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I’ve started to have second thoughts about the wisdom of the cloud....   >>>

I’ve started to have second thoughts about the wisdom of the cloud.



Partly it’s a question of data paranoia. Starting January 1st, I switched from Google Calendar back to a paper calendar (or diary, as we call them in the UK) after becoming increasingly frustrated in trying to get my schedule to sync reliably with my Blackberry. I try to avoid relying on email for important conversations, but if I did I’m not sure I’d trust Gmail for long-time storage needs. It’s early days (literally) but there’s something really nice about writing down an appointment in a book.



More seriously though, I’ve been growing increasingly alarmed by stories like this: the US government subpoenaing Twitter (and reportedly Gmail and Facebook) users over their support of Wikileaks. The casual use of subpoenas, including against foreign citizens is worrying enough – the New York Times says over 50,000 “national security letters” are sent each year - but even more concerning is the fact that often these subpoenas are sealed, preventing the companies from notifying the users they affect.



It used to be that if the US government wanted access to documents or letters in my possession they’d have to subpoena me directly. As a foreign citizen there are all sorts of ways I could fight the request – and it was at least my choice whether to do so. As someone living in the US I also had the whole weight of the 4th Amendment on my side. Now, with everything in the cloud, the decision whether to hand over my personal information is almost entirely out of my hands. And unless, as happened with Twitter, the company storing my data decides to fight for openness on my behalf, there’s every possibility that I won’t even hear about the request until it’s too late. That’s just not how things should work in a free society.



Read more about this privacy issue from Tech Crunch. | image is from flickr user http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosauraochoa/