Recent revelations that the US National Security Administration's surveillance practices are far more wide-reaching than previously thought are already having a material impact on the IT services industry in the US.

 

About 25% of UK and Canadian IT decision makers recently surveyed by the Canadian data center services company Peer 1 are planning to move their company data outside of the US as a result of the scandal, ignited by the leaks of classified NSA documents by the agency's former contractor Edward Snowden.

 

Peer 1 surveyed 300 businesses about storing data in the US and about the effects of the Snowden revelations on their decision making.

 

While a quarter of all respondents reported plans to move data, one in every three of the Canadian respondents said they were going to do so.

 

“Despite this trend, the US remains the most popular place for Canadian and UK companies to host data outside of their home countries,” Robert Miggins, senior VP of business development at Peer 1, wrote in a blog post summarizing the results of the study.

 

As many as one-third of the people surveyed said the revelations that the NSA was collecting phone-call data in countries allied with the US would impact their hosting decisions.

 

The NSA scandal has led many in IT to realize just how little they know about data security laws where their data was stored. Six in 10 respondents to Peer 1's survey said they did not know as much as they thought they should know about these laws, and four in 10 said they were confused by privacy and security laws.

 

Miggins' advice to hosting decision makers was to get informed about location of their data and what level of surveillance they were under. A hosting provider should be “willing and able” to provide this information, he wrote.

 

“This isn’t just on the front page of the news – it’s changing the way people make decisions,” he added. “That should be incorporated into service providers’ strategies going into 2014.”

 

Miggins assured readers that Peer 1 did not partake in any “voluntary compliance” with law enforcement or cooperation with authorities without appropriate warrants, subpoenas or orders.

 

Another key finding of the survey was that the majority of companies value security more than low latency. Nearly 80% of respondents said they would rather host company data in a facility that is highly secure but where they may incur latency rather than hosting in a guaranteed-ultra-low-latency facility where security is compromised.

 

This finding means that latency alone will not stop most companies from moving data overseas if it means the data will be out of US government's reach.