Privacy Products See Surge in New Customers in Wake of NSA Revelations

Good for business

In early September, when Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg sat down for an interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, the topic soon turned to the recent revelations of National Security Agency spying.

"The government's comment was, "Oh, don't worry, basically we're not spying on any Americans,'" he said. "Oh, wonderful, that's … really going to inspire confidence in American Internet companies."

Indeed, surveys have found the unremitting surveillance scandal could take billion dollar bites out of businesses whose stock in trade is user information — which is to say, much of the online economy today.

But the events seem to be having the opposite effect on organizations promising to strengthen security and privacy protections. In fact, there's been a surge of funding, new customers and media attention for these sort of companies and projects.