Last but not least: The search for the right cloud
In the future, data is to be stored on the Internet in so-called clouds. Swiss authorities are also already planning to move data to the cloud. Will «no control over our data» become the catchphrase of 2012?
The idea comes from the eGovernment steering committee, which includes Federal Councillors Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf and Johann Schneider Ammann. According to this strategy, all Swiss authorities should outsource their data - even sensitive data - to clouds. This was reported by Woz online on Thursday. Even if the digital clouds have economic and technical advantages, such as savings on storage space and software, some concerns about data protection cannot be completely dispelled: as soon as the company operating the cloud is American, it must also give the American authorities access to the data of European customers, regardless of where the cloud computer is located.
Does this take control of users' data away from them? In Germany, they said "yes" at the beginning of the year and presented the cloud with the "Big Brother Award". In their laudation, Woz said: "Sorry, dear investigative journalists, anyone who uses a Gmail account to communicate with whistleblowers is acting negligently." Because Gmail is Google's free email service. And the largest cloud providers are currently Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Google.
