Yahoo recently disclosed that it has received more than 6,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement in the last 6 months. Yahoo joins tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google in making known to the public exactly how many requests for data were made under the U.S. data surveillance program called
PRISM. What seems clear is that these companies are all voluntarily making disclosures in order to assuage customers that they are profiting data to the extent they can.
The problem with such disclosures is that it places these large public cloud providers in the position of having to defend their security and privacy policies to a public that increasingly has doubts about the privacy of public cloud computing. While public cloud has long been touted for its cost saving benefits, the recent press headlines about data snooping by US government agencies has brought considerable pressure on businesses to reevaluate their cloud strategies.
What does the future hold for public cloud? I think it's too early to tell. There is, and always will be, a place for public cloud. Primarily for customers and data that is just more cost conscious than customers who value data privacy more. What these news events do mean, however, is that nobody can be uncertain as to what the risks are for putting sensitive data in the public cloud. Odds are that at least someone is looking at that data.
