Data is increasingly flowing around the United States












Interception of foreign Internet communications is shifting Canadian and European traffic away from the United States. Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States is monitored by American intelligence agencies.
Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S. There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches. A climate of deteriorating respect for privacy and data protection has been created by US security measures to fight terrorism. This leads to odd routing arrangements, referred to as tromboning, in which traffic between two US-owned sites will flow through other nations.
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China and India are making larger investments in next-generation Internet technology that is likely to be crucial in determining the future of the network. The Japanese “are on a rampage to build out across India and China. They won’t have to route through the U.S.”

“Whether it’s a good or a bad thing depends on where you stand,” said Vint Cerf, a computer scientist who is Google’s Internet evangelist and who, with Robert Kahn, devised the original Internet routing protocols in the early 1970s. “Suppose the Internet was entirely confined to the U.S., which it once was? That wasn’t helpful.”here here