Extending the principles to the internet: a way to restore trust.

• Author: Gable, Julie
• Position: THE PRICIPLES: GENERALLY ACCEPTED RECORDKEEPING PRINCIPLES'

Almost from its inception, the Internet has spawned thorny, complex issues that are not easily resolved. Matters such as online piracy of copyrighted material, theft of trade secrets, cybersecurity, and trans-border data transfer issues constantly confront governments, Internet service providers, businesses, individuals, and watchdog groups.

In recent weeks, the balance of personal privacy and the need for national security have been the subject of high-profile news coverage. With revelations about the U.S. National Security Administration's (NSA) electronic surveillance program called PRISM, the parallels of data mining for marketing purposes and for surveillance purposes came into sharp focus.

Technology has given us the ability to store vast amounts of data cheaply. Now, with highly sophisticated data analytics tools, it is possible to exploit stored personal data not only for more effective marketing, but also for more effective detection of potential security threats.

The key difference is that while users freely give personal information to social media sites, e-mail services, marketers, and other Internet presences, they don't necessarily suspect that this personal data can then be handed over to federal investigators. That's because many people don't realize that the background architecture for storing such data is the cloud.

A Battle in the Cloud

According to The State of Cloud Storage 2013 Industry Report from storage vendor Nasuni, cloud storage providers put more than one exabyte of information--that's more than 1 billion gigabytes--under contract in the previous year.

With surprising revelations about how large providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, have responded to federal warrants has come a public outcry. According to reports in The New York Times, some providers have had teams of in-house experts charged with finding ways to cooperate with the NSA, a strategy aimed to keep the information-mining process under the company's control rather than the federal agency's control.

Cloud service providers--and the companies that use them via Internet connections to provide flexible processing for transactions, communications, and storage --have suffered huge reputational damage. Internationally, some countries have exploited the NSA revelations to maintain that those who fear their communications are being intercepted should not use services that go through American servers.

In short, an atmosphere of deep mistrust has arisen that could...