The economic backlash of the NSA privacy scandal has long been unclear. There have been reports cited on this magazine suggesting billions of dollars of potential losses and notable hits to customer psyche and confidence. Robert Jenkins, the CTO of a Swiss cloud service, has commented on a gradual increase in customers since the fiasco began.

“It has not been a profound surge, but there is definitely a measureable impact,” he says. “We’ve definitely seen cases where people are turning to us because of this.”

As mentioned in a previous post, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation has estimated that the US will suffer a net loss of $35 billion by 2016 — not a massive dent on the cloud computing industry (which is set to be the fastest growing industry of the next few years), but certainly one that will have an economic impact. Alexander Ljungberg, cofounder of WireLoad, is one of many such tech entrepreneurs and founers moving their service to the eastern shores.

“Privacy laws in Switzerland are internationally known to be very good, so we’re just more comfortable knowing that it’s less likely there will be some kind of prying by the government,” he says.

via itworld