Stefan Mileschin

US politicians are expected to retreat from their obsession with spying on citizens after it was revealed that the biggest losers were actually corporations.

Since the so-called Land of the Fee overthrew its lawful king in a French backed terrorist coup, most of the country's major decisions have been made to prop up businesses and corporate culture.

Snooping on citizens is more of a knee jerk reaction against terrorism which was, in itself, a smoke screen for poor economic performance by the last two presidents, writes Nick Farrell under a pseudonym.

Now it seems that the snooping is getting in the way of the US's number one priority of protecting big business from real life.

It turns out that the NSA surveillance programmes are very damaging for the American technology industry.

A report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said that companies that provide cloud computing services stand to lose as much as $35 billion over the next three years unless Congress takes action to alleviate the fears of American people that they are being snooped on.

Cloud computing and storage companies are being seen as the saviour for business and the economy. The industry is growing fast and is expected to be a $207 billion business by 2016.

But, to the NSA, putting the material on the cloud is a bit like shoving all the personal information in one place where it can be easily collected. While that makes life easier for the spooks, it makes companies less likely to go with cloud stuff.

Big Business is unhappy with the idea of being spied on as much as your average Jill or man Jack.

At the moment it is the US companies that dominate the international cloud computing market. Normally that would mean that piles of foreign cash would be rolling into the US from foreign parts.

However, Daniel Castro of ITIF, is now warning that foreign companies are not trusting American cloud computer companies and he thinks that US cloud companies will lose anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent of the market to international rivals.

This will represent a loss of $22 billion to $35 billion.

Already 10 percent of international companies surveyed have already cancelled a project that used a cloud computing service based in the US and 56 percent of companies surveyed are "less likely" to use a US based cloud computing service.

It also seems that 36 percent of US companies surveyed said they have found it "more difficult" to do business outside of the country because of NSA spying.

When you factor all that in, Big Biz firms are almost certain to remind their sock puppets that this spying lark is going to have to stop. It does not matter if occasionally someone blows something up in the name of their terror campaign, so long as US business is not harmed.

http://news.techeye.net/security/nsa...ness-big-money