ExtraTorrent-US Spying Harms Its Cloud

[Atreides]

Surprisingly enough, US mass online spying is killing off its chances to become a world player on the cloud Internet scene. Indeed, cloud based systems are considered to be the next big thing in business, but Jimmy Wales, known as the founder of Wikipedia, has warned that the United States has already disqualified itself in this race.

Jimmy Wales claimed that the revelations of mass spying of the United States will have a big impact on the cloud computing industry, because people don’t want to put data in the United States now. He said that, for example, BMW won’t be happy about putting its information into American cloud companies where it can be sniffed out by US spooks, so the company can find its way under the bonnet of competitors.

Jimmy Wales also admitted that the spying allegations will also harm operations like Wikipedia. The matter is that it will be very difficult to convince oppressive regimes to respect basic freedoms and privacy with Wikipedia seeking to limit censorship of its material.

Finally, the allegations of US spying give the Chinese every excuse to be as bad as they have been. Wales pointed out that the disclosures had been embarrassing. It turned out that the United States simply couldn’t lecture China about press freedoms and censorship while it was monitoring the worldwide web.

Thus far, China and countries in the Middle East have been most active in filtering Wikipedia pages in their attempt to restrict access to certain content, according to Jimmy Wales. Now all these countries can say that they need to do that for the same reasons that the United States need to monitor everyone’s emails.