In the News

ComputerWorld examines Google Inc.’s widely employed practice of cloud computing in this front page story about the privacy concerns 10 nations have raised about the practice.

While some types of data—especially those pertaining to export controls—must be stored in the U.S., according to a number of laws, most U.S. companies don’t have restrictions on data storage.

"None of the U.S. privacy laws would prevent you from shipping data to data centers all over the world or outsourcing it to India," said John Nicholson, an attorney with Pillsbury’s Privacy, Data Protection & Information Use practice in Washington, DC.

One potential risk for cloud computing is that a government that wants data on a particular server could theoretically take all of the data on that server. "That server (or hard drive) is theoretically subject to the law of the country in which it sitting," said Nicholson.

"If somebody is going to be attacking your systems, the geographic location of your server probably doesn't necessarily make that big of a difference," said Nicholson. "What probably makes a difference is the entity that is hosting your server," he said.