Cloud computing is a gold mine for the U.S. tech industry, but American firms are encountering resistance from an unexpected enemy overseas: the PATRIOT Act.
The Sept. 11-era law was supposed to help the intelligence community gather data on suspected terrorists. But competitors overseas are using it as a way to discourage foreign countries from signing on with U.S. cloud computing providers like Google and Microsoft: Put your data on a U.S.-based cloud, they warn, and you may just put it in the hands of the U.S. government.
“The PATRIOT Act has come to be a kind of label for this set of concerns,” Ambassador Philip Verveer, U.S. coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy at the State Department, told POLITICO. “We think, to some extent, it’s taking advantage of a misperception, and we’d like to clear up that misperception.”
Reacting to concerns raised by some of the country’s most influential tech firms, the Obama administration is engaging in diplomatic talks around the world to put to rest fears in foreign capitals about the controversial surveillance law’s power to give the U.S. government access to international data stored by American companies.
The PATRIOT Act, which had key provisions extended by President Barack Obama in May, has become a flash point in sales of cloud computing services to governments in parts of Europe, Asia and elsewhere around the globe because of fears that under the law, providers can be compelled to hand over data to U.S. authorities.
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The Sept. 11-era law was supposed to help the intelligence community gather data on suspected terrorists. But competitors overseas are using it as a way to discourage foreign countries from signing on with U.S. cloud computing providers like Google and Microsoft: Put your data on a U.S.-based cloud, they warn, and you may just put it in the hands of the U.S. government.
“The PATRIOT Act has come to be a kind of label for this set of concerns,” Ambassador Philip Verveer, U.S. coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy at the State Department, told POLITICO. “We think, to some extent, it’s taking advantage of a misperception, and we’d like to clear up that misperception.”
Reacting to concerns raised by some of the country’s most influential tech firms, the Obama administration is engaging in diplomatic talks around the world to put to rest fears in foreign capitals about the controversial surveillance law’s power to give the U.S. government access to international data stored by American companies.
The PATRIOT Act, which had key provisions extended by President Barack Obama in May, has become a flash point in sales of cloud computing services to governments in parts of Europe, Asia and elsewhere around the globe because of fears that under the law, providers can be compelled to hand over data to U.S. authorities.
More
