Head lawyer at Redmond suggests the move, to allay NSA snooping fears.



From Hexus:

Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith has said that Microsoft will allow foreign customers to make use of its cloud servers outside the US - in a response the US government data snooping scandal. The move has been deemed necessary by Microsoft "although many tech companies were opposed to the idea," reports the FT. The reasoning is that leaks have shown the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been sifting through data of foreign citizens and not just US residents. This is something even close US allies aren't happy about.

"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," Brad Smith told the FT. This move would make Microsoft the first major company to explicitly offer non-US storage. Smith gave an example of how the system would work saying that European users would be able to choose to utilise Microsoft's Irish data centres for storage.

  Microsoft to offer non-US storage for non-US users?