Instinctively, I’m not willing to voluntarily move my data to the cloud. Call it a control issue or a generational problem or whatever, it’s just not for me, at least not yet. The legal issue surrounding privacy and protection of the data from government seizure are alarming. Here’s an article by James Urquhart on CNET News that will begin to get you up to speed.

In essence, according to some legal experts, there are several problems we have to come to grips with:

• First, if you don’t care whether the government has access to the information you store in the cloud, read no further. This isn’t for you.
• The courts are very slow to hear cases that allow the law to keep up with the technology. Technology is evolving too fast and Web 2.0 is coming at us too fast.
• When you turn your data over to a third party, the Supreme Court has ruled in a long standing telephone case that you lose your reasonable expectation of privacy.
• In April, 2009, the FBI raided two data centers in Texas and hauled off their equipment.  They had a court order to get the data concerning one company, but got everyone’s data that was hosted in the data center. See the Wired article here.
• Congress needs to act on this and give users some assurance that their privacy will be respected by the courts and in practice. Of course, we’ll probably have to build something we don’t need in Alabama or Nebraska in order to get any kind of bill through the Senate since that’s the only thing the Senate apparently responds to.

James Urquhart in the CNET article above refers to an opinion written by a third year law student in the Minnesota Law Review. It’s a long read, but it points up the fact that there are many unsettled issues surrounding privacy and the cloud. I’m not comfortable yet with my or my clients’ data in the cloud. Like any new technology, there’s still some work to be done to get it right.