The U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) allows law enforcement agencies easier access to information stored in the cloud than to information stored on a hard drive or in a file cabinet, noted Representatives Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, and Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat.

Some countries have "legitimate concerns, honestly, about the lack of standards in American law," Lofgren said. "We have a lot of work to in this area."

In addition to marketing campaigns, several nations have passed or are considering laws that require their residents' data to be stored on servers within the country, said Daniel Castro, senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a tech-focused think tank. Many countries are using privacy and security concerns to pass domestic storage laws, he said.

"Some countries are using unfair policies to intentionally disadvantage foreign competitors and grow their domestic cloud computing industry," Castro said. "The rise of cloud is an emerging threat to global trade and information technology."

Greece, China, Russia and Venezuela are among the countries that have passed data localization requirements, Castro said. He called on the U.S. government to push against such laws.