A few recent legal developments affecting U.S. online privacy have rightfully troubled privacy advocates and civil libertarians on American soil. In addition to the Patriot Act’s relaxed regulation of law enforcement’s access to private data, recent court rulings have made it clear that U.S. authorities can secretly request data from tech companies without the user ever knowing.
If this seems objectionable from the standpoint of U.S. citizens, imagine how it looks to outsiders who are storing their data there. Some European companies who do business with U.S. technology companies are concerned enough to start looking elsewhere for infrastructure.
Cloudnines and City Network are two Swedish firms that are trying to make the most of European discomfort with the state of online data privacy in the U.S. They’re collaborating to build a database-as-service solution that is hosted on servers in Sweden, far from the prying eyes of U.S. law enforcement.
The new service allows companies to easily deploy and manage database instances in the cloud while still delivering products to consumers in such a way that complies with EU data protection laws.
A recent survey indicated that 70% of Europeans have concerns about their online data and how well companies secure it. A statement issued by two European politicians said that companies wishing to do business with consumers in Europe should abide by local data privacy laws, including social networks.
Cloudnines and City Network are pushing the privacy angle when marketing their services, as well as the notion that hosting data nearby (as opposed to across the pond) will improve latency and performance.
Considering growing concern over U.S. privacy developments, some of which are quite reasonable, we can realistically expect to see other firms in Europe and elsewhere follow suite with this type of branding effort.
