Patriot Act Dampening Cloud Computing?

Julie188 writes "Governments are turning the Internet into a cyberspace reflection of real-world geographic conflicts. One report says that the Canadian government is forbidding its IT organizations to use services that store or host the government's data outside their sovereign territory. They especially cannot use services where the data is stored in the United States because of fears over the Patriot Act. What kinds of jurisdiction issues might people face — think Google cooperating with the Chinese government — as cloud computing becomes the norm and your data is stored in 'offshore parts' of the cloud?"

Comments

I said it before, I say it again

[Opportunist]

The Patriot Act hurts the US IT industry.

Why should a foreign investor risk it to bring his IP to the US with the threat hanging over his head that suddenly it's declared illegal to export it, should he discover something the US deems "useful for terrorism" (read: something we'd rather have in the hands of US companies than others)?

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[TheRecklessWanderer]

I'm sure the US Government would not allow sensitive (or any) information to be stored on a foreign soil server, so why should Canada be any different.

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[Opportunist]

It's not even about sensitivity. It's simply the uncertainty that the US government deems it their right to, at any time, for any harebrained reason, snoop into your data. No sane company or even governmental institution would accept that. It's like legalizing industrial (and other) espionage.

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[iago-vL]

That's exactly correct. I work for the security department of a Canadian government, and we've decreed that no data can be stored on American servers, sensitive or otherwise.

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[c_g_hills]

Out of interest, why would a sovereign nation even consider hosting data outside its own borders? For large countries such as Canada and the U.S.A. I cannot think of a reason. The U.K. however has a government completely incapable of looking after the security of its data so I can understand they might prefer to put it in the hands of a country that is more capable of ensuring security.

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Actually the post was mostly about the Canadian government.

And all governments claim the right to do whatever they want (with approval of parliament in case of America, in other words : the people that represent you) within their territory.

That's obviously what makes it necessary for other governments to keep their data away from eachother. That's not strange, that's just a fact.

Geographical conflicts exist in the real world, as everybody knows. Here's a newsflash : so do you. Nature, it seems, has not seen fit to provide an "opt-out" policy.

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[jo42]

The idiot US Government already gets its Crackberry emails via servers outside the US.

Facism here we come! Heil Bush! And all that...

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[mpe]

It's not even about sensitivity. It's simply the uncertainty that the US government deems it their right to, at any time, for any harebrained reason, snoop into your data. No sane company or even governmental institution would accept that. It's like legalizing industrial (and other) espionage.

If you were from somewhere with data protection laws then it's most likely to be illegal to store certain kinds of data anywhere which dosn't have at least similar laws and/or the appropriate treaties in place.

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[dwater]

> I'm sure the US Government would not allow sensitive (or any) information to be stored on a foreign soil server,
> so why should Canada be any different.

> think Google cooperating with the Chinese government

...or China for that matter.

People seem to forget that the Chinese gov consider the US to be just as 'bad' as the US gov considers them; and, in many ways, they have a point, but it's the perception that's the key in this case, not the reality (whatever it might be).

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[kent_eh]

Combine that with the requirements of the Privacy Act and the government's policy is a no-brainer.

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[drosboro]

Right. I am a grad student at a Canadian university, and our research ethics board won't even approve any research that uses US-based survey websites for data collection, whether sensitive in nature or totally innocuous.

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[TDyl]

This El Reg Story talks about our dear Labour party possibly out-sourcing our entire 2011 census data to Lockheed Martin. I find it extremely worrying that such personal and private data (this time they're going to be asking us about sex habits - with criminal penalties for not answering) could even be considered as being able to be off-shored. Our current government are a laughing-stock and, unfortunately, very dangerous to personal privacy as well. They seem not to be able to learn from mistakes and continue plunging down a path of idiocy and stupidity that make Eden and Macmillan (previous prime ministers with none-too-savoury records) look almost angelic in comparison.

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? Criminal penalties for not answering the census? And people are saying the US if fucked up. I keep watching the goings on in the UK and saying to my wife, "There goes us in a few years, the UK is just ahead of us a bit."

Re:I said it before, I say it again

[Geekbot]

The interview there made them look even more foolish. Being asked about the move to L&H causing breaches in privacy she referred to a 200 year history of keeping data safe. Were they using L&H for the last 200 years? There was no logic whatsoever.

Worse yet she seemed unaware of how a national surveillance program (Patriot Act) might affect their ability to keep their information secure with a US contractor.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Governments and outsourcing?

[compumike]

Shouldn't governments be particularly sensitive about not having a role in picking economic winners and losers?

Beyond that, their stance seems relatively well founded. Take a look at the new privacy policies for Google Health... saying that they might release your records in some situations when required to do so by law.

But, I think the summary doesn't make it sufficiently clear that this is just government IT departments, not all information technology in Canada. Private citizens and businesses can still do as they wish.

--
Electronics kits for the digital generation.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Opportunist]

Yes, a government should actually do quite the opposite of what's happening: Making sure that everyone has the same chance to succeed, offering a level play field for enterprises, make them compete with each other, let the best one win chosen by the customer who picks the supplyer making the best offer.

IIRC from my economy courses, that's what free market is about.

Instead we get more and more laws lobbied into existance by large companies to ensure those companies have an edge over anyone trying to muscle into the field. Worse yet, outdated and obsolete structures and business models are being propped up by laws that go directly against anything free market represents.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[jlarocco]

Beyond that, their stance seems relatively well founded. Take a look at the new privacy policies for Google Health... saying that they might release your records in some situations when required to do so by law.

What the hell? Is that real? There are actually people stupid enough to upload their medical history to Google? Why?

That's the scariest thing I've seen all week.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Opportunist]

Hey, what gives? You got anything to hide or what?

Some people do need to touch the hot stove. I stopped trying to keep them from doing it, people don't learn 'til they burn their hands.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[garett_spencley]

Not everyone agrees that a free market is what's best for society. There are always going to be political lobbyists, politicians and voting citizens who opt for more regulation. In fact, I'm personally surprised by how many of my peers seem to favour more communist-like systems.

The other day a friend of mine was watching a Youtube video of a speech given by one of the founding members of the Canadian Action Party and he, not being canadian, asked me who this guy was. I explained to him what the CAP was all about. Said that while I agree with their Canadian Nationalist views they feel that globalization is a big conspiracy by the corporations in order to rule the world and make everyone their slaves. His response was "well isn't that already true ?"

It seems that a large portion of the public feels that corporations have far too much power and that free market has failed. They want government to further regulate the markets because they would rather have the government control their lives than corporations (they refuse to see that the public gives the corporations their power just as we give the government it's power).

Since I've failed to remain neutral I might as well just add that I am a pro-free-market libertarian and I think it will take a couple of wars before we can claim that the corporations enslave people. I do agree, however, that they get away with too much, but not because of a lack of regulation. It's because money buys justice and politicians. THAT is what that needs to be fixed. Yet many people don't look that deep into it. I can say with assertion that most people that I know in person certainly don't. They see that money = corporations = free market = evil and thus want more regulation.

Oh and it doesn't help matters when every single case of deregulation has resulted in short term economic upheaval while things balance out. Forget about selling long term advantages if it's going to cost people jobs and higher prices in the short term.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[value_added]

Shouldn't governments be particularly sensitive about not having a role in picking economic winners and losers?

I suppose, if one's outlook is a narrow view where the idealogy of capitalism overrules all other ideas. My own opinion is that one of the prime responsibilities of government is to set responsible policy. The citizenry or business interests are free to pursue things however they want in the context of the policy.

When viewed in that light, the notion of "picking winners and losers" is a construct that's as absurd as it is political. If a government chooses to raise mileage standards or raise taxes to offset the costs of environmental degradation, for example, Ford is free to go broke trying to sell SUVs, just as Toyota is free to build another plant in Ohio to meet increased sales. If the government adopts an open document format policy, Microsoft is free to adapt or continue their current practices. If there's any picking involved, it's being done in the corporate boardroom.

A sovereign government mandating local storage may indeed interfere with certain business models, but then again, so what? One door closes, another one opens. That's not to say the politics of the issue aren't interesting or worth discussing.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do agree, however, that they get away with too much, but not because of a lack of regulation. It's because money buys justice and politicians. THAT is what that needs to be fixed.

This is where your fair and balanced exposition of libertarianism loses touch with reality. It can't be fixed.

Let me put it this way: the smarter members of a given social system will work to game the system, thereby gaining a competitive advantage over the other members. This is true of every political system. History is essentially the story of peoples' rising to power.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are naive. It's not about "justice" and politicians, it's about power. Money = power. Plain and simple. And the beautiful thing in an unregulated free market is that you can use that power to destroy the free market. That's the role of regulation : to make sure no one completely destroy the free market.

BTW, governments and political systems are heavily regulated. The result is people don't "give" power to a government, they lend it for a very short time (at least in a democracy). That's why anyone with a bit of common sense prefers "giving" (i.e. lending) power to a government than to a corporation.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Opportunist]

May I sum it up?

The time of enlightenment brought us the separation of church and state. What we need is a second time of enlightenment, separating enterprises and state.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell? Is that real? There are actually people stupid enough to upload their medical history to Google? Why?

That's the scariest thing I've seen all week.

I'd prefer to have all of my medical data stored by Google than to have it spread between different hospitals and private practices, each one with a different view on how they should deal with your data and none of which have ever shown me their privacy policies. Not to mention that their policies are very close to Google's, since they have to follow the same laws...

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Original Replica]

Shouldn't governments be particularly sensitive about not having a role in picking economic winners and losers?

Someone mod that +1 funny. How are they supposed to pay for their re-election campaigns if they don't take direct action to influence the economy? The government is made up of people who, every few years, need to raise millions of dollars on nothing but promises, the only thing they can promise that makes that worthwhile is a good return on a campaign "investment".

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[lowsinon]

No doubt that day will come. However, I'm not convinced that the problem is any deeper than the concentration of wealth a corporate entity provides. Even a private citizen with wealth and a mission can do as much harm or good as they desire. In the event of your second enlightenment, the lobbyists would be paid personally by interested private citizens (some already are!). Is the natural conclusion then to separate citizens and government? Hopefully, you can see that a corporation is no different than a private citizen lots of money. Therefore, the only real cure is to make wealth concentration illegal. This of course would never fly without a revolution.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Tuoqui]

Unfortunately, the corporations got a bit of power... Then they in turn began to influence the governments to give themselves more power. That is the problem...

Now if the public wants to remove these corporations power they have to do it by boycotting everything really because theres so many companies and subsidiaries and what not that if you try to boycott say... Sony over the rootkit fiasco, well theres plenty of things you may end up buying that will end up having to not buy a whole lot since theres so many unrelated things that end up routing money back to Sony... And when they lose profits because of stuff they ask the government for subsidies and hand-outs to keep them alive (See the Airline Industry as a prime example)

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[koekepeer]

Yes, indeed.

(-1: Redundant)

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[hey!]

Not everyone agrees that a free market is what's best for society.

Agreed, however you don't have to pick addlepated examples like crypto-communists to illustrate the point.

The market maximizes the efficiency of resource to the production of excludable benefits. If you want an economic system to produce iPods for around $100-$200, the market is the thing. If you want a system that will ensure breathable air and drinkable water for everyone, it's not. Not without some tinkering.

It seems that a large portion of the public feels that corporations have far too much power and that free market has failed.

And why would that be? I think it's because people have been sold a bill of ideological goods. The power -- the inclination of The Market to grant every human wish has been grossly oversold. Just as its benefits and evils were once grossly oversold.

And now comes the backlash, which of course means medicines worse than the diseases they're supposed to cure.

Again and again, it has struck me that people have been taught to view The Market like God: a benevolent, infallible, personal God who cares about you personally. In truth, what The Market is, is a machine, and a remarkably good one, for the efficient distribution of resources in certain, widely applicable situations. It doesn't know or care who you are or give a fig for human welfare at all. With sufficiently advanced machines, it could well go on after efficiently eliminating the human race.

A milling machine can create all kinds of useful an beneficial things, but if you stick your hand in the wrong place the machine will unthinkingly rip it off. Electricity is a huge benefit to humanity, but if you put a penny in the circuit breaker box, in the course of nature it will burn your house down. If you let individuals externalize costs in a market system, or if you don't find ways of internalizing benefits, The Market will tear your society to shreds.

Electricity is a good example. It would be absurd to outlaw electricity because it causes fires. We would miss the benefits of electricity, one of which is a reduced incidence of fire as things like candles and oil lanterns have fallen into disuse. The Market causes social problems, but not as many as it solves.

That doesn't mean we have to accept everything The Market does as right, or even (as some do) define right by what the Market does. We should let it work unregulated where regulation is trying to do something The Market is inherently good at. Most ideas for manipulating oil prices are counter productive, reducing both the incentive to produce and the incentive to conserve.

On the other hand if the market doesn't charge somebody for their pollution, we should feel free to step in. In some cases, we should outlaw the pollution. In other cases, we can create a market for pollution credits. The latter is also a form of regulation, it just doesn't feel like one.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, I'm personally surprised by how many of my peers seem to favour more communist-like systems.

I'm surprised to hear it too. Do you really mean communist? Mao and Stalin and Lenin and all that? Other than a few real nut-jobs I've never met anyone like that in nearly fifty years in Canada. Disastifaction with an unbridled corporate free-market? Yes. Preference for national social programs? Yes. Shallow understanding of both? Oh my, yes.

My point is you're not doing much better here.

It seems that a large portion of the public feels that corporations have far too much power and that free market has failed. They want government to further regulate the markets because they would rather have the government control their lives than corporations (they refuse to see that the public gives the corporations their power just as we give the government it's power).

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say they feel "that free market has failures" and "they would rather control their lives through democratic government"?

I'm happy that you're giving it all some thought, as I rather like the idea of a thoughful democracy, but I caution that you're being careless. Try working things through with the terminology of discussion rather than the terminology of debate. I think that's tripping you up. You can go deeper.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[koekepeer]

This would never fly, period. People are too blase for a revolution, and they are being kept busy by the tremendous workload that comes with the two or more jobs they need to pay the ever increasing bills.

The only hope I have is the spread of wealth concentration. The US government doesn't seem to be interested in that, though, and here in Europe the tendency is to follow the US trend, slowly killing the social welfare systems.

Relative wealth is generated through the creation of bottlenecks (e.g. the current talk of 'world food shortage' being a great example). People need to learn how this works, and decentralise the power by applying this knowledge.

One way is to build a grey economy, totally independent of money, and based on value. I make something for you, you make me dinner or treat me to a couple of beers, something like that.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[lowsinon]

Revolution no longer occurs in the developed world in the classical sense. It is now done with wallets and votes, and I'm glad to be participating fully in the eventual decline of irresponsible business.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ignorance worries me.

From Google itself: HIPAA does not apply to the transmission of health information by Google to any third party.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Anonymous Coward]

As large databases of personal data became technically feasible companies had the chance to foresee the risks to their customers and do the right thing. Too many of them blew it off as unimportant to their bottom line. They were cheap and sloppy with their customer data.

Market forces aren't perfect, and this is an example. Market forces do poorly when there isn't an obvious financial value to something (e.g., clean air and water), when there is a long time lag between action and reaction (e.g., you find out *afterwards* that a company's security policies sucked), and if it is too easy to keep a problem (financial or otherwise) secret. It is easy to make a load of money by, say, doing something fraudulent or by dumping toxic waste into the local river, and hoping that nobody finds out before cashing the cheque or letting the company go bankrupt. And taking your business elsewhere isn't much of a consolation if you've already had your personal data compromised, is it? And what if the relevant company is a monopoly? What then?

The whole point of regulations for such things as financial disclosure, environmental laws, etc., is to make companies and their decisionmakers legally responsible. It creates or increases incentives for companies to do the right thing -- to assess the cost *before* making a decision -- and not to take the shortcuts that may yield short-term financial gain, but that are ultimately a false economy, often with long-term costs to the whole of society (think of the costs of a bank failure or environmental cleanup).

Now we get to the "pro-free-market libertarian" attitude. I don't get your point. I don't know in what modern capitalistic economy it would be a good idea to have no regulations at all, or how that would be "best for society". I'm sure that's not what you mean. And if people call for regulation, please, it does not mean they want socialism or a "communist-like" system. Either extreme is foolish and often demonstrably harmful to society (re: history), and it is unhelpful to imply such straw men are what people are actually suggesting.

So, can we please agree that SOME kinds of regulation on a free market is what is best for society, and get on with the actual decision here, which is whether a *particular* regulation is or is not beneficial?

The one that is relevant is the Privacy Act in Canada. The idea is to protect the use of private information about Canadian citizens when collected by businesses and by the Canadian government. This is after many years of misuse of such information (e.g., like the loss of millions of records of personal data that we hear about on /. all the time). Thus, the law stipulates what sort of information is protected, how it can be used (and not), how policies are disclosed to the person from which it is collected, etc. It's all pretty reasonable stuff that companies should already be doing if they actually care about their customers.

The problem with shipping a database containing personal information from Canada to the US is the inability to guarantee that the Privacy Act is being followed. Perhaps the FBI might be secretly rummaging through the data thanks to the Patriot Act and National Security Letters? A company can't even say what's going on, let alone guarantee it won't happen.

I think it is a pretty reasonable decision for the Canadian government to prohibit export of its databases or database services to the US (or, I suspect, any other country). If they did allow it, they'd run the risk of violating their own Privacy Act. You can argue that the Canadian Privacy Act is unnecessary regulation, and an unreasonable encumberance on companies, but I doubt you'll get much sympathy for that view given all the demonstrations of sloppy company security that have been reported here over the years. Some companies do get it. Some clearly DO NOT. And companies that have messed up badly have gotten little more than some bad press and a slap on the wrist. Big deal.

The Pri

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Anonymous Coward]

May I sum it up?

The time of enlightenment brought us the separation of church and state. What we need is a second time of enlightenment, separating enterprises and state. i think we should redo that first one, it didn't seem to take

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[menace3society]

I think you actually take a far too broad view of the problem. Industry lobbyists, to pick on someone everyone hates, aren't actually against free markets *in theory*, it's just that their job is to support legislation that helps out american businesses in their industry, even if it hurts foreign businesses or other sectors. To that end, they don't need to suppress possible flaws, they simple do not present them to legislators, and since there are (by law) no cash-contributing lobbying groups that represent international business interests and the free-market people are all in non-profit think-tanks, the politicians only ever hear one side of the argument.

The worst part is, I can't think of a solution that might not be worse than the problem.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[ukemike]

It is about power and corruption, but that's not the main point. The main reason corporations are dangerous is that they are legally persons, with all the attendant rights and none of the attendant responsibilities. Imagine if you created a class of people that had all the rights of other people but did not die and could not be put in jail, that could earn tremendous quantities of money but could arrange things so they were not taxed. That class of people would come to dominate all other people.

What libertarians seem to miss, an this is just my perspective, is that it isn't just concentrations of power in government that are dangerous to liberty, it is concentrations of power in any form that are dangerous to our liberty.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[pjt33]

You got anything to hide or what?

Yes! I don't want people finding out about my Marfan's syndrome.

Hang on. How do I delete this post?

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[laddiebuck]

This logic is a bit circular. You say that corporations get away with too much, not for lack of regulation but because they can buy justice. But if there is little regulation, then there is no reason to buy justice -- all they have to do is not fuck up too bad, and beyond that they can get away with whatever they like. Take, for instance, the state of healthcare in the US. It's run for-profit, and people are sold all sorts of expensive snake oil by pharmaceutical companies, simply because the goal is not to cure people quickly, but to prolong the amount of time they are selling them drugs, and increase the volume of drugs they are being sold. Children routinely receive ten times as many different drugs in childhood as do children in other Western countries (which, though unstudied, may not exactly be helpful), yet their mortality rate is still the lowest in the Western world. Or just look at how exploitative first-world corporations are with drugs in the third world. Many countries have declared their patents null and void and are producing their own generics -- and it is difficult to argue against this, as it saves tens of thousands of lives. What I am getting is that globalisation really _is_ harmful today, that an unregulated market really _is_ very harmful (and don't look at the symptoms: buying justice, ridiculous IP laws -- these are all symptoms), and that the only way we are going to make globalisation work is by strict regulation of enterprises. To be brief, I couldn't disagree with you more. Full disclosure: I'm Hungarian...

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Opportunist]

Personal wealth is a smaller problem, I'd say. A human being usually has something a corporation lacks by definition: Morals, ethics and a consciousnes.

Ok, most do. The rest become lawyers.

Snide comments aside, a corporation cannot have any consciousness. Or rather, the people working for it can brush it aside because they're not to blame. If you are to lobby for a change of laws to further your corporation's needs, you can even see just how many people you put into misery because of it, but you're not to blame. You can brush it off and claim other responsibilities. If you are to do it, you have to do it to keep your job, you're responsible for your family and its income. If you're the top manager of the company, not doing it will most likely not get you fired, but it would result in less revenue, thus less profit for the shareholders, and you have a responsibility towards them. As a shareholder, you're not responsible at all because all you did was put money into the bank and told your banker to "make it more", you don't even know what shares you have. And the bank's stock trader in turn isn't responsible either, because his responsibility is to make the best out of his customer's money.

Everyone can claim higher responsibilities to silence his conscience.

Doesn't work that easily when it comes to personal wealth. There is nobody you answer to, nobody to push in front of you as your shield against moral second thoughts. When you use your money to do something, you are fully responsible for the outcome, good or ill. In most people, this actually works, surprisingly.

You'll notice a lot of rich people putting a sizable amount of their wealth into charity. Some out of guilt, but I am fairly sure, a lot of them out of the drive to "do good" and be remembered as a good person. Few want to be remembered as rich assholes. Besides, there's only so much you can buy, when you cross the line from really rich to stinkin' rich, you notice that you just can't buy anything anymore. You have everything money can buy. You have your yacht, your manson, your football team, your personal little island in the Pacific, and there's still money left. Why not try to buy something you usually can't buy: Being liked.

Thus I think personal wealth isn't as dangerous as corporate wealth. Corporations only want more money, no matter what. They don't care whether you like them or not. Human beings usually have that need. Also, at some point money doesn't matter anymore. For humans. Not for corporations. They need to make more money, because they have responsibilities to their shareholders...

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Opportunist]

Do you think deleting this post would change anything? The info is out, and information that is out is out. There is no way to reverse time and undo it. Even with this post gone, some people will remember it and duplicate it somewhere else, where it is under no circumstances under your control.

That's the blessing and the curse of information. You cannot undo it. Despite what DRM tries to tell you.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[theshowmecanuck]

We should make you the head of a new religion and elect you president. j/k

I will say that I really like your idea a lot. To do it I think will bring another or new kind of religious war though. I'm up for it.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[CrimsonAvenger]

The US government doesn't seem to be interested in that, though, and here in Europe the tendency is to follow the US trend, slowly killing the social welfare systems.

And here I thought Europe's slow killing of the social welfare system was a result of the EU's requirement that deficit spending be kept under certain hard limits.

Note that the hard limits are actually about the same as the USA's current (excessive) deficits. but they ARE trying.

I'm curious, though. What can the EU actually do if a member state decides to NOT abide by the deficit limits set by the EU government? Besides kick them out of the EU, presumably?

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[rohan972]

I'd say. A human being usually has something a corporation lacks by definition: Morals, ethics and a consciousnes.

And a body that can be confined in a cell.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[rohan972]

Hopefully, you can see that a corporation is no different than a private citizen lots of money.

If that were true, then the rich would hold their assets in their own names rather than in corporations and trusts. Two of the significant differences are (1) there is no legal category of "Limited Liability Citizens" in the sense that there is with corporations (2) the nature of corporations is defined by corporate law, making profit the overriding motive always. Few individuals will make financial gain the overriding factor in every decision.

Therefore, the only real cure is to make wealth concentration illegal. This of course would never fly without a revolution.

Doesn't fly with a revolution either, didn't you notice? And it can only be sustained by the vigorous suppression of the population, replacing the ambitious abuse by the rich with the unchecked abuse of the state. Your cure is worse than the illness.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[rohan972]

One problem with this topic is the idea many people seem to have is that corporations in the form we have today are a part of a free market. In particular, Limited Liability Corporations only exist as a result of regulations. The idea that you can act without repercussions is not compatible with a free market but is instead a characteristic of sovereign rulers. The fiduciary duty that causes corporations to put profit above every other consideration is based on regulation, it is not a result of a free market (although such contracts may happen in a free market).

Eliminate limited liability protections of corporations and see how they really survive in a free market. What you are suggesting is not regulation of a free market, it is to solve a problem created by regulation with more regulation. To be honest, I'm not optimistic about the success of this plan. I'm not against all regulation but it does seem to often cause problems way out of proportion to the goals that motivate it.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[forrwen]

Hi Garett, You response came up in a google alert of Canadian Action Party. I am the CAP candidate in Toronto Davenport. Thank you for your thoughtful response. What people don't understand is that corporations are running the world...and our governments. Mussolini said it best, as did Thomas Jefferson - Fascism is the merger of corporations and state. When you have corporations directing government, that is fascism and it is exactly what we have now - corporate fascism. The government is us and we get the government we deserve by not being vigilant and keeping our government on its toes at all times. It has happened in the US and also here in Canada as well as most of the world. In Canada, not using our publicly owned Bank of Canada for government created money at zero interest for the purposes of building infrastructure and social programs was the first treason. That happened in 1974 (the same year we gained membership in the G7). Since they a country so rich in resources, both natural and human has borrowed from the same banks as you and me at high & compounding interest. Every year we pay about $34 billion federally in interest - that's 14 cents of every tax dollar. So in turn they say they have to cancel and reduce all kinds of services. Its just not true! Canada has all the money it needs to provide the best of everything for Canadians. Anyway, after that it was a free-for-all. The first step in the nailing of Canada's coffin was the FTA then NAFTA... Because you see free trade is not about free markets - its about free movement of capital for corporations with no restrictions. NAFTA and all trade agreements are financial arrangements that do impinge on the sovereignty of nations. Now we have the Security and Prosperity Partnership, which is leading us into a North American Union. But people won't wake up until we no longer have our own dollar and have to make use of the Amero which will be controlled by the privately owned Federal Reserve. In government we have traitors who have no allegiance to the country or its people...only to corporations. CAP does not feel that free markets are evil but no-holds-barred free trade is. What Canada needs and has always needed is fair trade. Eastern Canada cannot get one drop of our own oil unless it passes through the US - is that fair trade? Our environment is being destroyed in the Alberta Tar Sands, for example, to send profits elsewhere. The agency that was in place for years to oversee investment in Canada (FIRA) was disbanded by Mulroney. This means that industries that were paid for with Canadian tax dollars can be sold off with no review by those who are supposed to be looking out for the interests of Canadians. Please get the video Hoodwinked: The Myth of Free Trade. It features David Orchard before he joined the Liberal Party. It is very informative. I get so mad when I think of the treason that has been perpetrated on us which now continues with the US War on Terror. Canada is in there like a dirty shirt even though anyone with an IQ higher than a shoe size can see that the 9/11 story is bogus. You see, everything is connected...make no mistake. Hope this doesn't sound jumbled, its still a little early. Hoodwinked: The Myth of Free Trade (clip) http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=LJILRppeoeA Videos on the Bank of Canada and monetary reform: http://www.canadianactionparty.ca/cgi/page.cgi?aid=1001&_id=128&zine=show The Corporation (coproduced by TVOntario) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=192012118972057552

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[Opportunist]

I cannot become prez of the USA. Well, unless that amendment mentioned in Demolition Man passes.

Re:Governments and outsourcing?

[yacc143]

Well, technically, the US is twice over the allowed new debt per year (6% or so if I believe the CIA factbook in 2007)

The Audacity!

[eternalelegy]

Patriot act hampering something more important than its intended purpose? Oh the Blasphemy!!

Good news for Canadians

[Zalgon 26 McGee]

Imagine, a government actually concerned about rampant abuses by the American Executive branch, and attempting to protect its citizens.

Re:Good news for Canadians

[Opportunist]

A government more interested in executing control over itself than its subjects? That's unpossible.

Re:encryption

[Opportunist]

How would that help? I'm fairly sure some part of the Patriot Act allows the US government to demand handing over the keys.

I refuse to comment until we tackle the real issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is what's being done about the Patriot act and its effect on Sephiroth computing...

it happens all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a company that assists with clinical trials across the world. One of the things we do is store medical data until the trial is over and we can send all the data to the sponsors of the trial. No trial run out of Canada has ever let us store data or back up data to the US. One significant downside to this is that we now have unnessary extra servers in canada, which increases our deployments and our maintenece work load

Re:it happens all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always move all your servers to Canada and not have those unnecessary insecure servers in the US. Seems like someone made a bad decision setting up your infrastructure having them in the US to begin with seeing as you have global clients.

Re:it happens all the time

[mpe]

You could always move all your servers to Canada and not have those unnecessary insecure servers in the US. Seems like someone made a bad decision setting up your infrastructure having them in the US to begin with seeing as you have global clients.

If they have global clients then they may not be able to have all their servers in one country. For just this kind of reason. Though they certainly don't want to locate many servers in a country which most of the rest of the planet is likely to object to having data sent to. The US is definitly likely to be on a list of such countries. Whereas Canada isn't.

Re:it happens all the time

[russotto]

work for a company that assists with clinical trials across the world. One of the things we do is store medical data until the trial is over and we can send all the data to the sponsors of the trial. No trial run out of Canada has ever let us store data or back up data to the US.

Why not encrypt your backups? Sure, it's a fair bet the NSA can decrypt them, but #1, they probably aren't who you are worried about and #2, if they're really motivated, they likely aren't going to be bothered with the fact that the data is in Canada. Do you make sure all transfers to your Canadian backup centers aren't routed over US lines?

DUH!!!

[Jane Q. Public]

Do not store sensitive data on somebody else's server!!! This is not a genius-level concept, folks!

Re:DUH!!!

[ceoyoyo]

That kind of kills cloud computing then.

Job Security & National Security

[Doc Ruby]

Especially while American workers and domestic operated industries are hurting and threatened with even more hurt, the American people's security, both economic security and the resulting national security, would benefit by the American people investing more in American workers. American legal jurisdiction and yes, even patriotism, also make domestic operations even more securable than those outsourced to foreign corporations whose security integrity can be bought, perhaps as cheaply as Americans bought their basic IT operations.

The US government should always weight IT procurement decisions, in fact any expenditures, in favor of American vendors. The more 100% American the operations, and therefore the staff and the nearby economic circulation of the fees spent on them, the more favored they should be against foreign competitors for the American government contracts. And in fact, some essential operations should never be outsourced to foreigners, and probably not even outsourced at all outside the government itself, and its longterm civil servants.

If saving money were more important than protecting Americans, we wouldn't spend any of the $TRILLIONS we spend on security and defense. I'd love to see the millions of Americans so up in arms about immigration set their priority as defending our government operations from "foreign occupation", which would actually defend the country and even find a lot more solidarity among their fellow Americans.

Re:Job Security & National Security

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation 0
    50% Insightful
    50% Overrated

TrollMods think Americans' job security and national security are "overrated", so they don't even want to talk about it. Because talking about it in public could protect it.

Re:Job Security & National Security

[dryeo]

While the comment itself is insightful, where you put it is a bit trollish. This is a discussion about Canada and you jumped in with your pro-American comment.
I (as a Canadian) found your comment out of place.

Re:Job Security & National Security

[Doc Ruby]

Where I put it? I put it in reply to a story about Canadians protecting their own data (and jobs, according to my argument) by not leaving it in a foreign country, the United States. I put a comment about Americans putting their data in a foreign country.

Now, what you're describing (a valid comment in the wrong place) is known as "Offtopic", not "Overrated". But my comment was on-topic, but from the reverse perspective.

How is that "trollish"? What were the "predictable comments" which would be the sole purpose for which my comment was designed, which is the meaning of a troll?

I didn't say anything "pro-American" that in any way is "anti-Canada", except I suppose in that Canada is part of the world that is not the United States. And even at that, the exact same argument could be made for any country protecting its jobs & data - there's nothing uniquely US about what I described. But as an American, I'm going to talk about my own country. Just as it was perfectly reasonable for this story submitter to talk about Canada, when of course most countries have exactly the same concerns about their own data (and, I'd say, jobs) going abroad.

Or is it just OK for non-Americans to single out the US as a "dangerous foreign data haven", but not for Americans to discuss our identical concerns (which therefore have to be in other countries), even if we don't single out any other countries (though there are many, including Canada) about which the argument can apply?

Re:Job Security & National Security

[dryeo]

I guess what it is is that Americans often come across as arrogant. Perhaps we in Canada are a bit hypersensitive but unluckily America has to much history of acting like bullies.
Even if you had started your comment out with something like "We in America have the same problems as the Canadians ..." it would of not been so jarring of a comment.
I'm not agreeing that you should of been modded down, just describing how I felt when I first read your comment.
Generally I like reading your comments but occasionally that American self-centreness leaks out

Patriot Act Aside ...

[garett_spencley]

I'm not really sure how "news worthy" this is. As one example, the Ontario Education Act prohibits public schools in Ontario from using text books that are not written by Canadian authors.

The Canadian government trying to keep things in Canada is very standard practice. I didn't RTFA and I'm sure it mentions the Patriot Act, but I really doubt the Patriot Act is the sole reason that they won't outsource hosting companies to the US. Their policy is most likely that they can not outsource anything to anywhere outside of Canada unless they have no choice.

Re:Patriot Act Aside ...

[Fox_1]

Well the newsworthyness is lower for the Canadians who have been dealing with hyper-aggressive Americans since 2001. There were a number of obvious abuses of power that clued Canada in quick.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/26684res20060906.html
and most of those were just against other Americans by their own government.
If they treat their own citizens like that, why would we expect them to respect the rights of another nations citizens. Particularly over things like privacy which has been long protected to a higher standard in Canada than the US.

Re:Patriot Act Aside ...

[Cragen]

Agreed. I doubt any American gov't. agencies host any of their data outside the USA. Indeed, I doubt there is any gov't. anywhere that stores its data anywhwere outside its own borders. What an idiotic article.

C

Re:Patriot Act Aside ...

[Silvrmane]

The reason is that Canadian companies are required by law to adhere to the principles of the PIDPEDA act. Because of the Patriot Act in the US, and its provisions for examination of private data, by thanywhere, at any time, for reasons of national security, there is no way to guarantee the privacy of Canadian data stored on US servers. Therefore they cannot be used, QED.

Re:Patriot Act Aside ...

[Grant_Watson]

I'm not really sure how "news worthy" this is. As one example, the Ontario Education Act prohibits public schools in Ontario from using text books that are not written by Canadian authors.

That's amazingly silly. Maybe British or American textbooks have the wrong number of the letter U?

Re:Patriot Act Aside ...

[iago-vL]

Canadian companies have to adhere to PIPEDA, that's true. But this article is about government, and government doesn't have to adhere to PIPEDA, we are governed by the Privacy Act instead.

Re:Patriot Act Aside ...

[mpe]

The Canadian government trying to keep things in Canada is very standard practice. I didn't RTFA and I'm sure it mentions the Patriot Act, but I really doubt the Patriot Act is the sole reason that they won't outsource hosting companies to the US. Their policy is most likely that they can not outsource anything to anywhere outside of Canada unless they have no choice.

Thus you could call Canada's actions a "patriot policy" or even a "patriot act" :) Being reluctant to outsource anything outside one's country undoubtedly is patriotic.

Re:Patriot Act Aside ...

[garett_spencley]

Canadian English = British English

Re:Patriot Act Aside ...

[pjt33]

Nonsense.

Re:Patriot Act Aside ...

[dwater]

Well, IMO, that's not true on two counts.

1) It's "English", not "British English" (the Scotts, Welsh, and Irish have their own languages). The language spoken in England is simply "English" - call it "English English" if you must; and
2) Canadian English is different to English anyway.

Re:Patriot Act Aside ...

[gzunk]

It's not Scotts, it's Scots. And the vast majority of Scots speak English (with a Scottish accent). Only about 1% of the population speak Gaelic. Ditto with the Welsh (although about 15% of them speak Welsh)

Re:Patriot Act Aside ...

[dwater]

Ah, thanks for the spelling correction.

However, I don't see that the other statistics prove anything.

What's the Patriot Act?

[Anonymous Coward]

The closest thing I could find was the UASABPATRTIAOT act of 2001.

Re:What's the Patriot Act?

[nawcom]

The closest thing I could find was the UASABPATRTIAOT act of 2001. from where? the "Caturday" encyclopedia?

The USA PATRIOT is all acronym, if that's what you were trying to show. Yes, that's what "the Patriot Act" refers to.

Re:What's the Patriot Act?

[nawcom]

I can't wait to see this AC's response to an article on "LABSEOR" technology.

My god!

[MagdJTK]

You mean the US's total disregard for everyone's rights in the name of the "War on Terror(ism)" makes people wary of allowing them near themselves or their data?

I'd never have guessed...

Re:I refuse to comment until we tackle the real is

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure about that, but it pretty much killed Aeris computing.

Can't you just encrypt it?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Or is strong encryption some how not in keeping with the cloud computing metaphor?

Re:Can't you just encrypt it?

[Ephemeriis]

Can't you just encrypt it? Or is strong encryption some how not in keeping with the cloud computing metaphor? Depending on what you're doing with the cloud, no, you might not be able to encrypt it.

If you're looking at something like simple file storage then you could certainly encrypt your data. Encrypt it on your machine...upload it for storage...download it when you need it...decrypt it again on your machine. That's fine.

But if you're looking to use somebody else's CPU cycles that doesn't work so well. Your data has to be in some kind of executable state as it passes through their CPU. Even if the data is transmitted to and from their server in an encrypted state, it has to be decrypted for processing. And when that happens, that CPU better be very trustworthy.

You're already running in some kid of virtualized/time-shared environment... If they have physical access to the machine your code is running on, and your data at some point becomes cleartext for processing, then they've got access to your data anyway.

Re:Can't you just encrypt it?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Ok. Thanks. I was a bit unclear on the concept of "cloud computing". So, essentially, these companies trust Google, amazon, etc, not to mine their trade secrets?

Medical records are also an issue...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a systems analyst for the local health authority, I know that there are very specific restrictions on American vendor access because the Patriot Act allows the US government to access medical records.

"Cloud computing" has other problems

[Animats]

From capacity to "service level agreements" that guarantee little, cloud computing has business problems.

I went to this talk at Stanford by the head of "cloud computing" at Amazon. Technically, Amazon's approach to "cloud computing" is quite impressive. As a business, it works for a special reason - Amazon's load is 4X greater than normal during the buying season before Xmas. Amazon has to size their data centers for the Xmas buying season. For the rest of the year they have vast excess capacity. That's why Amazon's "cloud" is so cheap to use.

So Amazon's "cloud" is a great service, unless you need it during November and December.

Re:"Cloud computing" has other problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, who's to say they're not setting things up so that excess nodes are powered down during off-peak time?

Re:encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

The keys would be kept in Canada.

Good

[HangingChad]

They especially cannot use services where the data is stored in the United States because of fears over the Patriot Act.

Good. It's about time our knee-jerk fear-inspired legislation started hitting us in the pocketbook. And I hope the TSA and Customs Service attitude toward searching laptops at the border provides one more reason for people not to come here. I hope the visa and passport requirements encourage overseas travelers to travel and shop elsewhere. I hope all this silly crap comes back to bite us on the economic butt. If it hurts bad enough maybe we'll actually start thinking about whether we get to dictate fear inspired stupidity to the rest of the world without consequence.

Why is this even an issue?

[Cynic.AU]

The best thing, of course, is to have encrypted content in the cloud that cloud providers cannot decrypt. Until such technology is possible I'll be voting with my wallet (so to speak) and ignoring cloud computing. Especially with the way the US has gone of late.. :-)

Point being?

[bluefoxlucid]

What moron stores extremely sensitive data on random untrusted systems? Especially any kind of sensitive government data.

Sure, let's let Lockheed Martin store their working research on what they're building as our next latest stealth spy planes on computers in Germany and Canada. This is a great idea.

Re:Point being?

[ozonepriest]

Funny you mention Lockheed Martin: they're one of the companies we have a problem with. See this wikipedia article and search for "Lockheed."

Re:Point being?

[Geekbot]

What if you just have to transmit some files off site to yourself and you use Rapidshare? What if you need to work on a spreadsheet at home and you import it into your Google Docs account? It is important for a government and businesses recognize the ways that information can be compromised.

But it is significant when they are naming USA as an unsafe place for data. That limits our ability to keep up as we lose opportunities for contracts due to liability over data.

It is not a matter of a company's servers being unsecure. It is that the USA can demand those records, without search warrant, without you knowing, requiring of handing over keys to your data. That means that any security measures you verify at your contractors end are meaningless if the government decides it wants the information.

European leaders have, in the past, gone on record with concerns over the USA using communications surveillance systems to steal trade secrets and other business information. No matter what your contractor's set up is, the USA can access his server, ban him from notifying you, require handing over encryption keys, water-board information from admins, all without a warrant. Official US policies require counter-policies from countries those policies affect.

Not just governments

[Roger W Moore]

But, I think the summary doesn't make it sufficiently clear that this is just government IT departments, not all information technology in Canada. Private citizens and businesses can still do as they wish.
It is not just governments. Universities and other institutions have obligations under Canadian privacy laws. If they store data in the US, for example by using GMail accounts or online question services from text book companies, the US government can gain access to private data on Canadian students and the University will then be liable for a breach of privacy under Canadian law.

This has meant that at least some Canadian Universities are looking at implementing policies which forbid the storing of data in the US. The result undoubtedly will have some economic impact on the US since now either US companies will have to invest in Canadian based servers or be automatically disqualified from bidding on IT contracts (although I also understand that the US government can force US companies to reveal data even if it is not stored in the US so it may rule out any US company). This is not just hypothetical either - to my knowledge it has already affected contract decisions.

Re: Good Government

[mhollis]

Actually, it's supposed to work that way under the US Constitution.

The Legislative branch makes the law. Second, the Executive branch executes the law. Last, the Judicial branch interprets the law. Each branch has an effect on the other.

Legislative Branch

• Checks on the Executive
  • Impeachment power (House)
  • Trial of impeachments (Senate)
  • Selection of the President (House) and Vice President (Senate) in the case of no majority of electoral votes
  • May override Presidential vetoes
  • Senate approves departmental appointments
  • Senate approves treaties and ambassadors
  • Approval of replacement Vice President
  • Power to declare war
  • Power to enact taxes and allocate funds
  • President must, from time-to-time, deliver a State of the Union address
• Checks on the Judiciary
  • Senate approves federal judges
  • Impeachment power (House)
  • Trial of impeachments (Senate)
  • Power to initiate constitutional amendments
  • Power to set courts inferior to the Supreme Court
  • Power to set jurisdiction of courts
  • Power to alter the size of the Supreme Court
• Checks on the Legislature - because it is bicameral, the Legislative branch has a degree of self-checking.
  • Bills must be passed by both houses of Congress
  • House must originate revenue bills
  • Neither house may adjourn for more than three days without the consent of the other house
  • All journals are to be published

Executive Branch

• Checks on the Legislature
  • Veto power
  • Vice President is President of the Senate
  • Commander in chief of the military
  • Recess appointments
  • Emergency calling into session of one or both houses of Congress
  • May force adjournment when both houses cannot agree on adjournment
  • Compensation cannot be diminished
• Checks on the Judiciary
  • Power to appoint judges
  • Pardon power
• Checks on the Executive
  • Vice President and Cabinet can vote that the President is unable to discharge his duties

Judicial Branch

• Checks on the Legislature
  • Judicial review
  • Seats are held on good behavior
  • Compensation cannot be diminished
• Checks on the Executive
  • Judicial review
  • Chief Justice sits as President of the Senate during presidential impeachment

These checks are inefficient. And this inefficiency is borne out when one political party in the US system captures all three of the branches (as it has) and then, for the purpose of extending the power of that party, fails to exercise restraint and to provide a check on the other branches.

What I have noted is that the only branch that has actually decided to act in a manner consistent with Constitutional checks and balances is the Supreme Court. To the extent the Legislative Branch (or branches of the various States) have worked to mandate sentencing or require judges to act without their power to interpret, the Supreme Court has ruled these requirements as nothing more than guidelines. And this has gone on despite a rather radical shift in the Supreme Court to the political right. And I would agree with them, even though my own political direction differs strongly from many of their recent decisions and statements.

The Orwellian-named "USA Patriot Act" was a bill that was utterly altered -- in its entirety -- in the middle of the night by Bush's Attorney General, John Ashcroft within a committee that was also completely asleep at the switch. This is part of the rules of Congress, where a committee will take in a b

Lets get real...

[3seas]

...you want your data to be secure?

Disconnect it from the net.

given the vast amount of digital leakage and other human errors, who are you really putting trust in?

Re:Lets get real...

[hey!]

...you want your data to be secure?

Disconnect it from the net.

Next encrypt it with a one-time pad. Then burn all copies of the pad.

Re:Lets get real...

[SanityInAnarchy]

There are a lot of degrees between "Don't trust the US" and "Disconnect, entirely." Especially considering that data which is disconnected, but still in the US, is still a problem.

given the vast amount of digital leakage and other human errors, who are you really putting trust in? Well, if the servers are in Canada, it's still going to be a very long list.

If the servers are in the US, it's pretty much going to be the same very long list, plus the US government.

Which is more secure?

Thank god the CDN gov

[future assassin]

has the brains to not store Canadian citizen data in the US. Since the US gov could cares less about illegally spying on their citizens voice and data transmissions with illegal wire taps, do you think they'd care any less about some foreign countries data stored on US owned networks.

Not just canada.

[sjwest]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7231186.stm Has this issue. Trustworthy and patriotic - something loses in that war.

I disagree with your tag

[Jane Q. Public]

Re: the topic of discussion: I think "UNDO" would be a wise choice.

Just political posturing

[scrib]

This is just a political statement. "You can't host government data anywhere outside national boundaries." That pretty much covers everywhere already! Mentioning the PATRIOT Act is just posturing. Let's go over the political statements:

You can't host government data in:

• the U.S. because of the PATRIOT Act.
• China because of Tibet.
• Syria because of human rights violations.
• Elbonia because it doesn't exist.
• anywhere else because it's not Canada.

Also, nobody said anything about sensitive information. They are presumably talking about the vast amounts of information governments produce for public consumption. Downloadable forms, information on where to get a driver's license, front ends to access public records databases... Making sure the hosting business stays within the borders is just a little protectionism for their own hosting companies. Government requiring contractors to subcontract only with companies in the same political boundary is not at all uncommon, regardless of the industry.

Not that I'm at all a fan of the PATRIOT Act, but even if we rose up and successfully convinced our lawmakers to do away with it, Canada STILL wouldn't let their companies host their data here.

Re:Just political posturing

[mpe]

This is just a political statement. "You can't host government data anywhere outside national boundaries."

However it's one which actually makes sense in terms of "patriotism" and "national security"

Safe Harbour

[davecl]

This issue has been running for a long time. In particular the different attitudes to the privacy of individuals' data in the US and the EU has blocked a lot of data being transferred from the EU to the US. This isn't the Patriot Act - the linked article dates back to before that was enacted. As an EU citizen I like it that my personal data can't just be bundled up and sold on from one company to another without my permission.

However, there are provisions under the Safe Harbour rules that allow data to be transferred to the US, so this shouldn't be a complete block to development or outsourcing. As long as companies, and government agencies, agree to abide by the rules. If they don't want to, that's their choice.

Re: Good Government

[Opportunist]

I'd rather vote for someone who is soft on terror than someone who is soft on defending freedom.

But I noticed the US voters want "strong" leaders. People who make decisions and follow them through, no matter what. If they're wrong, they're wrong, but that's still better than changing their mind.

I guess, as a European, I won't fully understand that. And I guess neither would any US voter understand why we can vote for parties and politicians who tell you the exact opposite they told you 5 years ago.

Duh

[stabiesoft]

Why is there even an article on this? Obviously if your a foreign entity and suddenly whoever was holding your data went to war with your country, your data is their data now. Iraq proved we can go to war practically overnight. I've never thought it was a good idea to outsource email. Why in the world would you outsource your computing as a normal course of biz? Basically I have one immutable tenet, without phyiscal security you have no security. Translation, if my data is not sitting on my property, I have no idea what happens to it.

Dampening? Actually just the opposite.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not dampening cloud computing but instead it is motivating more companies to build cloud computing facilities, roughly one per sovereign territory.

Also, I'd like to point out that one of the pioneers in the business, Amazon EC, already has a cloud infrastructure in Europe so that people who want don't want to ship their data to the USA, don't have to.

With all these new cloud computing facilities coming online, you will see lots of variations on the theme. The competitive market will decide which ones are best. Some of the best ones will buy up failing competitors at a cheap price, and then use their data centers to offer the service in multiple countries.

Re: Good Government

[mhollis]

I suppose the European systems have their flaws. Some don't even have written constitutions (oh horrors!). But Americans do want leaders who appear strong and able. And I'd imagine Europeans do as well, as I cannot think of any leader in Europe who appears weak to me.

The issue with the US system of government is that our Executive is not directly elected by the people. And, I suppose, European Executive power, mostly being vested in Parliaments isn't either.

The various US States elect our President. And each state may choose how its electors shall vote, whether or not that vote shall be proportional to the popular vote within that state (which does not happen) or a "winner-take-all" system (which is what we have today). Our system tends to be described as "red state" versus "blue state." But that's really not all that clear, as most states have tended to be very evenly-split between the two dominant political parties.

European systems seem to be more friendly to multiple political parties and you have coalition governments more often. Perhaps that requires your legislatures and executives to be a bit more responsive and responsible.

I can report with some conviction that I believe our current President will be seen as having destroyed his party's hopes in this election. I do hope they remember this lesson.

Re: Good Government

[Opportunist]

There are two extremes. One is "winner takes all", which invariably leads to a (mostly) two party system, with little hope for a third party to rise to importance. The other one is "let everyone in who gets a vote", a system Italy had for a long time, leading to dozens of minuscle parties holding a seat or two, with coalitions between so many parties that governments fall apart, on average, after a year (that's pretty much Italy's average).

Either system is, in my opinion, doomed to be dissatisfying for the voter. The former because if the parties are too similar (as they are now, to an outsider's view), there is no real choice. The latter because you just know it doesn't matter how you vote, they won't get anything done anyway because no idea gets a majority.

Most European countries today have a minimum limit to get a seat in the parlament. You need at least 4-7% (varying between countries) to have a seat. Usually, gaining that much support already gives you a few seats right away. And while 4% doesn't sound like a lot, it pretty much means that the average European parlament contains about 4-6 parties.

This usually (if not almost always) leads to coalition governments. Which has its advantages (radical changes in policies are nearly unheard of) and of course disadvantages. Today, the disadvantages start to show a lot more than they did in the past, it seems our parties are too concerned to show "weakness" to cooperate anymore. More than one country has a coalition today that can't get anything sensibly done because the coalition partners are unwilling or unable to agree on compromises, because they fear their voters will feel they "lost their line" and "gave in".

Very true

[Mr_Icon]

I work at a large Canadian university and we're expressly forbidden from storing *any* student-related information, no matter how insignificant, on non-Canadian servers. This doesn't just include things like gmail, but also various payment processing services, online storage providers (think Amazon's S3), and even things like Google Analytics. The latter is so ubiquitous, I'm not sure we're succeeding in extricating it from university-owned websites, and each time we have to explain to people why sending sensitive information about our users' browsing habits to the US is not a good idea.

I don't think this policy has much to do with the Patriot Act, though I'm sure it acted as a catalyst. We'd probably not store any data in Netherlands either. If you're an institution that has to worry about compliance with various national privacy laws, it makes sense to store all information either within the organization, or at least within the same country.

Re:Very true

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't have anything to do with the patriot act as much as it has to do with slashdot's alterior motive to spread paranoia and hate about the USA.

Re:Very true

[dwater]

> It doesn't have anything to do with the patriot act as much as it has to do with slashdot's alterior motive to spread paranoia and hate about the USA.

Well, it is run by "Americans" (from the USA, not anywhere else in America), and USA people have proved that they seem hell bent on spreading paranoia about and hate for the USA - it's something they're undeniably best at.

Re:encryption

[Opportunist]

Yay, a reason to piss off and attack yet another country! And this time it ain't far at least.

Not only Patriot Act, Privacy Act (Canada)

[Anonymous Coward]

The Patriot Act is only half the issue. Contrary to the implications in the cited article it isn't really a nationalistic issue (i.e. trying to keep business in Canada). That's more of a side effect. The biggest issue is the Privacy Act in Canada, which provides a variety of privacy guarantees for Canadian citizens when they are doing business with companies and other organizations, including the government. These include such things as the requirement for a clear declaration of the purpose for collecting the information, who it will (or won't) be disclosed to, how it will be disposed of when the use is finished, etc.

For example, a company can not collect personal information from a Canadian citizen for one reason, and then turn around and sell it or give it to some other company to be used for a different reason. Many types of information collection require consent for its collection (health information especially). Not all information is considered "personal" (e.g., what's on a business card usually isn't), but a great deal is.

More details are available in various forms from this Canadian government site. The most relevant part for the implications of the Privacy Act on businesses is this summary. The closest thing to an FAQ for businesses is this guide.

To do business in conformance with the Act isn't especially difficult. When you read the list of things to do, they are the kind of obvious things you would expect or hope a business would do anyway, if they actually care about their customers and their personal information. The only difference is that here in Canada it has been put into law because of many past abuses.

You would therefore need to understand the implications before you decided to move your whole data centre full of personal information on Canadian citizens into the US or some other country. You would still have to abide by the Privacy Act, and if some law existed in the host country that prevented that (e.g., the Patriot Act), well, then you'd be set for a special kind of legal conundrum. Break the law at home or break it in another country? Hmmm...

It might be easy say "who cares about conforming with Canadian law?" if you aren't in Canada, but, obviously, the Canadian government doesn't have the luxury of such an attitude. Well, not overtly, anyway :-) Thus, they probably have it as a matter of policy not to allow database hosting outside Canadian borders. It's nothing nefarious. With storage inside Canada the database will be unambigously subject to Canadian law and the Privacy Act.

Nice blinkers there son

[hostyle]

Because the UK are the only country/government to ever lose track of valuable data ...

Re:Nice blinkers there son

[c_g_hills]

The U.K. is the one I have most experience with, and one of the compelling reasons that I emigrated to Denmark.

Re:encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Demand them whom from?

  The hosting company in USA? the company doesnt have them.
  The third party that is outside USA? the USA goverment doesnt have juristiction over that third party (unless the third party is an citizen of USA and that is still disputed by other nations).

Re:encryption

[PPH]

Doing daily business would require bringing the keys and the data together. Whoever is empowered to do so for normal operations will simply be waterboarded until the keys appear.

Better to move the keys, data, servers and administrative staff to a friendlier jurisdiction.

Re:encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

And that would work because no Canadian ever needs to travel to the US and the US is never above arresting a visitor for something that they did somewhere else.

News flash: Canadians don't trust Americans.

[Anonymous Coward]

News flash: Canadians don't trust Americans. Why would we?

You torture our citizens (Arar, Khadr, etc.) You fail to live up to the obligations of NAFTA (softwood lumber, etc). You keep trying to take our natural resources (water, oil, etc) and rape what little we have left of our sovereignty (Security and Prosperity Partnership, etc).

We were with you against the Nazis (thanks for showing up by the way, even if it was a few years late) but this pre-emptive "war on terror" is ... well, a little scary. We came with you to Afghanistan (Remember Afghanistan? That's where Bin Laden was hiding. Remember Bin Laden?) and we're still there, even though we got a little turned off when our first 4 casualties were from an American bomber (the Tarnak Farm incident). For future reference when command says "hold fire" it means DON'T SHOOT. Even if you are amphetamines.

We're really sorry about that whole 9/11 thing (we lost some too you know), but that WAS 6.5 years ago. And honestly, when you say the word "terrorist" to a Canadian, the first thing they picture is Bush.

Y'all have really blown it these last few years, so please forgive us if we keep our distance until you clean up your mess.

Back to Renting People!

[Anonymous Coward]

Computing is finally cheap enough for the masses, and people want to store their data on someone else's servers?!

why don't you go back to renting CPU time too?

For a small monthly fee, I can:

1. Rent you CPU time
2. Rent you storage
3. Rent you applications

You will own nothing, probably not even "your" data. Hey it works for cellphones, it can work for computers too.

Re:encryption

[SleepyHappyDoc]

There is no part of the Patriot Act that compels foreign countries to do anything.

Nations do this all the time.

[russotto]

Much as I dislike the Patriot Act, I rather suspect that Patriot Act or no Patriot Act, the US government would snoop on any foreign government's data available to it. And foreign governments (even "friendly) ones would do the same to the US. The time when gentlemen didn't read other gentleman's mail is long past.

Re:Nations do this all the time.

[gfineman]

the US government would snoop on any foreign government's data available to it This is very true. The assumption that the US government obeys its own laws is particularly inapplicable when it comes to the expansions of investigations allowed by the Patriot Act. The company I work for does hosting both in the US and in Canada. The customers in Canada operate on the simplistic notion that hosting in Canada is good and in the US is bad. Actually, it makes no difference where data is hosted, only who controls access to the data. We had a potential customer that whose database would be of interest to the US Homeland Security Department. They concluded that it made no difference where the database was located (including in house) and that it was most likely already secretly taken.

Re:Nations do this all the time.

[Geekbot]

This was actually an issue the EU looked into. I remember hearing a few years back how an EU commission voiced concerns over the USA using Eschelon to spy on businesses and steal information. They claimed the USA would then award that information to USA corporations. I believe this was before much of the US would have heard of Eschelon and many who talked about it were branded conspiracy nuts. Then these leaders from the EU came out and not only outed Eschelon but exposed abuses of communications surveillance system.

Re:encryption

[WindowlessView]

And that would work because no Canadian ever needs to travel to the US and the US is never above arresting a visitor for something that they did somewhere else.

Or any other nationality. Certainly never to this guy.

Re: Good Government

[ColdWetDog]

Nice summary.

Keep on making sense like this and we'll either revoke your Slashdot ID or your US Citizenship.

Or maybe both.

Re: Good Government

[pjt33]

The former because if the parties are too similar (as they are now, to an outsider's view), there is no real choice. It's stronger than that. In an effort to attract the "swing voters" the two parties drift towards each other, so over time they will become similar.

Re:encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

The keys would be kept in Canada. Keeping the keys in Canada as stated above is bad. Canada has a lot of laws which were created in the mid 90s (1996) by Alan Rocks which mimic or are worst than the laws in the US or other places.

For example the Police can seize your computer equipment under a secert warrant. Hold it for 90+ days with out letting you know why they were seized. They do not have to provide a list of what was taken, nor let you see what is being taken.

This happen to a friend and former co-worker of mine. The employer want to ensure he did not leave and work for another company who produces the same type of software. So they reported his car stolen, faked e-mails threats, and than had the Police arrest him, take his computers, publish false news releases, and even had his mother placed under 'protective arrest'.

It is a real mess. Best bet, stay far away from Canada. The current laws in Canada makes WWII Germany look good.

Re:encryption

[ehrichweiss]

Did you miss the part where the Unites States was involved in the Patriot Act? I don't know if you noticed but the way we bomb^H^H^H^Hcompel other countries to do our bidding doesn't have to have anything whatsoever to do with the Patriot Act, though that'll be the excuse for certain.

Re: Good Government

[Opportunist]

It works akin to the ice cream vendors theory.

Imagine a beach, stretching for a mile. There are people lying on the right, people on the left, scattered over the beach. There are two vendors of ice cream, positioned pretty much at 25% and 75% of the beach. Both of them make ample business.

Then one vendor ponders. If I move towards the middle, some people from the other side might come to me when I'm closer. The ones on the far end have to come to me anyway, since the other vendor is even further away.

Of course, this doesn't go unnoticed, the other vendor notices the lack of income, he realizes his competitor moved towards the center and, nobody to let a good idea go uncopied, does the same.

At the end, they are standing back to back in the middle of the beach. They both now make less profit, since the customers on the far ends think their ice cream just ain't worth it to walk half a mile for some ice cream. And in the long run, they don't think ice cream isn't so swell anyway.

It's left to the reader to ponder how this applies to politics.

Re:encryption

[CrimsonAvenger]

How would that help? I'm fairly sure some part of the Patriot Act allows the US government to demand handing over the keys.

No. Can you say "I take the Fifth"? Sure you can....

Re: Good Government

[CrimsonAvenger]

Power to alter the size of the Supreme Court

That's covered by the "Power to initiate constitutional amendments". Since Roosevelt tried to pack the Supremes, we've passed an Amendment mandating the size of the Court. Congress has no power to affect it further without another Amendment.

Re:I'm surprised

[hyades1]

Not surprising to see that there's a few fascists out there with moderator points and absolutely no sense of humour.

Patriot Act is not specifically the problem

[labmonkey09]

The Patriot Act isn't center mass of the issue. Some of it has to do with protectionism. Some of it has to do with national security. You don't want your economy's core processes and data running on foreign networks. Pulling the plug in a foreign jurisdiction, yanking a few undersea cables, knocking down a comsat are all real threats. Onshore resources are also threatened but less so, and, at least theoretically, repaired faster - though that may be years. Lack of privacy is a BS issue WITH REGARD TO THE PATRIOT ACT SPECIFICALLY. You put your citizen's data on foreign systems, the other guy doesn't need a Patriot Act to take it. There are writs & warrants & gum wrappers in every country.

Re: Good Government

[dajak]

The other one is "let everyone in who gets a vote", a system Italy had for a long time, leading to dozens of minuscle parties holding a seat or two, with coalitions between so many parties that governments fall apart, on average, after a year (that's pretty much Italy's average).

The Netherlands has no voting threshold whatsoever, and has been pretty stable (even to the point of being extremely dull) over most of its history as a democracy. You need just 0.667% of the votes to get into the 150 seat parliament.

Either system is, in my opinion, doomed to be dissatisfying for the voter. The former because if the parties are too similar (as they are now, to an outsider's view), there is no real choice. The latter because you just know it doesn't matter how you vote, they won't get anything done anyway because no idea gets a majority.

One way to think of it is that compromises must always be made: in winner takes all systems the voter often votes for the lesser evil of the two big similar parties because he knows that the party he really prefers will never be big enough to change anything, in proportional systems the voter has to accept that his preferred party will be ready to make deals with the enemy to get into the coalition. In either case the resulting government never does what you want.

More than one country has a coalition today that can't get anything sensibly done because the coalition partners are unwilling or unable to agree on compromises

This kind of paralysis can obviously also occur inside a big party spanning a broad range of the electoral spectrum. No system is immune to insane voters.

A problem for the UK as well

[mark2003]

Aparently the UK government selected a subsidiary of Lockheed-Martin to provide the IT for the next UK census. This will be on servers located in the UK, however I believe the Patriot Act still allows the US government to access the data collected because LM is an American company.

So, and rightly so, many MPs are trying to get the contract awarded to a EU company instead to avoid privacy implications and possibly because it brings the UK goverment into conflict with EU and UK privacy laws.

Re:encryption

[Opportunist]

Have you ever? First, it's usually as good as pleading guilty in the eyes of a jury. Yeah, they may not use it, yaddayadda, sure. I sure want to see someone go free after taking the fifth when facing a jury.

And second, I doubt it works when the Patriot Act comes into play.

Re:encryption

[CrimsonAvenger]

Have you ever? First, it's usually as good as pleading guilty in the eyes of a jury. Yeah, they may not use it, yaddayadda, sure. I sure want to see someone go free after taking the fifth when facing a jury.

Have I ever? Of course not. You have to be caught to go in front of a Jury. Of course, this isn't something that goes to a Jury, in any case. The cops (feds) ask the question, you say "I want to speak to my lawyer", interview with the cops ends.

Later, someone else may bring you a Search Warrant for the key. If the Warrant accurately describes the location, you have to let them look to their heart's content. If they don't find it, that's THEIR problem, not your problem. If they drag you in front of a Judge, you take the Fifth, the Judge maybe jails you for contempt, but there's more than enough caselaw to get you out of there as soon as your Lawyer can fill out the forms.

Then comes the countersuits, of course.

And second, I doubt it works when the Patriot Act comes into play.

Yes, it does. USA Patriot Act doesn't override the Constitution. It may take taking the case to the Supremes, but the Constitution always wins in the end.

Note, by the way, that non-citizens don't necessarily have the same Rights as citizens. They don't necessarily NOT have those Rights, either. That's what Lawyers are for.

Re:encryption

[yacc143]

Boy are you naive. All your pretty constitution is worth less than my role toilet paper when some government agent utters "Terrorism". You noticed that the DHS started to search laptops on border entry/exit. If it's encrypted, and you refuse the DHS guy access, the treatment you get depends if you are inmate in the police state or not. If you are, your IT stuff gets confiscated, and will be kept for a random time. If you are not, you can fly back home I guess. That's the newest case that comes to mind. Older stuff includes being held (as an US citizen) without a trial indefinitly, that example of the US government run youth hostel in Cuba, and so on. Or take the joys of National Security Letters. You know this joy of every secret state police that ever existed. Secret courts (like the FISA), or cases closed from public scrutinity by declaring them relevant to national security. And the bad part here is, because I know a number of Americans, and they are completely nice people, is the fact that from an outside view, if you cover the headings, it's hard to guess who the good guys are and who the bad guys. Ok, which group with a leader that uses religion as an explanation has killed more people? The US Army in the Middle East or the bad terrorists in the US and EU? Which organizations don't give a damn about (international) laws? Basically, clearly the US are the good guys for you, but not because some moral high ground, but because you happen to be US. It's way less so clearcut for an European, but on average the US are probably considered the good guys here still.

Re: Good Government

[mhollis]

I'm pretty sure that all forms of government as practiced in republics all over the world are subject to corruption, subject to ineffeciencies and subject to errors.

The American system was a set of compromises, with a bicameral legislature that pits "the interests of the states" againsts "the interests of the people," with Senators holding office for six years and members of the House of Representatives holding office for two. I recall reading a quote from Benjamin Franklin, who did weigh in on the current US Constitution as it was being considered as having said, "Every day a government official holds office beyond one year is one day closer to tyranny."

The populous states wanted government elected by numbers of people, the less-populous wanted the federal system to represent the states. And, included in the original unamended Constitution was a method of counting slaves and indigenous persons (not allowed the vote) so that the states with large populations of those persons could be better represented in the US House of Representatives.

But getting back to the Patriot Act, the US Constitution allows each branch of our Congress to make its own rules. And the rule that created this act was the rule that allows editing (and wholesale substitution of language) of a bill prior to a final vote. This creates the opportunity for the kind of corrupt practice exemplified by the Patriot Act, as the act that was debated on the floor of the House and Senate was not the act that was actually passed. The entire language was changed, wholesale, overnight. And the people who changed the language were not Congressional committee members but people working for the President.

One could talk about the Dutch, the English, the Italian system and debate the strengths and weaknesses of each, but any system that allows another branch of government to rewrite laws in the middle of the night and to do a switchout like was done in October, 2001 is suspect.

I feel ashamed for the actions of my country. These are not actions that ought to be supported by any citizen of any country.

Re: Good Government

[dajak]

One could talk about the Dutch, the English, the Italian system and debate the strengths and weaknesses of each, but any system that allows another branch of government to rewrite laws in the middle of the night and to do a switchout like was done in October, 2001 is suspect. And yet in 2004 the American people voted for these people to stay in power. The system is certainly not going to change that way.

I think we in Europe are mostly saved from the worst excesses of political opportunism because most countries, certainly the relatively smaller ones, are quite sensitive to the image they project abroad. A bad reputation has a direct economic impact. The American people have the problem of being responsible for keeping the world's most powerful - and arrogant - government in check. The worst things European governments generally have done over the past decade is following the American lead where they shouldn't have.

I don't think our system (the Dutch one) is any more perfect than the US one. It is for instance formally speaking completely open to exploitation by the monarch who forms and appoints governments (generally consistent with the election outcomes and following the results of party coalition negotiations, but there is no constitutional check at all), and appoints all provincial governors, courts, mayors, civil servants, and soldiers by decree, gives and takes citizenship by decree, and can block all acts of parliament by simply refusing to sign them. And those people appointed by the monarch swear loyalty to the crown, not to the parliament.

This was actually very handy during WWII when the government and queen, but not the parliament, were in exile, and they simply ruled by royal decree. The queen even replaced the government during WWII on her own authority.

But the fact remains that the system works as long as the monarch is 1) sane and 2) feels a responsibility towards ancestors and descendants to pass on the estate undamaged, and doesn't want to provoke an abolition of the monarchy. God help us if we ever get an "after me the deluge"* type like GW Bush as monarch.

* In case you don't know it, this was supposedly once said by Louis XV of France, and it, besides being incredibly arrogant, turned out to be prophetic, as his successor was decapitated during the French revolution.

Re: Good Government

[mhollis]

I believe that, according to the general laws of the nation, the English monarch holds the reins in England and rule by the House of Commons descended down the line of the monarchy needing to tax their subjects.

Your queen fled to England, ruling by decree and received no tax revenues and had very little (if any) power over her subjects during the Nazi occupation. She could deplore this, she could encourage that but she had no real power within her realm, save that of her government-in-exile.

But I'll bet her continuing to appoint governments in step with the "will of the people" is based on the requirement that the government of the Netherlands be able to tax its citizenry with their say-so. The only means by which a modern monarch could take over government is to entirely fund all government functions through the Royal treasury. And that gets old pretty quick.

The downfall of the regime ancien in France was brought on by the King's coffers being empty so that Louis XIV had no financial ability to continue to run things. He requested help from the Nobility, who also could not. His request to the Third Estate (the Commoners) is what caused government to change. I like to believe that when the commoners were given a vote, it was akin to suddenly releasing pressure on a boiler -- it blew. The end result was a very bloody revolution in France.

It is probable that Louis XIV waited too long to go to the people. It's also likely that he was also a victim of the times.