Google Pushes Back Against Data Localization

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Richard Salgado, Google’s director of law enforcement and information security, before testifying in front of a congressional panel in November.Credit Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

The big tech companies have put forth a united front when it comes to pushing back against the government after revelations of mass surveillance. But their cooperation goes only so far.

Microsoft this week suggested that it would deepen its existing efforts to allow customers to store their data near them and outside the United States. Google, for its part, has been fighting this notion of so-called data localization.

“If data localization and other efforts are successful, then what we will face is the effective Balkanization of the Internet and the creation of a ‘splinternet’ broken up into smaller national and regional pieces, with barriers around each of the splintered Internets to replace the global Internet we know today,” Richard Salgado, Google’s director of law enforcement and information security,  told a congressional panel in November.

Data crisscrosses the globe among data centers, and companies often store redundant copies of data in different places in case of natural disaster or technical failure. In most cases, companies cannot even pinpoint precisely where certain data is located.

At the same time, the United States government is tapping the fiber-optic network that connects data centers worldwide, according to leaked documents. So even if data is stored outside the United States, it could be intercepted during its travels.

Still, Microsoft and other tech companies are trying to prevent foreign customers from switching to services outside the United States. In the next three years, the cloud computing industry could lose $180 billion, 25 percent of its revenue, because of such defections, according to Forrester, a  research company.

Yet even though Google faces these same risks and requests from foreign customers, its policy position is for surveillance reform instead of data localization, according to a person briefed on Google’s policy who would speak only anonymously.

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While Mr. Salgado testified before a congressional panel, a woman in the audience protested Google's data practices.Credit Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

Though Google at one time tried to offer customers the ability to store their data in one location in response to requests, it does not offer that feature now because it determined it was illogical, the person said. Google decided data is more secure if it is stored in multiple locations and that storing it in one location slows Google services and makes accessing the data less convenient for customers, the person said.

Mr. Salgado said a proposed law in Brazil that would require all data of Brazilian citizens and companies to be stored in the country would be so difficult to comply with that Google “could be barred from doing business in one of the world’s most significant markets.”