All personal information stored by British internet users on major “cloud” computing services including Google Drive can be spied upon routinely without their knowledge by US authorities under newly-approved legislation, the Independent reports.
With the renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the US government granted itself the right to spy on anyone using the internet storage facilities provided by American companies.
Cloud computing allows internet users to store their information and data in an network server as opposed to in a physical memory stick or tangible location on their hard drive or on their smartphones. According to some estimates, 35 per cent of UK firms use some sort of cloud system – with Google Drive, Apple iCloud and Amazon Cloud Drive the major players.
Shockingly officials do not need to use the guise of a threat to national security as a way to justify their snooping.
Caspar Bowden, who served as Chief Privacy Adviser to Microsoft Europe for nine years until 2011, told The Independent: “What this legislation means is that the US has been able to mine any foreign data in US Clouds since 2008, and nobody noticed.”
Privacy campaigners and legal experts are only just waking up to the extent of the intrusion.
Bodies such as the National Security Agency, the FBI and the CIA can gain access to any information that potentially concerns US foreign policy for purely political reasons – with no need for any suspicion that national security is at stake – meaning that religious groups, campaigning organisations and journalists could be targeted.
The information can be intercepted and stored in bulk as it enters the US via undersea cables crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
Mr Bowden, who now works as an independent advocate for privacy rights and co-authored a report for the European Parliament warning of the threat to clouds posed by FISA, criticised the UK Information Commissioner’s Office for giving free rein to the US authorities.
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