The good, not so good, and long view on Bmail « The Berkeley Blog - Chris Hoo... - 0 views
blogs.berkeley.edu/...d-and-long-view-on-google-mail
googleaps4education linf14 privacy berkeley Hoofnagle
![](/images/link.gif)
-
Claude Almansi on 19 Apr 15Chris Hoofnagle, director of BCLT's privacy programs | 3/6/13 "...We need to be less infatuated with "the cloud," which to some extent is a marketing fad. Many of the putative benefits of the cloud are disclaimed in these services' terms of service. For instance, a 2009 survey of 31 contracts found that, "…In effect, a number of providers of consumer-oriented cloud services appear to disclaim the specific fitness of their services for the purpose(s) for which many customers will have specifically signed up to use them." The same researchers found that providers' business models were related to the generosity of terms. This militates towards providers that charge some fee for service as opposed to "free" ones that monetize user data. We should charge our IT professionals with the duty of documenting problems with outsourced services. To more objectively understand the cloud phenomenon, we should track the real costs associated with outsourcing, including outages, the costs of managing the relationship with Google, and the technical problems that users experience. Outsourcing is not costless. We could learn that employees have simply been transferred from the operation of CalMail to the management of bMail. We should not assume that systems mean fewer people-they may appropriately require meaningful staffing to fulfill our needs. As the expiration date of system wide Google contract approaches in June 2015, these metrics will help us make an economical decision. Finally, there are technical approaches that, if effective, could blunt, but not completely eliminate, the privacy problems created by cloud services. Encryption tools, such as Ciphercloud, exist to mask data from Google itself. This can help hide the content of messages, reduce data mining risks from Google, and cause the government to have to come to Berkeley officials to gain access to content. The emergence of these services indicates that there is a shared concern about s
-
Claude Almansi on 19 Apr 15Attenzione alla data: alcune cose potrebbero essere cambiate nel frattempo.