Aside from other pitfalls to which Cloud Computing is subject, it is interesting to note that potential foreign customers are hesitating to put their data and interests on American companies clouds, when they know that the data might be subject to access by the American government with no warrant whatsoever, and no notification to the customer that their information has been taken.
That Patriot Act, a gross misnomer and instance of tragic irony in naming a law if there ever was one, has been instrumental in the progressive destruction of the rule of law under the Constitution and Bill of Rights in this nation for the past 12 years.
I keep wondering just how much it will take for the America people to realize what is happening, or whether it is just to late to stem the tide that has eroded our civil liberties and protections against warrantless search and seizure to the point that those central tenants of our system, due process and habeas corpus, are simply dead, and not to be heeded by those in power in our nation.
By DAVID SALEH RAUF | 11/29/11 11:17 PM EST
Cloud computing is a gold mine for the U.S. tech industry, but American firms are encountering resistance from an unexpected enemy overseas: the PATRIOT Act.
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.
I have to admit that I am fully aware of the benefits to me, as someone who did an almost 30 years career in information technology, that having certain skills provides. Running my own web server, email server, development server, and domain controller and backup server storage machines pretty much provides my own cloud right here at home.
At this point, given the drift of affairs in our nation, I consider that a good investment in protecting my own data and machines, since, other than the business class Internet connection with a a major company, I am pretty much own ISP.
