Cloud Computing May Draw Government Action

snydeq brings us this excerpt from InfoWorld: "Cloud computing will soon become an area of hot debate in Washington, as the increasing popularity of cloud-based services is putting pressure on policy makers to answer tough questions on the privacy and security of data in the cloud. For example: Who owns the data that consumers store on the network? Should law enforcement agencies have easier access to personal information in the cloud than data on a personal computer? Do government procurement regulations need to change to allow agencies to embrace cloud computing? So far, US courts have generally ruled that private data stored in the cloud doesn't enjoy the same level of protection from law enforcement searches that data stored on a personal computer does, said Ari Schwartz, COO of the Center for Democracy and Technology. 'I do think government has an almost infinite ability to screw up things when they can't see the future,' former Bill Clinton tech policy adviser Mike Nelson added. 'We have to have leadership that believes in empowering users and empowering citizens.'"

Re:Physical storage vs. virtual storage?

[runlevelfour]

Generally speaking the government doesn't want you having any privacy whatsoever so their automatic assumption is that you don't have rights unless the courts force them to acknowledge them. I don't think that the EFF and the ACLU are going to sit idle on this but lately the government (Dem controlled mind all you Obama-will-fix-everything believers) has been passing very repressive legislature. I fully expect there to be a lot more legislature in the pipes on this in the near future. None of it in our (working class) favor, of course.

You thought you owned it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Shouldn't copyright laws apply?"

You didn't get the memo, did you? People for the Liberation Of Other Peoples Ideas have finally succeeded and copyright has been abolished. You can now do whatever you want...unfortunately like all good ideas there's a downside. You can no longer claim copyright on ANYTHING you create.

Re:Physical storage vs. virtual storage?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Yeah, well I am mostly concerned with my own corner of the world. More specifically, I just want to short the stupid need/want argument, since it's been redundant longer than I've been alive. Really, read Maslow's hierarchy and tell me if there's anything to add to it. Also note that the people in Africa are so very poor largely because the people in power are crooks and thugs who derive advantage from their misery. Nothing I can really do, and totally irrelevant to the argument.

Re:Physical storage vs. virtual storage?

[AnyoneEB]

There is the pretty clear difference in that your password is not a "lock" on your data. It is simply how you let the service know it is okay to send your data over the internet and let you edit it. An actual lock for "cloud" services would be for the data to be encrypted and only decrypted client-side.

Perhaps somehow it could be decrypted by Javascript with a passphrase entered client-side. There are lots of problems with that approach the main two that occur to me are (1) the service probably wants to serve ads based off your data, which it cannot do if it only has encrypted copies and (2) there is no way for the user to tell the difference between what I described and the current process of logging into Google Docs.

On the other hand, it might work okay for using S3 as file server like another poster mentioned. Unfortunately, if the data is encrypted, then it has to be decrypted on the computer doing the calculations. I suppose an encrypted index could be stored on the S3 file server, but this seems like it is getting a bit ridiculous.