iPatriot Act Ready and Waiting for i911; and, About the Cloud . . . .

Too impt. not to re-blog. Transcript from starting around 4:30 min.:

Lawrence Lessig: "There's going to be an i-911 event . . . I had dinner once with Richard Clark at the table and I said, 'is there an equivalent to the Patriot Act -- an iPatriot Act -- just sitting waiting for some substantial event . . . for them to come have the excuse for radically changing the way the Internet works?' And he said, 'Of course there is' -- and I swear this is what he said, and quote -- 'and Vint Cerf is not going to like it very much.'"

I wish more people were aware that this is what's been going on; but to quote some useful cliches, nature abhors a vacuum, and the unconscious does not hear the negative. So, it's not enough for us to just point this out and say, we can't let that happen. We need to have our OWN counter-iPatriot proposal sitting on the shelf. Theirs is ready; we'd better catch up fast.

And how about us having a few initiatives of our own that are actually in advance of theirs, instead of merely trying to catch up all the time?

About the Cloud, here's a recent article showing how one of the risks I've discussed has materialized:

"Can you trust your data to the cloud? For users of an online storage service called The Linkup, formerly known as MediaMax, the answer turned out to be a resounding 'no.'

"The Linkup shut down on Aug. 8 after losing access to unspecified amounts of customer data . . . ."

The Linkup says 55% of the data is safe, but they're not sure about the other 45%.

Here's my related, 2007 post.