Cloud Storage Open To NSA Spying Says Apple Co-founder

Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak

Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder of Apple, says companies that depend on cloud storage have left themselves open to the prying eyes of intelligence agencies like the NSA. Wozniak expressed sympathy for companies that are at odds with the surveillance tactics of these agencies, but he also added that industry reliance on cloud services is a major part of the problem.

“I think most companies, just like Apple, start out young and idealistic,” Wozniak said at the AWNA convention in San Francisco. “But now all these companies are going to the cloud. And with the cloud you don’t have any control.”

Technology companies are already on the defensive following other recent disclosures about NSA spying in the cloud. In November VirtualThreat reported that the NSA and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had worked together to infiltrate data centers operated by Google and Yahoo. The spy agencies targeted information as it moved over fiber-optic connections between cloud storage centers.

“We don’t have any strong regulations or principles,” Wozniak suggested, when addressing the scope of surveillance conducted by government agencies. He said when he was younger he could accept the idea of wiretapping a person suspected of illegal activities, but he went on to say that today’s tactics are a completely different story.

If you plan to upload your valuable data to a cloud storage provider, you need to “NSA-Proof” your data in advance by encrypting it with a FIPS 140-2 validated AES encryption routine. While not 100% guaranteed to stop government agency spies, it will definitely stop your average hacker.

Chris Dougherty is a grey hat hacker and online security expert. Please visit his blog, www.VirtualThreat.com, for more excellent news and information about protecting yourself in cyberspace.