US firms worry Edward Snowden is wrecking their business, but the Patriot Act was already doing that

[n2doc]

By Leo Mirani



Shortly after a meeting of an EU-sponsored program to push European cloud-computing capabilities in Estonia last month, a high-ranking EC official noted that the biggest losers from Edward Snowden’s revelation about US surveillance would be US businesses:

If European cloud customers cannot trust the United States government or their assurances, then maybe they won’t trust US cloud providers either. That is my guess. And if I am right then there are multi-billion euro consequences for American companies.

If I were an American cloud provider, I would be quite frustrated with my government right now.

American firms certainly are frustrated—so frustrated they have produced two reports in a span of two weeks, both arguing that the US government needs to fix this problem. The first (pdf) is from the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), an industry body. It released a survey of 500 of its members late last month, and found that more than half of non-US respondents were “less likely to use US-based cloud providers” and a tenth had “cancelled a project to use US-based cloud providers.” A third of American companies said they felt “the Snowden Incident” made it more difficult for their companies to conduct business outside the US.

The second (pdf) also comes from an industry body, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). It used CSA’s survey, which led it to “reasonably conclude that given current conditions US cloud service providers stand to lose somewhere between 10% and 20% of the foreign market in the next few years.” Combining that with various forecasts for the size of the cloud-computing industry in the next three years, ITIF estimated that the US cloud-computing industry will suffer between $21.5 billion and $35 billion in losses by 2016.

These numbers appear to be more of a back-of-the-envelope calculation than a rigorous analysis suited for national publications. For one thing, CSA’s survey came soon after the revelations, at a time when emotion was high. More importantly, ITIF doesn’t explain why its conclusion is reasonable, and assumes “current conditions” will continue. As the report itself admits, “The data are still thin—clearly this is a developing story and perceptions will likely evolve.”

more
http://qz.com/112943/us-firms-worry-edward-snowden-is-wrecking-their-business-but-the-patriot-acts-been-doing-that-for-years/

[bemildred]

1. They deserve every bit of the pain in the wallet they get from this.

The parties with the best motive and the best position to do something about this folly, and they stood by and cooperated rather than rock the boat.

[AppleBottom]

2. It's not Edward Snowden that's spying on everyone.

Talk about confused.

Is Shrub still president?

[KoKo]

3. And...who will be the Guardian of the Clouds....

I would think we should all be careful of this. Even small business who have gone to using "The Cloud" because they can't afford IT people to fix their servers.

Can't the Cloud be infiltrated for data that people assume is "super safe" just because it has such a pretty name. When Amazon is running a Cloud for CIA ...I think I'd be worried. But, it's not just Amazon running clouds.... Can the employees of the "Clouds" be trusted not to tap in? Just like Snowden did at NSA?