Will Intelligence Gathering Will Slow Cloud Computing?

It sometimes takes an outsider to tell what is happening "inside" a firm or nation. And one Canadian points out one information technology downside to what users reasonably might conclude are threats to information privacy: namely the threat to U.S.-based cloud computing services, compared to services based elsewhere.

In other words, a resident of Canada, needed to source cloud services there, might now conclude that it cannot buy from Amazon or Google or Verizon or other cloud suppliers because of the increased risk of government data acquisition or even transparency about the level of risk. 

Separately, there also are indications the European Union might now be rethinking what U.S. cloud computing risk might mean elsewhere. 

So some would-be customers will have to add intelligence risk to their decisions about sourcing cloud services. Some might conclude that they simply cannot source cloud computing from U.S. suppliers.

And though some blame Verizon or Google for cooperating with U.S. intelligence probes, some might say the bigger culprits are laws that allow overly-broad data gathering, or government agencies that either overreach, illegally use information to punish political opponents. 

After all, a single citizen or business cannot easily refuse to comply with a "lawful" request for records. Nor can citizens prevent people inside agencies from misusing data for other purposes. 

Beyond that, the issue is whether agencies now have become in some way institutionally corrupted, and whether U.S. citizens have allowed that corruption to happen, directly or indirectly.

The issue of "liberty" and other countervailing trends (legitimate needs to provide protection from terrorism) now pose issues the nation has not resolved. And some would say another complicating factor is the growth of the administrative state. That makes effective citizen control much more difficult.

For perhaps the first time, the next generation of computing architecture (cloud and mobile) now is significantly affected by political concerns. And that potentially is going to slow the growth of cloud computing, unless the political problems are addressed. 

More Impoper "Leaking" of Personal Data

A bipartisan group of 24 senators want to know why the Environmental Protection Agency leaked the personal data of more than 80,000 farms and livestock facilities to environmental groups. 

But some might argue there is a partisan angle to at least some of the "leaks." When the government intentionally leaks something that helps its perceived agenda, that's okay. 

When the leaks are not seen as helping, then leaking is a crime. 

Poll Shows Apple Losing "Cool"

A new poll suggests there is some truth to the notion that Apple has lost some of its "cool" lately. Last year, 81 percent of those under 30 years old said they viewed Apple favorably.

This year, that number was down to 71 percent. 

According to a poll, 83 percent of adult respondents have a favorable view of Google. Some 72 percent have a favorable view of Apple and 60 percent have such a view of Facebook. 

The poll results are said to be similar to last year's results, with one possible exception. 

U.S., Internet Surveillance Denial: Because It is Secret, Nothing Can be Divulged

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. described PRISM--the intelligence gathering effort-- as “an internal government computer system used to facilitate the government’s statutorily authorized collection of foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision.”

Perhaps that tells you something. LIke "trust me." Clapper says a warrant is issued every time  NSA or other intelligence agencies seek information under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 

But the secret court orders also are one-time blanket approvals for data acquisition and  surveillance on selected foreign targets for periods of as long as a year.

The problem is that nobody outside can tell how much other information is garnered. Nobody claims all that other data is destroyed. Nobody can assure the public that all gathered data is narrowly targeted. 

The National Security Agency also has requested a criminal investigation into the leak of highly classified information about secret surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency. 

"I can't tell you anything, but you don't have to worry." And if you try to find out, you will be prosecuted. 

Vodafone, China Mobile Abandon Race for Myanmar Telecom Market License

Vodafone and China Mobile, acting together, were among a dozen companies or consortia that made the final list of contenders to bid for a telecom license in Myanmar.

But Vodafone and China Mobile Vodafone and China Mobile have abandoned the effort to obtain one of two new telecommunications licenses Myanmar is making available.

The winners are scheduled to be announced by June 27, 2013. Among the applicants are consortiums led by Singapore Telecommunications, India's Bharti Airtel, MTN Dubai, Jamaica's Digicel Group, and Japan's KDDI and Sumitomo Corp.

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Malaysia's Axiata Group, Norway's Telenor, Millicom International Cellular, Qatar Telecom and Vietnam's Viettel Group also made the shortlist.

The Myanmar government plans to award two new telecom licenses, each with initial terms of 15 years, to the two licenses already awarded.

Only 5.4 million of Myanmar's 60 million-strong population had a mobile subscription at the end of 2012, a mobile penetration of just nine percent.

But the two telecom giants seems to have concluded that the conditions under which the licensees would have to operate make the business case too marginal. Building new networks from scratch, fast, would seem to be an obstacle.

The Myanmar government wants to increase the percentage of the population owning a telephone to between 75 percent and 80 percent by 2015 to 2016. That’s a lot of potential revenue growth in a very short time.

Also, retail prices might have to be quite low.

Myanmar has one of the lowest per-capita gross domestic products in Asia, standing at $855 last year compared with $5,851 for Thailand, according to International Monetary Fund estimates.

Beyond that, some would cite a potentially-significant amount of political risk, given Myanmar’s historically tightly-controlled government, fear of dissent and potential nationalism issues were a foreign-owned company to become too successful.

Whether the Vodafone-China Mobile doubrs are simply a matter of financial return, based on market conditions, or something else, perhaps government requirements that made the business case worse, is not yet clear.

A statement from Vodafone confirmed that the two operators had decided “not to proceed with the process as the opportunity does not meet the strict internal investment criteria to which both Vodafone and China Mobile adhere.”

The bad news is that whatever convinced Vodafone and China Mobile that the business case was marginal, might also be issues for at least some of the other contenders.

After Domestic Spying Revelations, Do You Trust the Government?

Defenders of the “PRISM” spying program claim it has helped authorities avoid at least one terror attack in 2009 aimed at the New York subway system.

But British and American legal documents from 2010 and 2011 contradict that claim. And that gets to the heart of the matter with the numerous examples of government spying that have broken in recent days: trust.

The heart of the issue is not that some amount of intelligence gathering is necessary, or that companies ranging from Verizon to Google to banks and credit card processors have much choice but to comply with lawful orders to hand over data, at times.

The issue is that the apparently far-ranging scope of such intelligence gathering now is so broad, so unfocused, with no assurances that the data on lawful U.S. resident and citizen activities could not be misused.

That is why the Internal Revenue Service targeting targeting of persons and groups for political reasons is so damaging. It destroys confidence in the actual impartial operation of administrative parts of the government.

But that IRS scandal happens at a time when the National Security Agency has probed phone records from the Associated Press, likewise gathered records of reporter James Rosen on apparently false pretenses, and gathered millions of call records from Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and probably other firms as well, without warrants and in a broad way, necessarily obtaining and storing records on millions of innocent U.S. residents.

NSA also apparently has been collecting data from a number of Internet app providers, including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.

So the real issue now is not whether there are some instances where intelligence has to happen. The real issue is that so broad and possibly illegal have been the intrusions that people now are right to mistrust the federal government to behave in a responsible way with programs most would say are sometimes needed to prevent terrorist acts.

The issue isn’t that Internet application providers, phone companies and others have to comply with information requests. The problem is that nobody anymore can be sure the data will be used in a careful or even lawful way.

And the problem now is growing doubt about whether the federal government can be trusted to act lawfully. That is a huge issue.

So Now We Can Guess What New NSA Data Warehouse is For!

If you were wondering why the National Security Administration is building a huge new data center in Utah, now you know. It likely will house millions and millions of records of phone calls, credit card transactions, web searches and emails.

The NSA is building a million square-foot data mining complex in Bluffdale, Utah.

But given the fact the NSA already reportedly intercepts 1.7 billion American electronic records and communications a day, it makes sense that they would need to expand operations beyond its headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.