why hackers and spooks want our heads in the cloud

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Printing sponsored by:   Why hackers and spooks want our heads in the cloud Our unthinking embrace of these giant data centres is throttling the giddy anti-authoritarian computing dream  John Harris guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 April 2011 20.00 BST larger | smaller Imagine this. A notorious multinational is on the lookout for new business. For the sake of argument, let's imagine it's Lockheed Martin, the defence, security, and "advanced technology" corporation that has lately been seeing to the census. From somewhere in their R&D division comes an idea: "personal lifestyle security services" for millions across the planet. The wheeze is simple enough: sign up and hand them your personal correspondence, financial records, bank details, ID documents, and more. They'll have all your stuff, and you'll have a unique password whenever you want a look. And just think: more clutter shunted out of your life, leaving you to glide through the minimalist  bliss of 21st century living.  You would have to be out of your mind. But this is the world we are hurtling towards, although it's not defence conglomerates who are in charge – yet – but private technology giants. The key is cloud computing, whereby just ab out anything that can be digitised is stored in remote servers, leaving us to access it from wherever we fancy. If  you have a Gmail or Hotmail account, you'll already be a practised cloud user. Two years ago, David Cameron suggested that Google and Microsoft might be i nvolved in the cloud -based storage of people's NHS records; now the Department of Health appears to have plans for exactly that. In 2009 the worth of cloud computing was put at $58.6bn; by 2013 it's forecast to reach $150.1bn. The new world is, of course, less a matter of clouds than data centres: huge i mpersonal sheds in which servers whirr away, while millions log in and out – a turnabout with an intriguing circularity. Up until the late 20th c entury the history of the industry was partly the mass transfer of data from hulking mainframes to ever smaller personal computers. Now the momentum is in the other direction, and what you might think of as digital centralism is back, in a wo rld awash with prying governments, hackers, corporations that seem as prone to skulduggery as they ever were – and terrorists who may well eye data centres as mouthwatering targets. So why aren't we worried? Inspired branding undoubtedly does its work. First, there is the term "cloud computing" itself, whose uncertain etymology is less important than its implicit suggestion of an innovation with all the unremarkable ordinariness of the  weather. Consider also the cuddly, kids'-TV-esque Google logo, or the way that so much of the Microsoft brand is synonymous with the humanitarian work of Bill Gates. All this chimes with a culture in which, as supposedly maverick organisations get ever closer to government, mass trust in their operations still seems to know no bounds – even when such revelations as the iPhone's surreptitious tracking of its users' movements point to slightly more on their minds than the b reezy convenience of their customers. Page 1 of 2 Why hackers and spooks want our heads in the cloud | John Harris | Comment is free | Th ... 4/26/2011 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/25/hackers-spooks-cloud-antiauthorita ...

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Page 1: Why Hackers and Spooks Want Our Heads in the Cloud

8/6/2019 Why Hackers and Spooks Want Our Heads in the Cloud

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/why-hackers-and-spooks-want-our-heads-in-the-cloud 1/2

Printing sponsored by:

 

 Why hackers and spooks want our heads

in the cloudOur unthinking embrace of these giant data centres is throttling

the giddy anti-authoritarian computing dream

 

John Harris 

guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 April 2011 20.00 BST

larger | smaller 

Imagine this. A notorious multinational is on the lookout for new business. For the sake

of argument, let's imagine it's Lockheed Martin, the defence, security, and "advanced

technology" corporation that has lately been seeing to the census. From somewhere in

their R&D division comes an idea: "personal lifestyle security services" for millionsacross the planet. The wheeze is simple enough: sign up and hand them your personal

correspondence, financial records, bank details, ID documents, and more. They'll have

all your stuff, and you'll have a unique password whenever you want a look. And just

think: more clutter shunted out of your life, leaving you to glide through the minimalist

 bliss of 21st century living.

 You would have to be out of your mind. But this is the world we are hurtling towards,

although it's not defence conglomerates who are in charge – yet – but private

technology giants. The key is cloud computing, whereby just about anything that can be

digitised is stored in remote servers, leaving us to access it from wherever we fancy. If 

 you have a Gmail or Hotmail account, you'll already be a practised cloud user. Two years

ago, David Cameron suggested that Google and Microsoft might be involved in the cloud

-based storage of people's NHS records; now the Department of Health appears to haveplans for exactly that. In 2009 the worth of cloud computing was put at $58.6bn; by 

2013 it's forecast to reach $150.1bn.

The new world is, of course, less a matter of clouds than data centres: huge impersonal

sheds in which servers whirr away, while millions log in and out – a turnabout with an

intriguing circularity. Up until the late 20th century the history of the industry was

partly the mass transfer of data from hulking mainframes to ever smaller personal

computers. Now the momentum is in the other direction, and what you might think of 

as digital centralism is back, in a world awash with prying governments, hackers,

corporations that seem as prone to skulduggery as they ever were – and terrorists who

may well eye data centres as mouthwatering targets.

So why aren't we worried? Inspired branding undoubtedly does its work. First, there isthe term "cloud computing" itself, whose uncertain etymology is less important than its

implicit suggestion of an innovation with all the unremarkable ordinariness of the

 weather. Consider also the cuddly, kids'-TV-esque Google logo, or the way that so much

of the Microsoft brand is synonymous with the humanitarian work of Bill Gates. All this

chimes with a culture in which, as supposedly maverick organisations get ever closer to

government, mass trust in their operations still seems to know no bounds – even when

such revelations as the iPhone's surreptitious tracking of its users' movements point to

slightly more on their minds than the breezy convenience of their customers.

Page 1 of 2Why hackers and spooks want our heads in the cloud | John Harris | Comment is free | Th...

4/26/2011http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/25/hackers-spooks-cloud-antiauthorita...

Page 2: Why Hackers and Spooks Want Our Heads in the Cloud

8/6/2019 Why Hackers and Spooks Want Our Heads in the Cloud

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guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

 While we're here, take note: all messages on Gmail are automatically scanned so Google

knows where to place any relevant ads – and deleted messages and accounts "may take

up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline

 backup systems".

Inevitably, hacking into stuff stored in the cloud is a global pastime, with its own grim

star system. Earlier this month, for instance, a very unpleasant Californian named

George Bronk was jailed for six years for rifling through Gmail and Yahoo mail accounts

 belonging to women and girls (some of them British), and sending any revealingpictures he found to all their Facebook contacts. Meanwhile the world's more

authoritarian states know exactly what the cloud allows them to do: in late 2009, for

instance, Google's servers were breached by Chinese hackers, presumed to be under

government orders, who tried to break into the email accounts of human rights activists.

 We all know how even democratic states tend to view the kind of informational riches

that the cloud contains. Our own Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is in the

process of being partly reformed, but even more invasive data-gathering powers seem in

the pipeline. In the US, whether to drop or renew provisions in the infamous Patriot Act

is currently the subject of a noisy debate – but extensive powers to pry into data and

communications will remain. (In Canada this has fed into a fascinating debate about

public and private sectors using US-based cloud services, and thereby leaving people

open to American surveillance.)

There is, perhaps, a worrying time lag at work here. The computer industry came of age

in the 1990s, that giddy phase of American and European history when

authoritarianism was assumed to be on the wane. For sure, it's still nice to live in a

liberal democracy, but given that the world has since moved in no end of sinister

directions, isn't our unthinking embrace of the cloud (and just to recap: our medical

records could soon be up there) an ill-advised throwback? And what of the long view:

looking ahead 50 years, how certain are we that the surveillance state will not have

extended its tentacles; that nasty, illiberal politics will not be all the rage; or that Google,

Microsoft et al will not have learned dangerous new tricks?

Right now, I think of the hyper-connected activists behind UK Uncut, or the ongoing

anti-fees protests, or the other campaigns over which our spooks presumably keep

 watch, and feel a pang of unease. This cloud, I fear, may yet turn very dark indeed.

Page 2 of 2Why hackers and spooks want our heads in the cloud | John Harris | Comment is free | Th...

4/26/2011http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/25/hackers-spooks-cloud-antiauthorita...