What happens when GoogleDocs goes down? A good question.

All privacy concerns aside -- one of the problems with the whole "Software as a Service" angle is the non-proximity of the problem. If, like me you've been wondering what happens after 30 seconds lasts far longer than 30 seconds, it's an important reminder of the dangers of over-reliance on any one medium. Single points of failure suck -- it's a good thing I have local back-ups of all important GoogleDocs.

VoIP News posted an interesting article listing 10 VoIP surveillance entities. Ranging from the NSA to the Mafia to your spouse, the article brings home the importance of (but doesn't explicitly mention) end-to-end encryption when handling sensitive information. One of my recent presentations at the Politics Online Conference focused on this issue -- which will certainly grow in importance as more and more privacy-invasive tactics are adopted by miscreants, corporations, and governments alike.

In the end, it's important to read the (technological) small print -- not all VoIP is created equal. Products like Skype have end-to-end encryption built in and, in fact, utilize a peer-to-peer connection that makes surveillance incredibly difficult. Several plug-ins exist for "off-the-record" instant messaging -- you still get your own log (as does the other person if they so choose), but at least there's no one in the middle recording your conversation.

But most cellular text messaging (from sensitive business dealings to naughty text to your spouse) and many VoIP products don't afford privacy in an age of widespread privacy invasions. Eventually, the erosions of privacy rights will come back to haunt us, but until that time, given the remarkable lack of 4th Amendment rights protections in the contemporary (US) society, the onus is on us, the end users, to ascertain how best to protect our own privacy.

I'd forgotten to mention that I'm not just attending the Politics Online Conference, I'm also giving two presentations while here:

• Privacy in the Digital Age -- Wednesday, March 4th at 3:30pm.
• Open Source Government -- Thursday, March 5th at 1:45pm.

Should make for some fairly rambunctious debates.

"EU Court: Downloaders Can Stay Private" state the Associated Press; "EU court says file sharers don't have to be named" says Reuters; "EU top court protects downloaders' privacy" writes Xinhau; "File-sharers 'need not be named'" is the BBC headline. From London to Beijing, the media are reporting on the recent high court ruling in the European Union -- in civil suits, Internet Service Providers don't need to turn over information on file-sharing customers, regardless of whether they may be sharing copyrighted materials. Meanwhile, in the United States, AT&T (among others) is considering adding deep packet inspection to its core routers in order to filter copyrighted content (whether legal or illegally used).

The EU and the US are launching on two entirely different trajectories -- one that balances copyright holders' rights with the privacy and fair use rights of the general public (the EU) and one where copyright owners are systematically stripping the general public of its fair use and privacy rights (the US). In addition, US policies will lead to a data obfuscation arms race -- making it increasingly difficult to engage in legitimate law enforcement.

At some point, I suspect that policy-makers will need to step in to reign in the RIAA, MPAA, and their allies and re-establish a balance between the rights of copyright holders and and general public. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, is focused on balancing of rights, authorizing Congress to: "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" while, at the same time, "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Alas, the US has become increasingly blinkered -- focusing more and more on the latter and ignoring the responsibility to promote science and art as well.