A particular story that gained popularity last week has really caught my attention and got me thinking.  If you didn’t know a US Judge has just ordered Microsoft to release emails from servers stored in a foreign Datacentre (based in Ireland). The decision isn’t immediate and gives MS time to appeal, but it’s not looking good for those who think that data stored overseas is safe from the US government. This comes at a time when not many have forgotten about the revelations from Edward Snowden that the NSA and GCHQ have been helping themselves to all manner of data stored both abroad and locally.
As SharePoint people  – who are being encouraged to adopt Azure and Office 365 – what does this mean for you? Will this change the viewpoint of the organization that you are working in? If this US ruling sticks, what’s the future for global US Tech companies in general? Is this decision so big that it will stifle the development of Cloud Services? Or, is it something that will eventually be circumvented by those who can afford to implement a complex network of international companies that can operate under different jurisdictions.
Thoughts?
If the court specified exactly whose account they wanted access to and for what reason – a pending criminal investigation, perhaps – then fine. But that is what Snowden was so irritated by, the generalized nature of data farming by Big Brother. They have no right to collect wholesale data.
Companies need to encrypt their data heavily, regardless of whether they are securing it from government or not.Â
As for the reliability of the cloud in general I think it will be one of the first things taken down if there is a global conflict of some sort. A giant is easier to kill than a thousand ant hills. China, Russia, the US, and other countries constantly attack each other in cyberspace so it is just a matter of time before some really large “cybernado” causes lots and lots of problems by taking down some large data centers.
