[ Thanks to Cosmo
Lee for this link. ]
“Before, the bad guys usually needed to get their hands
on people’s computers to see their secrets; in today”s cloud all
you need is a password.“Thanks in part to the Patriot Act, the federal government has
been able to demand some details of your online activities from
service providers — and not to tell you about it. There have been
thousands of such requests lodged since the law was passed, and the
F.B.I.’s own audits have shown that there can be plenty of
overreach — perhaps wholly inadvertent — in requests like
these.“The cloud can be even more dangerous abroad, as it makes it
much easier for authoritarian regimes to spy on their citizens. The
Chinese government has used the Chinese version of Skype instant
messaging software to monitor text conversations and block
undesirable words and phrases. It and other authoritarian regimes
routinely monitor all Internet traffic — which, except for
e-commerce and banking transactions, is rarely encrypted against
prying eyes.”