Again. The United States is incessantly violating people's privacy.
Sure, the 'cloud' is basically hanging everything up on the Internet for anyone to see, but that is not how it was meant to be. It was supposed to be a way of making sure a person can access his or her data from anywhere without constantly carrying around a hard drive or multiple thumb drives. It was supposed to be a way for a person to use all the computing power necessary even if all the person has is a puny netbook or tablet, or even a phone. It was supposed to be a way of getting things done anywhere using any device by letting the 'cloud' take care of the heavy lifting. Collaboration was supposed to be a great feature of the 'cloud', allowing people from all over the world to work on the same project, no matter where they were or what device they were using to access the 'cloud'. Even so, it was never meant to be used or accessed by people not specifically authorized for it.
Now it would appear that a piece of legislation is allowing the U.S. law enforcement to snoop what goes on in the cloud. While currently it is limited to the servers located in the country, but nothing is really stopping them from demanding other countries' cooperation. We all remember how they demanded that New Zealand would hand over the founder of MegaUpload because his company servers were being used for piracy. The servers were not located in the U.S., the founder was not located there, and yet it was the U.S. decided to prosecute the guy. For creating a company that allowed people to rent server space from them. The hand of 'world police' stretches far.
I've shared my gripe with the powers that be before, most notably when Obama allowed detaining U.S. citizens without sufficient (or any) proof for an unspecified amount of time and when he allowed the killing of U.S. citizens abroad without due process.
It is all part of the problem that Americans tend to have nowadays. A problem brought out by a smart chap. A problem that Americans have excessive faith in the establishment. That is to say that whenever there is a problem, they want more government control. The latest issue, gun control. One shooting by a person who used his mother's guns and people go running to the government, demanding more stricter rules, from more psychological tests to banning guns altogether. Random demands, just wanting the government to spread its wings and bubble-wrap them. Because it is not the people or the gun culture at fault, it is the government. And giving all possible power to the government surely can't be a bad thing, right?
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