Stefan Mileschin

US mass internet spying is killing off its chances to be seen as a world player on the cloud internet scene.

Cloud based systems are tipped to be the next big thing in business, but the founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales has warned that the US has disqualified itself before the race is run.

He told the Economic Times that the revelations of US mass spying is going to have a big impact on the cloud computing industry as people are afraid to put data in the US.

Wales said that BMW is not going to be at all happy about putting its data into US cloud companies where the can be sniffed out by US spooks and could find their way under the bonnet of competitors.

But the spying allegations will also harm operations like Wikipedia, Wales warned. It will be difficult to convince oppressive regimes to respect basic freedoms and privacy as Wikipedia seeks to limit censorship of its content.

The allegations of spying give the Chinese every excuse to be as bad as they have been. He said that the disclosures had been really embarrassing. After all the US could not lecture China about press freedoms and censorship while it was monitoring the Internet.

http://news.techeye.net/business/us-...cloud-industry