Wikileaks and the vapourware of Cloud Computing

Salon puts it very well....

The WikiLeaks affair is highlighting the Internet's soft underbelly: the intermediaries on which we all rely to store our information and make it available. We are learning, to our dismay, that we cannot trust them. Combine that with increasing government intervention, we're also learning that the Internet is somewhat easier to censor than we'd assumed.

This should worry anyone who believes that we're going to move our data and online lives into the fabled "cloud" -- the diffused online array of hardware and services where, proponents say, we can do our online work, play and commerce without the need for storing data on our own personal computers. Trusting the cloud is becoming an act of faith, and it's time to question that faith.

And the situation should absolutely chill everyone who believes in free speech -- and especially the people who call themselves journalists. Sadly, however, too many of them have been cheering on people who want to make WikiLeaks disappear. Do they realize that it could be their own turn someday?

Given that the economic case for Cloud Computing seems to be floating ever further away, and its most punted current rationale is "risk reduction", Wikileaks shows The Cloud's promise of risk reduction is whispy at best and that there is only one way to reduce risk and that is have your own servers, preferably not in the US. And ideally have your own Internet as well....

The correct retort to any Cloud Apostle right now is probably somewhere between a snort of derision and a well placed boot on the seat of the trousers....