When we think about what actually matters when it comes to institutions (public or private) one very important thing is trust.
The NSA has eroded much of the trust it once had. This reduces its effectiveness as an organization and puts all Americans and American companies at increased risk.
Those who committed the crimes revealed by Snowden should be brought to justice, the program dismantled, the hardware auctioned off, and the money returned to taxpayers.
One does not have to be a privacy zealot or an anarchist to believe that the NSA should act within the law.
> puts all Americans and American companies at increased risk.
Both yes and no.
No, because many startups are just looking for the shortest path to market and that means they absolutely will go for US cloud storage and computing if it best serves their initial business plans.
Yes, because there are many ethical businesses (albeit smaller) -- and also in light with the GDPR -- who have a clear business model that doesn't involve selling personally identifiable information. And they now would go an extra mile to ensure they don't use USA-hosted services. I know business owners who did this and I'd do it as well if I was one.
Post Snowden there were a lot of companies offering secure email hosting in Europe. Not sure if that really amounted to a big loss for the USA email hosting market though. Many people are too dependent on Gmail to ever replace it, for example.
The NSA has eroded much of the trust it once had. This reduces its effectiveness as an organization and puts all Americans and American companies at increased risk.
Those who committed the crimes revealed by Snowden should be brought to justice, the program dismantled, the hardware auctioned off, and the money returned to taxpayers.
One does not have to be a privacy zealot or an anarchist to believe that the NSA should act within the law.