The fog of law and cloud computing

Grazed from TheAge. Author: Trevor Clark.

Data sovereignty and privacy concerns resulting from the extension of US-government mass-surveillance powers raised in an EU report publicised last week should not dissuade Australian businesses from actively considering and adopting cloud computing services, legal experts say. The reach of the US Patriot Act – which essentially compels US companies to hand over data stored anywhere in the world – has been a major point of contention in debates over risk and the use of cloud computing services for some time.

So much so that vendors such as Rackspace and Google have publicly said they would fight any requests to hand over data – which is welcomed by those with data sovereignty concerns but of little practical effect in countering the risk posed by the law – and led others to invest heavily in data centre facilities or siting IT infrastructure in Australia…

However, in the EU report titled Fighting cyber crime and protecting privacy in the cloud, the authors claim section 1881a of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment Act of 2008 – or FISAAA – is potentially more concerning…

Read more from the source @ http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/the-fog-of-law-and-cloud-computing-20130218-2emkw.html