President Barack Obama’s administration is pushing two potentially controversial Internet policies in a secretive trade pact, with trade negotiators calling for other countries to adopt net neutrality provisions while rejecting policies requiring local storage of data in a secretive 50-country trade pact now being negotiated.

A leaked U.S. proposal from April would prohibit countries signing on to the Trade in Services Agreement [TISA] to reject policies requiring that data held by Internet companies and other service suppliers be held within a member country’s borders. A handful of nations have moved to require their own residents’ data to be stored within their own borders in response to recent revelations about widespread U.S. National Security Agency surveillance.

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