(Image: Kacper Pempel/Reuters)

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What’s the price of loss of trust? We will find out in 2014 as the after-effects of the revelations about the spying campaigns on the world’s internet and cellphone networks become apparent.

The financial costs are already mounting. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington DC think tank, reckons US firms could lose $35 billion in sales in the next two years because of fears over snooping by the US National Security Agency (NSA).


The revelations might also change how we use the internet in more fundamental ways. World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee has warned that a lack of faith in privacy could make people interact less freely with one another online.

But there may be some benefits, too. People are now more aware of what they do online. For example, use of DuckDuckGo, a search engine that promises not to collect a user’s personal information, soared in the weeks after the NSA’s activities were revealed. This personal data protection is likely to accelerate next year.

We might also see the first signs of internet fragmentation. Some nations, including Brazil and Germany, are considering reining in internet routing to within their own borders, although such moves would play into the hands of authoritarian states and cause delays for international traffic.

We might see the first signs of internet fragmentation

Other methods to beat the spooks could also hit the mainstream, including ways of masking traffic and even local internet networks that keep sensitive data off the public internet.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Hiding from spying eyes”