One of the intensively discussed issues in Cloud Computing is compliance with local data protection and privacy laws. The European laws, for instance, are sort of “location-dependent”. It is much easier to deal with PII (Personally Identifiable Information) within the borders of the EU than outside of that region. That is the reason why many large Cloud Providers build data centers within the EU to support their European customers.
The question which recently came to my mind is: Does it really make sense to focus on location? Shouldn’t we better focus on the information security itself? The target is to avoid abuse of PII and other sensitive information. The laws focus on processing, with a very broad definition of the term “processing”. Processing is allowed only if the providers are following specific rules. However: When we clearly define these rules, when we audit the providers, when we do certification – why should the location really matter?
You could argue that there are regions where you won’t expect the government to respect these rules. You could argue that there are countries like the US where some laws are contradictory to European laws. However, that all could be easily part of the rules defined in the law. There is no logical reason to do it by location. If you look at the way governments in some European countries act I wouldn’t say that location is the best choice for enforcing data protection.
From my perspective it would be a good idea to fundamentally re-think data protection laws and to define protection requirement levels for different types of PII and different types of processing. Then rules for the requirements external (cloud) providers have to fulfill can be defined – independent of the location. If one of these rules is contradictory to the local laws in the country the provider has its data center the result would be the same as today. But overall, we would end up with far more flexibility for the cloud.
However, IT reality is always far ahead of the laws. Thus we probably have to accept that it will take many years until the laws reflect the reality of today’s globally distributed, service-based IT.