InfoWorld: The government is driving some people away from the cloud

Paul Carr from TechCrunch did a good job making the case why some of us may want to reconsider blanket uses for the cloud: "I've been growing increasingly alarmed by stories such as the U.S. government subpoenaing Twitter (and reportedly Gmail and Facebook) users over their support of WikiLeaks. The casual use of subpoenas, including against foreign citizens is worrying enough -- the New York Times says more than 50,000 'national security letters' are sent each year -- but even more concerning is the fact that often these subpoenas are sealed, preventing the companies from notifying the users they affect."

In other words, you're putting your personal data on a cloud provider, and the government can go directly to it for that data, bypassing you altogether. While you might think your cloud provider would stand up to such requests, most are legally bound to hand over the information.
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http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/the-government-driving-some-people-away-the-cloud-489

Seriously, that's the deal. If you want to keep control, keep it off the web. The web, the cloud, is public space.

Often both. We've all been using "the cloud" from the beginning. Anybody with a gmail/aol/yahoo/etc. account has their email in the cloud.

..."the cloud" was a term coined by companies with underutilized server farms, looking for some way to make money off their investment.

to never say anything over the telephone that you didn't want to be overheard. Back then it was only a possibility, now its a probability. Just don't put anything out there.