NEWS that Microsoft will allow foreign customers to have their personal data stored on servers outside America raised more than a few eyebrows at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. “People should have the ability to know whether their data are being subjected to the laws and access of governments in some other country and should have the ability to make an informed choice of where their data resides,” the Financial Timesquoted Brad Smith, the firm's general counsel.
Internet experts at the WEF saw this as another sign that the big consequence of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks will be that countries and companies will erect borders of sorts in cyberspace. But they also questioned whether Microsoft can make such a promise. “If the NSA wants to get its hands on something, it will succeed—if only because other intelligence agencies gladly do the job,” said one who prefers not to be named.
But it is a legal issue that may keep Microsoft from being able to offer such a service. Experts at rival firms argue that it doesn’t matter where the data are kept: as an American company Microsoft will—if asked by American authorities—have to hand over information on their servers regardless of its location. “If you have a US server in another country it is still subject to FISA,” said Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, referring to America’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In order to get around that, he added, one would have to transfer the servers to another company.
Still, most experts in Davos expect the internet, after the NSA leaks, to become more balkanised—and its governance to change, giving governments more control. “This will come, the question is how far it will go,” says Alex “Sandy” Pentland of MIT’s Media Lab, who was in Davos to present his new book “Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread”. A conference in April will give an idea of how high the virtual borders will become: that is when the ICANN, the organisation that oversees the internet’s address system, will hold talks in São Paulo to discuss the network’s future governance.