Who owns your cloud stored data? Uncle Sam says, ”Not you.”

Hence why I have always been wary of what I post. Any where.

I don´t hold myself back while i browse in forums or the www. i know that you have to see your actions as contract ( every little step you make and every click can be fatal im aware of that after about 17years... But holding myself back not speaking freely is just another step towards a controled system in this case a controled wwweb it never ment to be this way but certain people try to make it that way... 
But i guess there are enough smart people out there that wont support or use things like cloud services or FB
Not giving them the upper hand is important just looking at ACTA ( i feel sorry and ashame that some people blindly voted "yes its needed withhout having any clue what it does" )
Any way Cloud services in any form stay away from it , or before - make yourself clear about what it does 
besides that the cloud isnt that save your data could be stolen opened by third they could get deleted they can be overlooked as doc said and if you uploaded something that has copywrite on it your well guess....
Your files can be hjacked... Data or files you upload can be confiscated... Data or personal information can be used for advertisement YAY 
But thats by far not all...

So if I put my stuff in a storage unit, the stuff doesn't belong to me anymore?

Bummer.

You must first understand the fundamental nature of the "Rule Of Law". Strip away all of the irrelevancies such as the imposing buildings, the polished wood dais, the black robes and icons, the pomp and circumstance and the dusty volumes of incoherent law books. What is left is the real nature of the "Rule Of Law": the will of one imposed upon another through the use of force or coercion. Notice that this definition says nothing about the concepts of fair/unfair, good/evil or innocence/guilt. The "Rule Of Law" is all about power and control. This definition is applicable to civil, criminal, military, social and religious venues.

All levels of any government will use the resources at their disposal to ensure that they remain in power and control their subjects. This is why the "Occupy" demonstrations failed in the USA because the various government agencies used the law enforcement agencies to maintain power and control over the demonstrators. The USA citizens have watched the steady erosion of the Constitution by all levels of USA government in the battle against terrorism and media piracy.

Just as the colonialists fought a bloody revolution to establish the Constitution of the United States, so another bloody revolution may be necessary to push back the political powers that seek to limit and control our existence.

This post almost smells like Rothbardian Libertarianism. (Which I see as idealist nonsense) I agree with the second paragraph though. 

Wow...didn't see that one coming...

OH WAIT!!! I DID!

Yeah, whoda thunk casting all your data into the internet winds could come back to bite ya?  

Even the name "Cloud" tells you it is a vaporous, unstable, non-permanent place to be. It may be a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want my information to live there.

I think the real question the law will have to settle about the internet is this: Is the internet a public space or not? If it is a public space, then you have no expectation of privacy, from the government or anyone else. If it is not a public space, then the website owners have full control over who uses their service, the data they collect, and so on, with few rights to the user. Or it could be a mix of both, as in the real world.

Microsoft and other publishers have no qualms at all about asserting ownership over your computer's hardware, so its not as though your data is safe on your computer.  I'm not sure why so many consider the government as tyrannical but its okay for corporations to own you.

Simple solution... NEVER use cloud services, ANYWHERE!

Wiz... You buy storage and if used within TOS and the law, are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy. After all, you are paying for the storage, and per Technet:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/privacyimperative/archive/2011/11/29/skydrive-everything-on-skydrive-that-you-upload-is-private-until-you-tell-us-otherwise.aspx

There are sophisticated screening methods used on your upload, however. This is (they say) to ensure no issues like child pornography (the example used in another blog about it).

If a hacker succeeds in stealing data, that's not the same as the DoJ walking into court and claiming what you upload is not yours. In the case of pirated images, software, etc. they might be correct. However, if you upload family pictures, installers... they are not.

You were given the Fourth Amendment which states that without a proper court ordered search warrant (except in "plain sight" issues), you and your property may not be seized or searched.

The government does NOT have the right to sift through everything to find what it considers a law breaker or illegal. If it did, then racial profiling, etc. would be legal. It is not. 

There is an exception for if a private citizen looks through your stuff, legally or illegally, and then alerts the government to it being illegal - the government can then go search, because they have probable cause to search for those illegal things.

Hence, if the site you upload to screens things, then a private, non-government entity is searching it - if illegal things are found by them, it is not illegal for the government to search behind them.

Cloud storage is an invention of the internet era, and a faddy one with a grey area a mile wide.  Private data should not be stored on some server somewhere.  By treating it so carelessly and without having a backup you might as well have thrown it away.

I blame the teachers and the parents for not educating people to know better than to trust some third party or even the government with your data.  You might as well hand out photocopies of your birth certificate at the train station while you're at it.

I am sorry to say that the government response does not surprise me.

+1

"you might as well have thrown it away." or given it to your worst enemy.

A reasonable expectation of privacy depends on who is defining  "reasonable" and "privacy"

20-30 years ago we would have cried foul, cursed big brother, and been up in arms if someone proposed dozens or even hundreds of cameras being placed on the streets and sidewalks in almost every major city in America for whatever reason.... with facial recognition, no less.  They are there now along with good old Google, watching our every move.  Carry a cell phone? You can be located to within 3 feet of your position.

 When did all this become a good thing?  There is no right to say "no, I don't want to be filmed, watched or tracked by whomever" That would be an unreasonable expectation of privacy by modern standards.

 We accept this now like sheep because we have been told it is in the interest of our own saftey and security. Privacy? What a quaint old-fashioned notion. It (and the Forth Amendment) have been sacrificed for our own good.

Why would anyone be shocked that the internet would take the same path?

Consider what you just wrote, there ... you do not get to consciously choose whether or not some of your personal information appears on 'some server somewhere.'  Yeah, uploading your data yourself does ... but you could refuse to ever upload your data anywhere and still wind up with your private information on some server somewhere.  I continue to point this out to my mother, who refuses to buy anything online, even from amazon.com, because she feels that exposes her information in a way that buying something with a credit card at a brick and mortar store doesn't.  Grocery stores have been caught red-handed tracking customers in their stores, and any purchase with a credit card -- or just applying for a credit card, or even just receiving an application for one -- results in very vulnerable information being sent places out of your control.

Assigning full blame and penalty on users, then, is useless and, in some cases, flat out wrong.  In the same thread of store owners having a degree of responsibility for providing security on their premises for shoppers in their store and their employees by providing security lighting, etc., and property owners can and have been found negligent for not providing basic security measures resulting in murder, hijacking or theft, server owners / hosting providers / etc. should have a degree of responsibility for keeping private information secure.  A server owner who knowingly stores sensitive information, such as information that could be abused to steal someone's identity, should have a degree of responsibility if, due to their negligence in securing that data, hackers are able to access it.  As responsible as the hackers themselves?  No, but if they do not make a reasonable effort at encrypting the data and limiting access to it, I feel they can and should be held criminally liable for such negligence.

With the cost of HDD's being relatively low these days [like 3TB for $120] I can't understand why anyone would want to store private data on any cloud... then lose control/ownership of it.  There's no way on Earth I'd trust somebody like Google, Yahoo or Microsoft with my personal stuff, and not because I have something to hide, but more that I wouldn't want anyone laying claim to it, because it happened to be on one of their servers.

I dunno, the more I hear about this 'land of the free' the more I realise just how lucky I am not to live there, though it probably won't be too long before our idiot politicians follow suit and take away more of our freedoms.  Yup, you can always depend on a politician to throw a spanner n the works to make life less enjoyable

I have lost creative works (I'm an aspiring -- nice word for wannabe -- author) I wish I had stored online to retrieve from hard drives dying on me.  No, they don't need a lot of storage space, but its nice to have backups ... just as I like being able to format-nuke my hard drive when I need to and be able to retrieve software, like Stardock games, online instead of having to hunt around for my game CDs.

Some data I'd be more leery about, but I have friends who share private financial data with me via Google docs and whatnot.

Safe to say you can count on it.  Plan accordingly.

Back when I did a series on cloud storage, https://forums.wincustomize.com/423476 , I felt that Cloud storage wasn't a good move. Mark, I absolutely agree regarding HDD cost and security.

Also, I've written in the past about apps like word processors and office suites, etc. The entire move to personal computing was for control over your software and and hardware, and the convenience of the net.

I never intend to 'rent' software on some cloud app. Never.

NEVER store financial data like tax forms, etc. or anything with you Social Security number, etc. online. NEVER!

If the security is breached, your identity is as well. That kind of damage is unbelievable and trying to fix it will drive you insane. Please. Just never do it.

Well fair enough, there are a lot of things, personal data and so on, that you do have recorded somewhere, and you can't avoid that.  But you can choose not to use online storage for files and things, that's what I was getting at.  You can choose not to link your account to social networking and have your activities scrutinised.

There's no assurance of safety in filling out job applications and including your social security number, or anyplace else, either.  In fact, a huge portion of South Carolina residents recently had their private information, including Social Security numbers, hacked from state servers recently.  Not putting your info online yourself, then, is virtually ineffective at protecting your identity.

That's why you make regular backups... and have a backup of your backups on an entirely different drive.  For example, I have an internal drive for Acronis system images and personal data, then an external that's constantly plugged in to make a backup of that backup, and then another external drive I plug in once a week [sooner if there's something vitally important] to make a backup of that backup.  Yes, it takes a bit f effort to set it all up, but once you're set it's as easy as falling off a log.... and a lot safer than cloud storage, as we are now seeing.

Yeah, the bastards certainly know how to put a bitter sour taste in your mouth.  I mean, we have a constitution as well, but Paul Keating, when he was briefly Prime Minister, bought out an "Amendment Act", which can be used by government to change the constitution to suit its own agenda, without having to go to a referendum or the polls.

I just don't have the trust in cloud based storage after once reading about Google laying claim to data that was stored on its servers.  Nope, it's good old HDD storage for me.

Me either!  I use Painshop Pro, and recently I got an email from Corel inviting me to use its cloud based services, which I politely refused by deleting the message and not bothering to reply.  I mean, why would I need to use their cloud based software when I already have it installed on my PC from disc.  Apparently Adobe does the same thing, and people say it's a cheap way to use the creative suites, but I certainly won't be availing myself of it.  The way I see it, if I can't afford to purchase it on disc, then I'll have to do without.

I see you have idiot friends.....;)

Simple solution....keep out of the clouds.

Don't use it as a 'safe' backup for anything you may want to claim authorship of.  If you need to back up a manuscript...buy a USB stick....or 10.

Books don't need much space at all anyway....;)

I've been using webmail for over a decade now.  I want that data offloaded and backed up, but until I get DSL (supposedly still this month, will believe it when I see it) it's hard to even get the initial download done on Gmail at least.

Fortunately, my internets, they are a changin'

I hope.

Sigh.

(As far as other cloud storage, it's still good for pics and music and whatnot.  Just nothing private.)