Law Enforcement and the Cloud

Posted on | April 27, 2009 | No Comments

The articles report that the FBI raided at least two Texas data centers last week, serving search-and-seizure warrants for computing equipment, including servers, routers and storage. The FBI was seeking equipment that may have been involved in fraudulent business practices by a handful of small VoIP vendors.

The problem is that they didn’t just grab the systems belonging to the VoIP vendors, but also hundreds of servers that served a wide variety of businesses, the vast majority of which had never dealt with or even heard of the companies under investigation, according to Threat Level. Companies interviewed complained of losing millions of dollars in lost revenue and equipment with no warning whatsoever.

A disturbing piece from James Urquhart, taking a lead from an article on Cloudiquity, showing how our law enforcement agencies are trailing a long way behind the development of cloud-based computing. James offers his own, US-focused, take on what has to happen if this kind of collateral damage from police and other investigations is to be avoided:

The law must respect digital assets in the same way that it respects physical assets.
The federal government should adopt a cloud-computing bill of rights.
It is time for our policy makers to step up and really understand the influence that the Internet and cloud computing will have on the future growth of this country.

The question needs to be asked, whether the same, or similar, steps could and should be taken here in the UK and across Europe – otherwise a single heavy-handed investigation of criminal activity in the cloud could jeopardise hundreds of completely legitimate businesses or activities.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, james urquhart, cloudiquity , law