Cloud Computing?

Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com

I was just reading today about new laptops that will soon be on the market using the Google Chrome operating system - with no hard drives in them. Even Microsoft predicted, some years ago, that personal computers would eventually evolve to the point where we didn't store information on a hard drive within the computer itself, but in the virtual world, conveniently accessed by all who were authorized. And therein lies the rub... Who would be authorized? We law enforcement professionals tend to do quite a bit on computers now. Much of what we do involves storing, sorting, retrieving and using controlled information. If that information, as systems evolve, isn't on the computer itself, then how secure can it be? Now, I know some of you are thinking, "Wait a second; we all access the NCIC system and IT'S not on our computer; we're accessing it virtually." And you'd be right. However, NCIC is maintained on secure servers and the information we can get from it - because the means we use to receive that information isn't secure - is limited. We've seen just in the past week - with the whole Wikileaks boondoggle - that even classified and controlled information may not be either. If the federal government - and other governments around the world - can't keep their secrets secret, then what would make law enforcement agencies in the U.S. think we can? That thought only gets magnified by the implications of not having the information on secure servers but instead stored in the virtual reality so many now call the "cloud". While that may be a great tool for the computer companies who will then have access to virtually everything stored on their servers, it doesn't offer much in the way of guaranteed privacy for the user, does it? I'd be interested in reading your thoughts on this?