Article: Microsoft Seeks Privacy Law to Aid Cloud Computing

Microsoft Seeks Privacy Law to Aid Cloud Computing
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-23/microsoft-seeks-new-u-s-privacy-law-to-propel-cloud-computing.html

The following is the brief summary.

Representatives of Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing in support of recommendations to update the privacy law by Digital Due Process, a coalition that also draws support from AT&T Inc., Intel Corp. and Internet technology companies.

“Compelled disclosure of content should require a search warrant, just as obtaining content out of a person’s desk drawer would,” said Paul Misener, vice president for global public policy at Amazon.com.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act was passed by Congress in 1986 in an effort to give law enforcement agencies access to information while preserving an individual’s right to privacy.

‘Reasonably Protected’

“We recognize that enterprises and individual consumers will only use new technologies if they have confidence that their information will be reasonably protected,” Smith said in his testimony yesterday.

The law provides different levels of protection for electronic messages, he said. E-mails stored for less than 180 days have more protection than older messages. A document stored on a PC’s hard drive has greater protection that a similar item saved on a “cloud,” he said.

“Microsoft supports changes that will ensure that users do not suffer a decrease in their privacy protections when they move data from their desktop PCs to the cloud,” Smith said in his prepared comments.

Senator Patrick Leahy, the committee’s chairman and a Vermont Democrat, said the panel would begin work on legislation to overhaul the law, without giving a specific time line.