Re: Cloud computing is the story of our lifetime

Brian Moelk wrote:
No, *everything* is not online today.

Give me some examples. Nearly everything I care about keeping private has an online presence/portal of some kind. Besides, there are things like Echelon, homeland security monitoring, etc.

This is a different aspect than the one I have discussed with I.P. Nichols. I am sure you can think of several cases when the law enforcement has seized the server computers of a company in order to obtain evidence for all sorts of crimes. Tax fraud; file sharing and copyright violations; organized crime; etc. I believe that answers your question.

Two things could be said in addition:

Pro: It would become easier to collect evidence without collateral damage.
- Firstly, they wouldn't necessarily have to take the server down in order to obtain all evidence. Presuming all data and code is in the cloud, the law enforcement could simply request a snapshot image (after passing legislation requiring the cloud provider making that technically possible without loss of evidence). If there is no suspicion of ongoing criminal activity they could let the service continue to run in the cloud.
- Secondly, had the same service been running on a traditional shared server (script based like most sites, or in a VM), seizing the server computer would typically cause collateral damage to the other companies with sites on the same computer.

Con: An argument sometimes put forth is that governments tend to regulate anything they can. If you hand them a new peep hole (i.e. technical means of monitoring what people and companies do), they regulate whatever they see through that peep hole.
- Admittedly, I think that argument is partially flawed because IMO governments are actually worse, in that they already tend to regulate anything they now exists regardless if they have the means of monitoring it or not. The only way to prevent the government from regulating new phenomena is to halt progress all together.
- However, if the government gets a new peep hole a complete new range of integrity issues will emerge. If you really think access to bank records and health records is the only threat to your integrity, your imagination is, with all due respect, seriously lacking.


Consequently: If cloud computing were to be subject to the same amount of restrictions and regulations the financial sector and the health care sector is subject to, it would effectively kill the whole idea.

But why would it? Health care and financial institutions offer online applications. And even if you exclude some application domains based on those issues, there are still a ton of domains where it makes sense.

Possibly, yes, but not necessarily. It might not be just health care and financial applications that would be excluded, if exclusion was made based on potential integrity and security issues, but also a wide range of everyday commercial applications: In the EU, restrictions are significantly different if I store a customer database on our server without prior consent from everyone in it, compared to if I store records of people who themselves and directly register to some online discussion forum. In the latter case there are virtually no legal demands on the security of our system, but there are in the former case.
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