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Cloud Computing: A Move Towards Reforming Privacy Laws
The laws governing the privacy of data stored in the cloud were written almost 24 years ago. A lot has changed over those 24 years. And now many cloud-based vendors are lobbying congress to update those laws to the reality of the Internet in 2010 to ease concerns about on-line privacy.
In 1986, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was enacted to extend restrictions on government wiretaps to both data transmissions and phone calls. The problem is that the law has a lot of holes in it when now applied to today’s technnologies. To address those problems, a coalition known as Digital Due Process has been formed and the group is advocating a rewrite of the current privacy laws. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Ebay, Intel and AT&T are included among those backing the reform. Microsoft has also called for reform of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
New technologies like cloud computing, social media and mobile location are some of the drivers behind the movement for change. More and more people’s data is being stored on-line by a variety of vendors for an indefinite period of time. And one concern with the current law is that the federal government can easily gain access to most of that data. Today law officials routinely ask for data stored in the cloud because there are no laws restricting those requests.
Take for example email. A court order or a warrant is needed to get e-mail that is less than 180 days old. But anything older than that is not protected. In 1986 that may have made sense since at that time email would typically be immediately downloaded to the user’s local machine. But now with users having gigabytes of storage with services like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, that is no longer the case. People don’t delete, they just keep adding to their on-line data.
Changes won’t happen overnight. The government and its surveillance agencies are likely to resist any change. But given the clout and the number of companies that are urging reform, it’s likely that change will happen.
