{"id":1152,"date":"2010-05-05T07:36:52","date_gmt":"2010-05-05T15:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=1152"},"modified":"2010-05-05T07:36:52","modified_gmt":"2010-05-05T15:36:52","slug":"cloud-computing-a-move-towards-reforming-privacy-laws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/cloud-computing-a-move-towards-reforming-privacy-laws\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloud Computing: A Move Towards Reforming Privacy Laws"},"content":{"rendered":"

The laws governing the privacy of data stored in the cloud were written almost 24 years ago. \u00a0A lot has changed over those 24 years. \u00a0And 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.<\/p>\n

In 1986, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was enacted to extend restrictions on government wiretaps to both data transmissions and phone calls. \u00a0The problem is that the law has a lot of holes in it when now applied to today’s technnologies. \u00a0 To address those problems, a coalition\u00a0known as Digital Due Process<\/a> has been formed and the group is advocating a rewrite of the current privacy laws. \u00a0Companies like Google<\/a>, Microsoft<\/a>, Ebay, Intel and AT&T are included among those backing the reform. \u00a0Microsoft has also called for reform<\/a> of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.<\/p>\n

New technologies like cloud computing, social media and mobile location are some of the drivers behind the movement for change. \u00a0More and more people’s data is being stored on-line by a variety of vendors for an indefinite period of time. \u00a0 And one concern with the current law is that the federal government can easily gain access to most of that data. \u00a0Today law officials routinely ask for data stored in the cloud because there are no laws restricting those requests.<\/p>\n

Take for example email. \u00a0A court order or a warrant is needed to get e-mail that is less than 180 days old. \u00a0But anything older than that is not protected. \u00a0In 1986 that may have made sense since at that time email would typically be immediately downloaded to the user’s local machine. \u00a0But now with users having gigabytes of storage with services like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, that is no longer the case. \u00a0People don’t delete, they just keep adding to their on-line data.<\/p>\n

Changes won’t happen overnight. \u00a0The government and its surveillance agencies are likely to resist any change. \u00a0But given the clout and the number of companies that are urging reform, it’s likely that change will happen.<\/p>\n

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The laws governing the privacy of data stored in the cloud were written almost 24 years ago. \u00a0A lot has changed over those 24 years. \u00a0And now many cloud-based vendors are lobbying congress to update those laws to the reality…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more ›<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,31,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cloud-computing","category-content-management","category-security","category-social-networking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}