Lot is being said about cloud computing recently that culminated on the heated rant from Richard Stallman. As always, I agree in parts, but sometimes RMS can be a bit too reactionary.
I do completely agree that giving away your personal data to companies like Google, Yahoo!, Amazon and Microsoft is not desirable. That this puts too much power on their hands, that they own your data, your history. Problematic ownership grants such as in Second Life proved to be even worse. So, what’s the catch?
Cloud computing
In essence, cloud computing is doing to the internet what IBM did to big companies in the 60’s. They had a big server and hundreds of dumb terminals from where you could access the system, your data and history. Today’s dumb terminals are a bit smarter, though, but the cost of keeping consistent data and history on your own home desktop, work desktop, laptop, mobile phone, pda and whatever else you have that access or deals with your data is still unbearable.
Not only that, but it’s virtually impossible to build a collection of systems that works with any kind of data on any type of device running any operating system and window manager etc etc. Lots of big companies (such as Microsoft and Apple) are trying hard at it for decades and they are failing miserably, over and over.
Agreeing over standards (HTTP, XML, RDF) is one way to go but the intrinsic details of every single application and this Intellectual Property paranoia the world is facing nowadays makes it impossible for two different companies to agree with standards. That, of course, when they don’t start their own standards just for the sake of having one of their own.
On the other hand, on-line software companies like Yahoo! (at its time) and Google (today) grew bigger than those two giants doing on the internet exactly what they couldn’t do on the desktop. Cloud computing is just a beautiful name for “we keep your data safe and sound and pay us with the right to do whatever we want with it“.
Desktop era
Where I don’t agree with RMS, though, is that we should keep our desktops. No matter where you store your data, on Amazon’s S3 or on your desktop, if you don’t protect your data, it’s not yours anymore.
It’s not just easy to break into any machine or network with the required amount of work (NASA and NSA constantly owned is the ultimate proof of that), but if everyone stores data on their desktops it’ll also be worthwhile. Today, if you break into my desktop you’ll see a bunch of pictures of my family and my (already public and GPL) programs.
What’s the point? No point, my desktop today is just a cache of the internet, a fast access to data that is already public on the internet. My personal banking information is on my bank’s website (which I don’t trust, by the way) but that’s life. My emails are on my mail servers, my personal history and chats on my blog, my friends list on social websites, etc. If I was to store all that information on my desktop, that’d be a huge security breach.
Not only is easier to safeguard a bunch of servers than millions of desktops, but it’s spread out. If you break into GMail to get someone’s emails you won’t (hopefully) get his banking details. If you click on scam and loose your financial data, you won’t loose your family pictures, emails from your dead granny, and so on.
Safe cloud computing
What we need to assure is that companies like Google and Amazon not only promise to “not use your data for their own profit”, we need to make sure they will never be able to, even when they change the EULA. How? Simple, use encryption!
We need to make sure that the email service uses GPG (or any encryption/authentication scheme) not only for sending and receiving, but also for storing your emails. Google says it spoils their fantastic advertising engine and you’ll get random ads instead of targeted ads for your email. Thing is, I’m not looking for answers or searching the internet, I’m just talking to my mum! I don’t need to buy “mums on eBay at unbeatable prices“!
On-line storage is easier to work around, just be sure to encrypt the files before you send it back and forth. A simple program could do that using the API they provide to access your data.
Social networks is far more complicated, though. But the way I see is simple: it’s public data, live with it. My blog and web-pages have lots of information about me. If you google my name you’ll see lots of other sites with lots of informations about me, and I can’t do absolutely anything about it. What would be good, though, is to be able to own this data, but it’s not storing on my desktop that will help anyway.
Would be cool, though, if one could download their own information in RDF format and import it to a local tool on their desktops or to another social network. Different websites could do it automatically (some do) to exchange information about you, but again we fall into the value of data ownership, and when money is at stake, people (and companies) can get very naughty.
Conclusion
As I see, cloud computing is inevitable, either because it’s really cool or because those companies will make you believe it’s really cool. It’s not a matter of liking or not, it’s a matter of accepting it, but enforcing your rules to your own data.
I will never, ever, buy anything that has DRM, Root-kits, feedback-systems, usability limitation or anything that takes away my own freedom to own what I’ve paid for, or created myself. A song, a picture of my son, my friends list, this post or my ideas, are all owned by me, no matter where I store them.
Storing copies of my data on another server should not bestow them ownership, but they do reserve the rights to do something with it (like targeted ads). They own a copy of your data. But if you regain control of it, by encrypting everything, you take this last right away from them.
So, if you’re really concerned that Google will take profit of your start-up idea described on your email, don’t use GMail for those things, or at least encrypt what’s sensitive. If you’re concerned that Yahoo! will use your personal photos for advertising, don’t store there sensitive images.
But please, don’t go crazy, blaming a new technology, just because it’ll take away the ownership of your own data. The internet already did that, a looong time ago.
If you’re still paranoid… keep your computer safe, unplug it from the mains. Don’t take pictures, don’t blog, store all that information on your brain. Don’t talk to other people, they might use your ideas for their own benefit, or for the greater good. It’s a choice you have to make, and be consistent with it… Good luck!
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