Regulation tries to catch up with cloud computing technology. All together now: "Good luck, regulation!"
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Regulation tries to catch up with cloud computing technology. All together now: "Good luck, regulation!"
Politico’s Tony Romm reports on efforts in Congress to figure out which laws apply and which new laws need to be created to keep up with the push toward business and personal information being stored on remote servers physically far from the person or business to whom they are associated. The tech industry is apparently eager to see some more clarity in how this is all to be governed although it’s nervous about too much regulation.
The debate is over the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a statute written in 1986, long before most consumers had migrated essential services and information online. Even tech companies often at political loggerheads — including Microsoft and Google — said an upgrade to the law is critical to the development of the cloud industry.
At issue is the ease at which law enforcement can obtain data stored in some servers. Whereas investigators typically need a search warrant to obtain a document in a filing cabinet, they generally can secure access to that same bit of information using a subpoena if it’s stored using a cloud service.
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