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Lori M. Jahnke and Andrew Asher
his experiences in Ethiopia; hackers attempted to sabotage and use
the blog against an Ethiopian national living in the United Kingdom.
Although the blog did not directly discuss the sociologist's research,
had the research data been stored on a cloud server, they might also
have come under attack, which, if successful, could have potentially
endangered the lives of the research participants.
Unlike local data centers, which are located in a single country,
cloud infrastructures often extend over multiple jurisdictions, and it
may be unclear which laws apply to the search and seizure of data
(Hon, H6rnle, and Millard 2012; Sotto, Treacy, and McLellan 2010).
In fact, it is often very difficult, if not impossible, for researchers to
determine precisely where their data are held and which laws may
apply-- an especially problematic situation for researchers who are
working transnationally on potentially sensitive topics. To gain ac-
cess to data that are stored in the United States (e.g., on a hard drive
in a research laboratory), law enforcement must present a warrant
to search the physical premises. When data are stored in a cloud
infrastructure, a subpoena or e-discovery writ may be served to the
cloud provider, and the owner of the data may not even be notified
of the search. In the United States, Twitter's successful resistance
to disclosing private user data is among only a few examples of a
company challenging the misuse of secrecy provisions contained in
U.S. national security letters (NSL) on behalf of their users.7 Recently,
the New York Times reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation
requests more than 50,000 NSLs per year (Cohen 2011). Google has
also begun releasing information regarding government requests for
user account data and their rate of compliance with these requests
(figure 1).
Provider and user needs are not likely to align in relation to dis-
closure of user activity and resistance to overly broad and unreason-
able searches without significant market pressure. Google's Trans-
parency Report is a step in the right direction, but the data released
are still very general; they do not allow individual users to assess
their risk of data exposure, nor can users determine if their personal
data have been released.
It is conceivable that governments might target particular data
sets or types of data stored on cloud services without the researcher's
knowledge. For example, one anthropologist we interviewed was
studying the prosecution of members of the Kurdish minority in
Turkey under the auspices of Turkey's anti-terrorism laws. This re-
searcher was very concerned about the possibility of state intrusion
into her data, and she was not planning to store them with a cloud
data services provider. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario in
which government actors compromise a cloud data services provid-
er. It may be advantageous for a data service provider to cooperate
7 A national security letter (NSL) is a demand letter to communications providers,
financial institutions, and credit bureaus to provide certain types of customer business
records, including subscriber and transactional information related to Internet and
telephone usage, credit reports, and financial records (Yeh and Doyle 2006, 10). An
NSL does not need prior approval by a judge, and it may include a gag order to
prevent disclosure of the search or even the existence of the order.86
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Asher, Andrew; Deards, Kiyomi; Esteva, Maria; Halbert, Martin; Jahnke, Lori; Jordan, Chris et al. Research Data Management Principles, Practices, and Prospects, book, November 2013; Washington, DC. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc234929/m1/95/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .