Patriot Act Clouds Picture For Tech

[DamianTV]

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/12/02/1923207/patriot-act-clouds-picture-for-tech

"Politico has a piece on how the Patriot Act is interfering with U.S. firms trying to do business overseas in the area of cloud computing. Here's a quote: 'The Sept. 11-era law was supposed to help the intelligence community gather data on suspected terrorists. But competitors overseas are using it as a way to discourage foreign countries from signing on with U.S. cloud computing providers like Google and Microsoft: Put your data on a U.S.-based cloud, they warn, and you may just put it in the hands of the U.S. government.'"

Government causing problems for business by creating non business friendly laws as usual.

 

[VBRonPaulFan]

there are easy ways around this. like encrypting your data on the client side with a strong aes 256 encryption before transferring the data to the cloud. if you are hosting some sort of cloud based web service, of course that may not be possible. it would really only be secure on desktop based applications generally.

 

[DamianTV]

Personally, I think the entire idea of "cloud computing" is taking control over computers out of the hands of the people and putting into the hands of a small group of dominant companies. As time passes, many of these cloud companies will dry up leaving only a few very large companies, but what happens to your data in the meantime is that it is either lost or completely outside of your control. I dont think government is real happy about the fact that our computers at present can hold vast ammts of data that they do not have as much access to as they would like, and going to the cloud gives governments damn near unlimited access to your data, and there is not a damn thing that people would be able to do about it. Even with encryption, which is way way way way way beyond the scope of an average user. Ask anyone here if they even know how to implement a 256 bit php encryption using PHP, Im fairly certain I wont get a single response.

The "cloud" can burn in hell for all I care.

 

[Rael]

The "cloud" can burn in hell for all I care.

+1

I'm not interested in the "cloud". There are plenty of ways I can access my data on the go if need be without using it.

I do use Evernote, which I suppose you could argue is part of the "cloud". But then again, I'm not too terribly concerned about the security of my grocery list.

 

[madengr]

This will only hurt small businesses, or those than't can't afford lobbyists.

 

[DamianTV]

+1

I'm not interested in the "cloud". There are plenty of ways I can access my data on the go if need be without using it.

I do use Evernote, which I suppose you could argue is part of the "cloud". But then again, I'm not too terribly concerned about the security of my grocery list.

But advertisers would be tremendously concerned with your grocery list, amongst other things. When it comes down to it, the advertisers make deals with the grocers that damn near force you to give up your personal information to them. I got kicked out of Albertsons once because I politely but very firmly refused to accept their club cards.

Now, if they are willing to go to such lengths just for a grocery list, what could they do if they knew even more about you? Then again, maybe a better person to ask would be a Hollocaust Survivor what the price of Privacy truly costs.