當獲知 Google 即將推出一個新的作業系統(Operating System) Chrome 時，心裡十分高興，以 Google 的一貫風格，這應會是一個免費而且不斷更新的作業系統。終於有人出來挑戰微軟了！當我看過了相關報導後，發現這個OS只是讓機器可以直接連上網際網路作業的系統，就是讓人們可以由電腦或手機直接上網，如果只是如此並沒有甚麼好喜悅的，不過是把 brower 變成作業系統罷了。現在已經有許多免費軟體讓人們可以從電腦上網了。


Google 所勾畫出來的未來發展藍圖裏，資料都是存在網際網路上 Gmail, Documents, Google Maps, Google Chat, Calendar, Photo, Reader ..等各項服務都是讓人可以不受機器的限制，在任何可以上網的地方都可以從事各種工作，而 Chrome 似乎就是那最後一哩(last mile)的建設了(或許Android才是)。我可以想見的最大影響就是：我以前在賣的資料儲存設備(data storage device)的需求將大幅減少，以及這種「雲端」服務(將所有資料與資訊存放於網際網路中的各種服務)的總總便利。讓人們可以享受種種便利，卻不必付錢，而服務提供者Google 又能賺錢，這是真正的「幸福經濟」。

這就是新經濟嗎？或者是"It's too good to be ture!"我是有一些淡淡的疑慮。不過 Google 的設備一定比我用的好，我存在 Google 裏的資料滅失了的可能性應該還小於我自己硬碟壞掉才是。那關於隱私與資料的安全，就信任 Google 了。

在讀到了這篇Op-ED之後，我突然覺得一般使用者有足夠了理由停止這種信任(or Anti-turst)。我想這個道理或許和一年前這個地球上沒幾個人相信通用汽車會倒是一樣的，對 Google 的信任其實是沒有甚麼保證或保障的。可是像我這般的小人物，我的資料值幾個錢呢？我想大部分的人即使有這樣的憂慮，仍無法抗拒這些雲端服務所帶來的便利性。請讀一讀這位 Jonathan Zittrain所寫的評論，我想應該要有公權力介入來提供使用者一些保護，而我們也需要立法來保障使用者的隱私。

文中除了資訊安全問題的討論，與一些實例之外，也討論到隱私權的保障。舉例來說像檢察機關可以要求系統業者提供使用者的各種資訊，而不需經使用者同意，甚至不會告訴使用者他們的資料被看過或使用了。這就像只要知會房東就可以到你住處搜索一樣。法律對於存放於雲端的種種資料、資訊的保障，遠遠不如對於傳統個人財物的保障。

另一個更棘手的問題是創新的受限。各個雲端服務平台將掌有決定各項應用軟體和內容的權力，雖然可能會有幾個平台相互競爭；但雲端服務一但開始使用，一般使用者也不易更換平台，所以不僅軟體開發者與內容創作者受到平台提供者(e.g. iTunes, iPhone, Google)的制約，一般使用者也是。




Op-Ed Contributor

Lost in the Cloud

By JONATHAN ZITTRAIN
Published: July 19, 2009                            Cambridge, Mass.

EARLIER this month Google announced a new operating system called Chrome. It’s meant to transform personal computers and handheld devices into single-purpose windows to the Web. This is part of a larger trend: Chrome moves us further away from running code and storing our information on our own PCs toward doing everything online — also known as in “the cloud” — using whatever device is at hand.

Many people consider this development to be as sensible and inevitable as the move from answering machines to voicemail. With your stuff in the cloud, it’s not a catastrophe to lose your laptop, any more than losing your glasses would permanently destroy your vision. In addition, as more and more of our information is gathered from and shared with others — through Facebook, MySpace or Twitter — having it all online can make a lot of sense.

The cloud, however, comes with real dangers.

Some are in plain view. If you entrust your data to others, they can let you down or outright betray you. For example, if your favorite music is rented or authorized from an online subscription service rather than freely in your custody as a compact disc or an MP3 file on your hard drive, you can lose your music if you fall behind on your payments — or if the vendor goes bankrupt or loses interest in the service. Last week Amazon apparently conveyed a publisher’s change-of-heart to owners of its Kindle e-book reader: some purchasers of Orwell’s “1984” found it removed from their devices, with nothing to show for their purchase other than a refund. (Orwell would be amused.)

Worse, data stored online has less privacy protection both in practice and under the law. A hacker recently guessed the password to the personal e-mail account of a Twitter employee, and was thus able to extract the employee’s Google password. That in turn compromised a trove of Twitter’s corporate documents stored too conveniently in the cloud. Before, the bad guys usually needed to get their hands on people’s computers to see their secrets; in today’s cloud all you need is a password.


Thanks in part to the Patriot Act, the federal government has been able to demand some details of your online activities from service providers — and not to tell you about it. There have been thousands of such requests lodged since the law was passed, and the F.B.I.’s own audits have shown that there can be plenty of overreach — perhaps wholly inadvertent — in requests like these.

The cloud can be even more dangerous abroad, as it makes it much easier for authoritarian regimes to spy on their citizens. The Chinese government has used the Chinese version of Skype instant messaging software to monitor text conversations and block undesirable words and phrases. It and other authoritarian regimes routinely monitor all Internet traffic — which, except for e-commerce and banking transactions, is rarely encrypted against prying eyes.

With a little effort and political will, we could solve these problems. Companies could be required under fair practices law to allow your data to be released back to you with just a click so that you can erase your digital footprints or simply take your business (and data) elsewhere. They could also be held to the promises they make about content sold through the cloud: If they sell you an e-book, they can’t take it back or make it less functional later. To increase security, companies that keep their data in the cloud could adopt safer Internet communications and password practices, including the use of biometrics like fingerprints to validate identity.

And some governments can be persuaded — or perhaps required by their independent judiciaries — to treat data entrusted to the cloud with the same level of privacy protection as data held personally. The Supreme Court declared in 1961 that a police search of a rented house for a whiskey still was a violation of the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of the tenant, even though the landlord had given permission for the search. Information stored in the cloud deserves similar safeguards.

But the most difficult challenge — both to grasp and to solve — of the cloud is its effect on our freedom to innovate. The crucial legacy of the personal computer is that anyone can write code for it and give or sell that code to you — and the vendors of the PC and its operating system have no more to say about it than your phone company does about which answering machine you decide to buy. Microsoft might want you to run Word and Internet Explorer, but those had better be good products or you’ll switch with a few mouse clicks to OpenOffice or Firefox.

Promoting competition is only the tip of the iceberg — there are also the thousands of applications so novel that they don’t yet compete with anything. These tend to be produced by tinkerers and hackers. Instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing and the Web itself all exist thanks to people out in left field, often writing for fun rather than money, who are able to tempt the rest of us to try out what they’ve done.

This freedom is at risk in the cloud, where the vendor of a platform has much more control over whether and how to let others write new software. Facebook allows outsiders to add functionality to the site but reserves the right to change that policy at any time, to charge a fee for applications, or to de-emphasize or eliminate apps that court controversy or that they simply don’t like. The iPhone’s outside apps act much more as if they’re in the cloud than on your phone: Apple can decide who gets to write code for your phone and which of those offerings will be allowed to run. The company has used this power in ways that Bill Gates never dreamed of when he was the king of Windows: Apple is reported to have censored e-book apps that contain controversial content, eliminated games with political overtones, and blocked uses for the phone that compete with the company’s products.

The market is churning through these issues. Amazon is offering a generic cloud-computing infrastructure so anyone can set up new software on a new Web site without gatekeeping by the likes of Facebook. Google’s Android platform is being used in a new generation of mobile phones with fewer restrictions on outside code. But the dynamics here are complicated. When we vest our activities and identities in one place in the cloud, it takes a lot of dissatisfaction for us to move. And many software developers who once would have been writing whatever they wanted for PCs are simply developing less adventurous, less subversive, less game-changing code under the watchful eyes of Facebook and Apple.


If the market settles into a handful of gated cloud communities whose proprietors control the availability of new code, the time may come to ensure that their platforms do not discriminate. Such a demand could take many forms, from an outright regulatory requirement to a more subtle set of incentives — tax breaks or liability relief — that nudge companies to maintain the kind of openness that earlier allowed them a level playing field on which they could lure users from competing, mighty incumbents.

We’ve only just begun to measure this problem, even as we fly directly into the cloud. That’s not a reason to turn around. But we must make sure the cloud does not hinder the creation of revolutionary software that, like the Web itself, can seem esoteric at first but utterly necessary later.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/opinion/20zittrain.html?bl&ex=1248408000&en=26edfbfbe564636f&ei=5087%0A

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The article, Lost in the Cloud, was taken from The New York Times.  "The New York Times " is the registered trademark of the New York Times Company.  The copyright remains with its original owner.  The author of this story and the New York Times are not involved with, nor endorse the production of this blog.