It’s bad enough that Jeremy Clarkson; as British TV personality opened up his big mouth saying that the fact that the British government has lost the data for 25 million citizens really wasn’t that bad of a thing.

His supposition being that there was nothing that could be done with that data anyway, To prove that this was the case Jeremy then went an made his banking information public saying that the only thing that would do would be to let folks deposit money into his account.

Thinking himself safe Jeremy went about his usual routine only to find a few days later that he was about 500.00 pounds lighter in his bank account as that was the amount that someone; using the data Jeremy had made public, had donated to a local charity in Jeremy’s name. This of course has prompted Jeremy to have a total turn about on what should happen to the people who stole the data for 25 million British citizens

"I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake." [...]

Clarkson now says of the case: "Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy."

Now as stupid as this whole incident makes Jeremy out to be, the thing that gets me is that these are the same services that people who advocate banking over a phone, or piling all their personal information into the hands of social networks, or believing as Jeremy did in the goodness of people who would never do anything evil with all this free information.

Of course this doesn’t take into account two divergent groups who will misuse any information they can get their hands on - legally or otherwise. With the increasing push to have us entrust all our data to third parties the doors are forever open for criminal elements to steal it and uses it for profit - theirs not yours. Along with this the ease by which governments; and any of their agencies, can access that data without even having to worry about getting your consent.

Computing in the cloud might make for some nice catch phrases but the only ones living in a cloud are the ones that believe that their data is safe from theft or prying eyes. As much as the proponents of this so-called future of computing might like to make us believe it is safe there are two points of human nature they are ignoring. Anyone can be bought and every system has a backdoor.

Listening to: Mind In A Box - Lost Alone - Light & Dark

Conversation Tags: cloud computing, data theft