Clouds!

[Roland Perry]

In article 
<AANLkTi=sEbaMuGPwHWuHrGNd818+6Hozvtu62AFoTmmd at mail.gmail.com>, Michael 
Simpson <mikie.simpson at gmail.com> writes
> The point of this mail though is to bring to your attention the
>recent revelation by Jon Honeyball in this month's "PC Pro" after he
>managed to corner Bob Muglia - president of MSFT's server and tools
>business and asked him about the sanctity of data stored in their EU
>cloud. Jon was told that if the dept of homeland security (or
>presumably any other agency that really wants to) asks for any data
>held by MSFT anywhere then it will be transferred to the US datacentre
>and handed over "no ifs, no buts."

Cloud computing is the new growth area for regulators interested in data 
privacy and cross-border issues. All the major institutions are looking 
at it - EU, Council of Europe, OECD and so on. It's a problem because 
the (ostensibly simpler) jurisdictional issues of non-cloud computing 
haven't really been sorted out yet.

But the good news is that (at a senior level anyway) the major suppliers 
understand the problem and are happy to advise potential customers that 
it's not the solution for them, if certain essential (to their 
application) safeguards, like knowing exactly which country your data is 
held in, are lacking.

It sounds like MSFT are being equally up front about the Law Enforcement
aspects.
>
>caveat emptor

It's not compulsory to use cloud computing, if it's not suitable for the 
application. But I agree that potential users need to know what 
questions to ask.
-- 
Roland Perry