Snowden NSA Revelations Cost US Firms $30B
A new report is suggesting that documents and information leaked by Edward Snowden may have cost cloud providers in the USA nearly $30B. The exact figures are unknown but EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding says, “The surveillance revelations will cost the US cloud computing industry USD 22 to 35 billion in lost revenues over the next three years.” The source for the data quoted by Reding was originally formulated by a Washington D.C. based think tank called Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
This presents a huge problem for US companies trying to gain European market share. When you consider the revelations provided by Mr. Snowden, it can be easy to see why international companies are hesitant to use trusted name brand providers such as Google and Yahoo. In fact, revelations provided by Mr. Snowden showed that the USA’s National Security Administration routinely accesses Google and Yahoo datacenters using stealth methods. While engineers at Google were appalled, they have publically said they will work to close any method of entry the NSA may have into their datacenters.
The staggering losses for the US cloud market are a direct result of the Snowden leaks. This presents another problem. Sources say that the Snowden leaks have only scratched the surface. In fact, a report published in December of 2013 shows that only 1% of his leaks have been published. This could point to an oncoming tidal wave of information that could totally overwhelm the US cloud market. Since we do not know what the remaining 99% says, it is difficult to ascertain what the ramifications could possibly be. With this in mind, keep an eye on cloud stocks as more information begins to come out. Since many of these documents contain highly sensitive information, it is possible that none of these documents get released and that nothing else happens.
