Google plans to make PCs history
guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk
...catch my drift?
If Google does have a GDrive project, I'd bet they don't consider it a means to "make PCs history". I'd bet they probably just want to offer a service that users want to use; therefore increasing use of their other products and selling more ads.
I am not a lawyer, but this seems out of sync - I imagine the process for getting a warrant and a subpoena are different (the latter being easier). Whatever the legal reasoning was for protecting the letters I store in my home should also apply to my e-mails in Google's database, no?
Anyone more knowledgeable care to elucidate?
I think you could argue that, due to Google File System's (GFS) distributed nature, you could request a subpoena from a local judge in any country in which Google has a data center because Google would have to prove that a chunk of data belonging to someone is not hosted in that country. That's very hard ot disprove since I doubt that Google keeps historical track of their chunks. The way GFS works, a master keeps tracks of chunks but it doesn't keep a history of where each chunk was. So a clever lawyer could try to subpoena anyone's account given that Google has a data center in their country.
For example, Google has a data center in UK. Could US person's account, be subjected to a UK issued subpoena if a lawyer uses the logic I described above? Maybe.. there's no way to prove that a chunk of your data is not hosted in UK.
Distributed systems ("cloud") are a privacy nightmare waiting to happen, and I think that EU privacy commission will tackle this issue at some point. "Cloud" computing seems to be illegal (to a certain degree, in strong-privacy countries like Germany).
More info here: http://www.jroller.com/MasterMark/entry/google_teh_evil_clou...
A lot of technological advances are "nightmares waiting to happen" before the proper legal systems are in place. This is a problem with privacy laws, not with Google's technology.
And how long do you think it will take for all the countries in the world to adopt these laws?
For now, I'd consider any tech that can run into issues like I described, a problem, and not the laws. Laws should be considered immovable objects since they're open to interpretation and rely on centuries of case law. Laws have already all but killed P2P... and nothing has changed in the past 8 years that will change that and I'd bet against anything changing them in the next decade as well.
What do you think will happen if Google decides to give your letters to a govt, perhaps because Google believes that you're evil?
How much effort do you think that Google will expend on your behalf?