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.
