Free at What Cost ?: Cloud Computing Privacy

Abstract

Privacy laws in the United States have been enacted to control both government investigation into private lives and to deter intrusions by private persons. 2 Communications between private persons have often been targeted for such investigation and intrusion. 3 United States federal law provides more protection against intrusion for communications of the human voice in the process of transmission than it does for data transmissions such as email and text messages. 4 It provides even less protection for data communications in digital or electronic storage. 5 As part of the dramatic increase in use of "cloud computing," where remote servers provide hardware and software for even such basic tasks as word processing, more and more data, including communications, will be stored on third-party servers. 6 The foundation of different treatment for stored communications, as well as the effect it will have on cloud computing, is the focus of this article. In examining the scope and limitations on privacy protections for communications, courts have applied the U.S. Constitution, the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act ("ECPA"), and other state and federal privacy statutes. Both legislatures and courts have limited privacy protections where other interests are found to conflict. 7 The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution has long provided protection for communications stored in either document form or electronic form, so long as the storage was within the home, or another place recognized by general search and seizure law as a location in which ...