The overwhelming majority of the world’s internet traffic is routed through the United States. The world’s most important ’emerging markets’ Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are no exception when it comes to relying on the U.S. to route their data flows. That will change in the future as Brazil has taken significant steps to try to free itself of network dependence on the United States in an attempt to secure it’s citizens data from the prying eyes of the NSA.
To understand the United States’ dominance in international data flows consider the following two maps. The first map shows most of the built or planned undersea telecommunications cables. Of the two cables connecting Brazil to Africa or Europe one is built and one is planned. The result is there are currently zero underwater cables directly connecting South America to Africa and Asia.
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This second map tells more or less the same story. Instead of looking at cables, it looks at the volume of traffic being transmitted per second. Unsurprisingly, most data flows through, to or from the U.S.
In the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA spying, Brazil’s President Delma Rousseff was one of the most outspoken international leaders. She said the NSA’s “illegal practice of intercepting the communications and data of citizens, companies and members of the Brazilian government constitute a serious act against national sovereignty and individual rights, and [are] incompatible with the democratic coexistence of friendly countries.”
Brazil has initiated a number of projects over the last five years to free itself of U.S. dependence. Since Snowden’s revelations some of those projects have been cloaked in the language of Brazilian national security. However, it’s clear some of Brazil’s efforts, in particular the much publicized Russia to Brazil via South Africa cable seen below, predated Snowden. Other efforts, in particular a law requiring Facebook and Google to store Brazilian user data on servers in Brazil, are more clearly a reaction, effective or not, to Snowden.
I tend to fall in the fatalistic camp of believing Brazil’s efforts are for naught–at least from a data security point of view. The United States has a long history of tapping deep sea cables and in order to believe the U.S. won’t be directly intercepting data from the cable you’d have to believe no Americans or allied states (Canada, the UK, Australia or New Zealand) work on building or maintaining the cable. You also have to believe no American technology is used or that none of the seven states–including British Commonwealth country Mauritius–will be convinced to allow the U.S. onto the cable as AT&T did in San Francisco.
the Foreign Office 