US tech firms may lose $35 bn as backlash against NSA mounts abroad

Global anger over the NSA's internet surveillance is adversely affecting sales of American technology companies and hurting US efforts to promote internet freedom.

Disclosures of spying abroad might cost US companies a whopping $35 billion in lost revenue through 2016 as doubts about the security of information on their systems lingers according to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a Washington- based policy research group, which had on its board representatives of companies such as IBM and Intel.

Bloomberg Businessweek quoted Rebecca MacKinnon, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a Washington policy group, as saying, the potential fallout was pretty huge given the extent of the dependence of the economy on the information economy for its growth.

She added, it was increasingly where the US advantage lay.

There could be adverse fallout from any setback to the US efforts to maintain an open internet particularly for companies such as Apple Inc and Google Inc that benefited from global networks with minimal national restrictions.