Internet users have jumped headfirst into the world of cloud computing, but both US policy makers and the public have a lot to learn about it, technology experts said on Friday.
Cloud computing will "transform how we do computing, and not in 10 years but in four or five", said Mike Nelson, a visiting professor at Georgetown University's Center for Communication, Culture, and Technology and a former technology policy adviser under the Clinton administration. "This is going to change everything we do with computing, and there are lots of policy implications."
Nelson participated in a panel discussion on cloud computing hosted by Google on Friday. The discussion coincided with the release of a report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showing that 69 percent of internet users have engaged in some form of "cloud computing" but most have high levels of concern about how their data on the cloud could be used.
"Most users understand enough" to feel comfortable with cloud computing, Nelson said, "but they don't understand what can happen to that information. There's a definite need for education in that area."
He said politicians needed to learn more about the implications of cloud computing as well, so they can "future proof" the new policies sure to be proposed in the near future. A whole host of issues are likely to be addressed, he said, from privacy to pornography and policing.
"The government has an almost unlimited capacity to screw up things," Nelson said. "We've got some huge challenges ahead of us."
"Cloud computing" refers to moving tasks typically handled by nearby PCs or servers — such as storage, software execution and computation — to a remote server somewhere on the internet. Cloud computing can refer to specific services on the internet, such as photo-editing services, or to generic foundations, such as computing capacity.
Most internet users engaging in cloud computing (56 percent) are using webmail services like Hotmail, while 29 percent of internet users have used online applications such as Adobe Photoshop Express or Google Docs, according to the Pew study. Forty percent of internet users have engaged in cloud computing for at least two activities.
Despite the popularity of cloud computing, 90 percent of cloud-application users said they would be very concerned if the company storing their data sold it to another party. Sixty-eight percent said they would be very concerned if their data were used for targeted advertising, and 49 percent said they would be very concerned if their data were given to law-enforcement bodies.
The high use of cloud applications combined with people's concerns shows "people use it more than they understand it", said John Horrigan, Pew's associate director for research.
Ari Schwartz, vice president and chief operating officer for the Center for Democracy and Technology, said there should be enough protections and privacy options for consumers online that "we should get to a point where it doesn't make a difference" how much users understand about the privacy risks of cloud computing.
"Consumers expect their information [on the cloud] to be treated as if it were stored on a home computer," Schwartz said.
He noted that, once a US user moves their data online, they lose the constitutional rights they would have had over the data on a home computer.
"We hope that interpretation will change over time," Schwartz said.
Nelson said, in terms of cloud computing: "Today, we are about where we were in 1993 with the web." He added: "We need to be working on policy problems now".
"You have to have leadership that believes in empowering the user and the citizen," Nelson said.
