One note about all this: Did you notice how Snowden caveated the Dick pic question? When pressed he described how your gmail could go to a data farm in the UK even if you weren’t corresponding with someone overseas . The misdirect is the word “could” — Google would have to have a perfect storm of circuit failures, routing issues, and MPLS ring failures in the U.S. here to even want to think about routing your Gmail to a data farm in the UK when there are at least five domestic centers closer. Think about the economics of the situation - routing anything out of country puts it on circuits that are many multiples of cost higher than domestic ones. Nobody designs or engineers for any data to go out of country unless there is a real need for that data to go over-border. Indeed, as I’ve pointed out before routing voice calls out of country and then back in can get you big fines because even if it is inadvertent you are avoiding LEC access fees.