Megaupload.com seized

Sun Jan 22 00:22:53 UTC 2012

On 01/21/2012 03:28 PM, Joel jaeggli wrote:
> On 1/21/12 11:38 , George Bonser wrote:
>> Entire governments in the US are using "cloud storage" for their
>> documentation these days.  It is my understanding (which is hearsay)
>> that Google has an entire service aimed at small governments (county
>> and municipal mostly) in Google Docs for just this purpose and I know
>> of at least one city on California that is using Google for their
>> document repository and their city email.  In case of an emergency
>> where Google is unreachable, they are in a world of hurt and won't
>> even be able to send email from one department to another in city
>> hall because all their mail and documents are now "in the cloud"
>> which would then be inaccessible to them rather than on a server in
>> their local data center.  So ... and Earthquake in Santa Clara county
>> might take out city governments in Monterey or Santa Cruz counties
>> which might otherwise be perfectly able to conduct their business.
>>
>> Point is, MANY people are using "the cloud" as their primary storage
>> because it is marketed as being safe and secure (backed up and with
>> better access security than they could manage themselves).
> It may also be the case that your cloud service may be uncoupled from
> the fate of your geography which may will allow it to survive a regional
> failure that might otherwise render you inoperable.
>
> All eggs in one basket is to my mind a bigger problem than who's basket
> they're in.
>
> If your network is wiped out it may not matter where the data is from an
> availability perspective unless alternatives are in place.
>
I think that the larger issue here is resilience. If you're completely
dependent on IP, then when IP fails you're hosed. We have a situation
where that is becoming more and more true, however. When the last
vestiges of TDM are rooted out of the telephony network, we will be
less resilient than before. When paper record trails are replaced by
the cloud, we are less resilient. It's sort of scarey in some ways how
much of an information monoculture we're building: it's a huge strength
and a glaring vulnerability.

Mike