The movement of personal data off desktop computers and into the cloud is changing rapidly. The amount of Data that will reside with Cloud Service providers will eventually dwarf what is held by individuals and company servers; this brings up troubling questions that must be addressed as we move forward to this new paradigm of shared resources and Cloud Computing.

Is it time to update legal protections? Our laws must change to account for cloud computing. The Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure will surely be challenged as more of our personal and private information is being held by someone else. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) was written more than two decades ago and leaves many new categories of data poorly protected.

The Fourth amendment, — “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”, — will surly have to be more thoroughly debated and I hope strengthened.

In the 1976 case U.S. v. Miller and in a series of subsequent decisions, the Supreme Court basically concluded that an individual’s records held by a third party may enjoy considerably less constitutional privacy protections than the same records held by the individual in a filing cabinet.

Cloud Computing will allow for data storage at very low cost. The downside may be a loss of privacy protection. What constitutes, “papers and Effects” and “unreasonable.” Along with questions of jurisdiction and what a reasonable expectation of privacy is will be at the forefront of this new challenge to our legal system.