Data sovereignty: Up in the clouds
Grazed from TheInterpreter. Author: Philippa Nicole Barr.
The surprise recent decision of the European Court of Justice to make Google responsible for removing search result information demonstrates the ambiguous sovereignty of online data. In recent years there has been a trend toward de-territorialisation of business and government operations, storing data and operations in an online cloud so it can be accessed by partners at multiple locations in one country or internationally.
Yet the easy technical passage across international borders is met by regulatory complexities. A company with data in the cloud is subject both to the laws of the nation hosting the server and to their own local laws regarding how that data should be protected, leading to a potential conflict of laws over data sovereignty…


Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM) are close to an agreement that will enable customers of Microsoft’s cloud computing service to use Salesforce’s customer management programs, said people familiar with the talks, signaling a thaw between two longtime rivals.