Switzerland Wants to Offer the World a Spy-Proof Cloud

It's fitting that Switzerland, famous for its neutral politics and furtive foreign bank accounts, would set out to be the internet's privacy haven. Have a Swiss account to keep your finances discreet? Why not use Swiss cloud services to shield your business secrets from the US government's data spies?

The European country's state-owned telecom, Swisscom, may offer a "Swiss Cloud" to international companies looking for a secure and private way to conduct their online business affairs, Reuters reported yesterday.

It's a savvy move amid a global backlash over the NSA's mass surveillance operations. Companies are increasingly transitioning to cloud services, but could be nervous about exposing information to major US technology companies, given the recent news that intelligence agencies are siphoning torrents of data from Google and Yahoo's cloud networks.

A Swisscom executive told Reuters that offering Swiss Cloud abroad has nothing to do with the NSA fallout—it's sticking to the business pitch. But the timing is clearly ripe to monetize both privacy against surveillance and security against hackers. Not to mention it behooves Switzerland to protect its $2 trillion financial industry from being targeted by foreign snoops.

Switzerland has strict privacy laws. Though the telecom would still be required to hand over information when requested by law enforcement, it claims there would be no backdoor data collection and monitoring. This promise comes after the Washington Post's recent report that the the NSA and UK spy agency GCHQ are siphoning data from internet links outside the US, where privacy regulations are looser.

Swisscom has offered secure cloud services for three years, mostly to Swiss banks. It's now considering marketing its "Swissness," as the telecom's website calls it, to foreign companies, too. “We guarantee data protection and legal security in compliance with Swiss law," the website states. "Access to personal and business-critical data is protected at all times, even from abroad.”

The Swiss Cloud is just the latest sign of the potential balkanization of the internet in the wake of a string of leaks revealing the extent of US spying. German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom is pushing to keep all internet traffic local to Germany; Brazil is working to build a closed-loop internet that’s outside of America’s reach; and a group of concerned nations are urging the UN to take on a greater role in controlling the web.

But the mechanics of severing cyber-ties with the US are tricky. There's no guaranteeing protection for data once it crosses national borders, and there’s no easy way to control the route that information takes as it travels through the World Wide Web.

Swisscom admitted to Reuters that it's difficult to guarantee the security of international communications. Still, the telecom's goal is to have 70 percent of the Switzerland's IT infrastructure in the protected cloud by 2016.