The Pew Internet and American Life Project released on Friday a survey about cloud computing, the practice of storing documents and other online data on a platform other than your computer. Most common e-mail services such as Hotmail and Gmail are clouds.
More than two-thirds (69 percent) of Internet users say they "use Web mail services, store data online, or use software programs such as word processing applications whose functionality is located on the web," according to the survey, or in other words take advantage of cloud computing. But that's not the interesting part. Only 49 percent of the survey participants said they would be "very concerned" if the cloud computing vendors shared their data with law enforcement without their permission. That was far less concern than if the online companies sold your personal files to others (90 percent would be very concerned), used your photos in marketing campaigns (80 percent), delivered ads to you based on what was in your files (68 percent), and kept copies of your files even if you deleted them (63 percent).
What may be at play here is the widely accepted argument that if you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn't be worried -- an argument that has been discussed in Tech Insider before. The law paper, which the blog entry is based on, argues that the American public puts a low value on privacy and therefore is not as concerned about exposure or possible misuse of it. Given that nearly twice as many Americans would be very concerned about their data being sold rather than their privacy possibly being violated, that may very well be the case.
COMMENTS
A deeper look at the survey and a comparison with other polls shows something else at play. In fact, 64% of Americans say they somewhat or very concerned, which is pretty high for a poll that simply asks whether it was ok for companies to give law enforcement access upon request. Many Americans have the false sense of security that they have done nothing wrong and therefore have nothing to fear from the sharing. If Pew had asked the question another way, "Do you believe that you should have fewer constitutional rights from government access to information about you if it is held by the companies rather than in your home?" (as actually is the case today) the numbers would be in the 90th percentile. Pew is planning to do more surveys on the topic, so maybe we will see.
Ari Schwartz 09/16/08 09:58 am ET