Is there any data that isn't compromised by the US Patriot Act?
I thought about writing an intro series for marketers to the Cloud (as in cloud-based apps and marketing), but I'll jump right in here. Imagine if you would, your personal hard drive (from a computing device: say, an iPad, laptop, netbook, desktop monstrosity, server, etc.) with documents (e.g., text, photos, presentations, spreadsheets, notes) that you share with your colleagues or clients in an online platform where you presumably control access privileges and file privacy rights. On zdnet.com, Zack Whittaker highlights an interesting perspective on how Microsoft is dealing with privacy with respect to law enforcement requests for documents shared on a cloud.
The Microsoft statement: "Any data which is housed, stored or processed by a company, which is a U.S. based company or is wholly owned by a U.S. parent company, is vulnerable to interception and inspection by U.S. authorities."
Not only do companies have to worry about hackers breaching a cloud platform like what happened to Epsilon and its customers in March 2011 (Kroger, JPM Chase, and a long list of others), but now your data could be seized at any moment without due process by the US government, regardless of where that data is if it is managed by a US-based company.
Read more?
Microsoft's whitepaper on the data protection policies of Office Live 365
PC Mag's article on "Epsilon Data Breach: What Can You Do to Protect Yourself?"
