[HIB]How Your Cloud Dream Is Becoming a Security Nightmare

After extracting a deal from Research In Motion that appears to give state authorities the ability to monitor messages sent over the company’s BlackBerry network — similar to a deal that RIM agreed to with the government of Saudi Arabia — the Indian government has suggested that it may go after both Google and Skype in an attempt to get similar kinds of security concessions. India’s threat means that this is no longer just about Research In Motion and its specific network or security controls; it’s about gaining widespread and potentially unlimited access to a whole range of cloud-based services. In other words, it means that our growing use of the “cloud” — whether it’s web-based email or web-based voice calls such as those recently launched by Google, or mobile email and data from companies such as Research In Motion — is colliding headlong with the demands of foreign governments to control those services and applications, or at least their demands to monitor them whenever they wish.

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