The shockwaves generated by Edward Snowden's revelations of the    close collaboration between US tech giants such as Microsoft    and Apple and the NSA are still reverberating through the    industry. Those disclosures, together with related ones such as    the involvement of the NSA in     industrial espionage, as well as the     asymmetric nature of US law when it comes to gathering data    from foreign individuals, present something of an open goal    for non-US technology companies - or so one might have thought.  
    On the face of it, then, it is surprising that non-US    technology firms and others that can distance themselves from    the US law are not proclaiming this fact more loudly. After    all, there must be a considerable number of organisations that    would dearly love to locate their data as far away from the    attentions of the NSAas possible.  
    Perhaps the lack of fanfare is merely a reflection of the    relative sizes of the marketing budgets available to the US    tech giants and local contenders; or perhaps the shock of    Snowden has yet to translate itself into meaningful action,    making such messaging premature.  
    Can of worms?  
    Or maybe the alternatives to the US cloud giants are simply    wary of making bold promises that may later come back to bite    them. Analyst Clive Longbottom of Quocirca certainly believes    that organisations need to be very careful about seeking to    differentiate themselves from others on the basis of the leaks.  
    "In my view, trying to market off the back of Snowden would be    opening a can of worms," Longbottom said. "To every possibly    positive marketing message there will be a few sensible    contradictions. 'Hey, we have no back doors on our system!' -    bet you use equipment at the hardware level from vendors who    Snowden implicated in such backdoors. 'Hey, we're open source,    so it's all OK!' Sure - the NSA has never infiltrated any open    source group and built in back doors through such means."  
    Despite the possible "worms", however, there are some companies    thatare using the revelations to set themselves    apart. One is security firm F-Secure, which is actively    involved in promoting privacy via collaboration with pressure    groups such asDon't Spy on Us and the Open Rights Group and which uses its    very Finnish-ness as an asset.  
    "Finnish culture is very much about privacy. Freedom of speech    is written into their constitution so the technology is built    with the idea that people are anonymous and data is protected,"    said Allen Scott, F-Secure's managing director for UK and    Ireland.  
    Scott acknowledged the dangers of over-promising on the issue,    saying that any organisation promoting itself as ethical will    become a target for attackers trying to prove it wrong.  
    "This is the sort of thing that has to be built into your    company at an R&D level and a board level. If you're going    to say that you're 100 per cent anything you're already open to    ridicule. If you say the safest company in the world people try    to hack you."  
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The privacy differential - why don't more non-US and open source firms use the NSA as marketing collateral?