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[Discuss] Discuss Digest, Vol 6, Issue 9



On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 1:26 PM,  <markw at mohawksoft.com> wrote:
> I would say that the law is actually fairly settled, and it is scary. No
> one seems to be addressing or even knows that your right to privacy in the
> cloud is non-existent. Once your data is in the hands of someone else,
> they have no real right to protect it unless they are your legal counsel.
> The government has the right to access your data without a warrant and the
> ability to demand that your agent NOT tell you. (read up on NSA letters)

Even if the law is settled, it is still possible to protect data
owner's interest by setting up some sort of Data Retention Policy,
particularly tailored to such "outdated" law.

> What's worse is that your "agent" has no legal requirement to use its 4th
> amendment right to fight for you. In fact, it comes down to cost. If you
> are a $20/month customer, would your cloud provided spend millions to
> defend your privacy?

This looks like a good class action case against the agent and the government...

** A couple of technical questions:

1. Is there a way to encrypt data stored with cloud services (such as
dropbox) that can be decrypted only by the data owner, not by "agent"?
 I believe PGP can do a pretty good job, am I correct?

2. If I send an e-mail (with attachment) from Gmail to Hotmail, would
both Google and Microsoft keep this e-mail on their respective servers
forever?  Wouldn't that quickly explode the service provider's storage
space? Would the ISP also keep a copy of that e-mail?



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