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What is the legal status of using cloud services with data potentially subject to export control limitations?

  • A lot (surprising amount) of information is subject to export control rules if you send it to some countries.   If you use cloud email (with Google, Microsoft 365, Rackspace email, Notes Cloud) they have servers in various countries which are outside USA and potentially subject to export control   Does that mean no-one who has export control concerns can use cloud services? If not, what are the legal boundaries? The same applies to cloud apps eg Google Docs - where are those Docs stored & whast is juristiction?   (please don't give 'it is obvious...' or 'common sense' answers - I already have them! I'm looking for some pointers to actual legal specifics)

  • Answer:

    You would definitely not want to put it in general purpose clouds.  You identified one problem with the server locations, but even more dubious is the citizenship of all the people that work on the cloud.  For instance, do they employ a non-US system administrator? Do they use a non-US sub-contractor to do offsite backups.  Are the general clouds subject to inspection by foreign governments and law enforcement? Export control is not just about the servers. Office 365 has a set of servers specifically government purposes.  http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/products/office/365/default.aspx I don't know if this meets the export compliance standard, but it seems like a good place to start asking questions. Ultimately I think you'll see service providers that specialize in this niche market. It would probably be a great market for the defense contractors like Boeing, Lockheed, Honeywell, etc who already have experience dealing this this type of information. I think there's precedent for this in the way specialized services have popped up for HIPPA service providers.  There's a lot of added costs and RISK for service providers (especially since you can go to jail for an unintended export).  Expect these services to cost a pretty penny.

Matt Dotson at Quora Visit the source

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For Microsoft specific questions, a good place to start would be their 'Privacy in the Cloud' hub: http://www.microsoft.com/privacy/cloudcomputing.aspx The articles linked to from the hub cover broad aspects of privacy, such as data sovereignty and compliance, and it also has information on specific services such as Office 365 and Azure.

Guy Gregory

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