In the British Columbia town of Kamloops, arid as a desert with cool summer nights, Telus Corp. (T) only has to turn on the air conditioning about 40 hours a year to keep its computer servers from overheating. The chilly temperatures are part of Canadian companies’ sales pitch to businesses looking for places to store their growing troves of digital information as cheaply as possible. They also boast of inexpensive hydroelectric power and low seismic activity. And now they’re touting what they say is a new advantage: less snooping. Revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency has spied on data networks run by American companies have given Canadian data-center operators an opportunity. They’re telling customers from Europe and Asia that laws north of the border are more protective of privacy. Sales of storage services in Canada are growing 20 percent a year at Telus and Rogers Communications Inc. (RCI/B) U.S.-based technology companies, meanwhile, complain that the NSA scandal has hurt their business.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-09/nsa-spying-sends-data-clients-north-of-the-border.html
