Really!
It’s not news to an old-timer like me who’s suspicious of all Internet services – especially “free” ones. See for example the posts on Google Public DNS and Google Wave. In the latter I list (most of) the Google services I use.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) document is at http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7020352132.
Of course, as no less a person than Eric Schmidt says:
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
That statement gave me the chills – but it is also a wake-up call to users worldwide. The amplification he gave is factually correct.
“But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And [...] we’re all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.”
His apparent assumption that people only require privacy if they are doing something scandalous or illegal is mind-boggling.
There are two types of information that I will keep in the cloud:
- Encrypted information where I hold the key.
- Information that I don’t mind if it gets plastered over the front pages of the New York Times and the Bangkok Post.
Anything else is held in encrypted storage using a tool that I trust: TrueCrypt.
Tags: cloud computing, privacy, security
