Tech companies are hopefully going to follow the example

Jan 23, 2014 08:15 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is taking the step that other tech companies seem reluctant to – the company has decided to move data belonging to foreign customers on servers outside of the United States if they so desire, following the NSA scandal.

Brad Smith, general counsel of Microsoft, says that this action is necessary considering the information revealed by Edward Snowden’s leaked files regarding the surveillance practices of the NSA.

“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,” Smith told Financial Times.

Furthermore, customers would have the chance to choose from a variety of existing Microsoft data centers across the world.

This is a particularly important step from a company as big as Microsoft, especially given the current international context. Citizens from all over the world have expressed their discontent with the United States’ lack of respect towards their right to privacy, international committees have been organized to analyze the damage on the Internet and world leaders have criticized the US for spying on them, to name just a few.

At the same time, the White House came up with a set of NSA reforms that the president presented last week. The reforms, however, aren’t really going to change much.

Hopefully, Microsoft’s example will be followed by other big companies, including Google which has criticized the United States government for letting the NSA get away with spying on everyone.

The company has also been calling for more transparency for many months, asking the government to allow it to include in its report the exact number of government data requests that it receives.

Of course, Google isn’t the only one who could and should follow Microsoft’s example, but also other major companies, such as Facebook.