Race To Create Offshore Havens For Data Privacy
schwit1 writes "Some European leaders are renewing calls for a 'euro cloud,' in which consumer data could be shared within Europe but not outside the region. Brazil is fast-tracking a vote on a once-dormant bill that could require that data about Brazilians be stored on servers in the country. And India plans to ban government employees from using email services from Google and Yahoo Inc. It is too soon to tell if a major shift is under way. But the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimates that fallout from revelations about NSA activities could cost Silicon Valley up to $35 billion in annual revenue, much of it from lost overseas business. A survey conducted this summer by the Cloud Security Alliance, an industry group, found that 56% of non-U.S. members said security concerns made it less likely that they would use U.S.-based cloud services. Ten percent said they had canceled a contract. Even some companies that seek to profit from fears about U.S. snooping acknowledge that law-enforcement agencies in other countries want to catch up with Washington's capabilities. 'In the long run, there won't be any difference between what the U.S. or Germany or France or the U.K. is doing,' says Roberto Valerio, whose German cloud-storage company, CloudSafe GmbH, reports a 25% rise in business since the NSA revelations. 'At the end of the day, some agency will spy on you,' he says."
Before all this, people didn't even think about creating a real competitor for Google or Amazon. Now we can expect some real options for these services soon. This is good news for everyone, thank you USA!
Working for a Europe-based Dropbox competitor, we have seen a truly massive increase in interest and sales after the NSA revelations.
Countries like France and UK, yeah, absolutely. Germany... is slightly more touchy about issues pertaining to surveillance and the general topic of totalitarianism, for some reason.
Iceland overthrew its government when said government wouldn't jail bankers. If Iceland says they ain't going to spy on people because fuck that, I would lean toward cautiously trusting them.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
And China has been accused of it many, many times - they barely even bother to hide it. Every country does it, then acts outraged when all the others do too.