Fourth Amendment? Meh. Privacy? Yawn. Corporate profits? PANIC!
Report: NSA spying deals billion dollar knockout to US cloud prospects
Fourth Amendment? Meh. Privacy? Yawn. Corporate profits? PANIC!
Updated Sustained violations of civil liberties at home and abroad? Yawn. The manifestation of Orwell's nightmares? Snooze. The potential loss of scads and scads of money? Egad, we should really do something about this!
That's the gist of a report published on Monday assessing the likely commercial fallout for the US cloud computing industry because of the NSA data-slurping revelations.
Spying by the NSA could cost the US cloud computing industry between $22bn and $35bn over the next three years, according to Washington think tank, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), whose website happens to be down this Tuesday morning.
In a report entitled "How Much Will PRISM Cost the US Cloud Computing Industry?" ITIF analyst Daniel Castro predicts that "the disclosures of the NSA's electronic surveillance may fundamentally alter the market dynamics" for US cloud companies in Europe and elsewhere.
Non-US cloud companies have been able to sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about US clouds due to the data-slurping provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act, but the NSA revelations now give these cloud naysayers more ammunition than ever before.
Castro reckons US companies could lose out between 10 and 20 per cent of the foreign cloud market to European or Asian competitors by 2016.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/06/prism_revenue_wobble_worries/