Cloud vendors seek better protection laws

Friday, September 24, 2010

Executives from top cloud vendors met with a congressional committee this week to urge lawmakers to improve the legal protection of data stored in the cloud, Computerworld recently reported.

Members of the Digital Due Process Coalitions, which includes representatives from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Salesforce.com and Rackspace, said the current laws are inconsistent and confusing, and they deter some businesses from using the services of the cloud.

Richard Salgado, Google senior counsel, pointed out that the Electronic Communications Privacy Acts of 1986 allows the government to compel service providers to disclose the content of an email older than 180 days with only a subpoena. Salgado said information stored on the cloud should be treated as if it was stored on a home computer, which would require a warrant.

David Schellhase, executive vice president of Salesforce.com, told the committee that its customers, especially those outside the country, want assurance that the U.S. government will not access their data without deliberate due process.

Michigan democrat John Conyers said the importance of data protection in the cloud had been “undervalued” by the committee.

Several tech vendors and civil liberties groups launched the Digital Due Process Coalition in March to push for changes to ECPA. Representatives also recently met with the Senate Judiciary Committee to advocate changes to the law.