The government is driving some people away from the cloud

Legal subpoenas to cloud providers serve as reminders that you lose control and even awareness of who can access your data

Paul Carr from TechCrunch did a good job making the case why some of us may want to reconsider blanket uses for the cloud: "I've been growing increasingly alarmed by stories such as the U.S. government subpoenaing Twitter (and reportedly Gmail and Facebook) users over their support of WikiLeaks. The casual use of subpoenas, including against foreign citizens is worrying enough -- the New York Times says more than 50,000 'national security letters' are sent each year -- but even more concerning is the fact that often these subpoenas are sealed, preventing the companies from notifying the users they affect."

In other words, you're putting your personal data on a cloud provider, and the government can go directly to it for that data, bypassing you altogether. While you might think your cloud provider would stand up to such requests, most are legally bound to hand over the information.

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Source: InfoWorld
By: David inthicum