Posted on 01/11/2021 9:25:27 AM PST by MercyFlush
I've been in the technology industry for over twenty years and I've seen fads come and go. When I got started in 2000 I oversaw the migration of data from old tape drives to modern 1GB hard drives. Then at my job I oversaw the end of the mainframe and the ascendancy of the PC and server as the new form of decentralized network infrastructure.
From 2001 through to around 2010 the internet and internet access were present in the government agency I work for but most people were prohibited from using it. And if they did their access was strictly limited.
In the space of ten years my agency went from all but prohibiting internet access to mandating it as mission critical. The massive amount of personal and corporate data my agency holds used to be zealously guarded on our own highly secure server farm. Not even our oversight agencies could penetrate our defenses and our access protocols.
Then starting around 2010 that all changed. Outsourcing of internal jobs had already started in earnest despite state laws prohibiting such outsourcing. That led to outside firms having more access to public data than the government agency itself had.
Then upper management started getting courted by the people who came up with the idea of using remote servers to host (and harvest) data in supposedly cheaper server farms. To make this concept palatable to upper management types they gave it a trendy name and called it, "The Cloud".
The Cloud, you see, was a miraculous gift from Jesus Himself and it was going to save humanity, end global warming, cure cancer, and make kittens happy again. Criticism of The Cloud was not permitted. It was an unspeakable heresy to challenge the bureaucratic orthodoxy and point out that The Cloud was simply moving data and services from our servers to someone else's servers.
In due time The Cloud became an unstoppable force. As The Cloud began to dominate the IT landscape the cheap introductory prices started to increase. And over the last few years even the last vestiges of independent network control, on premise Active Directory, was migrated to The Cloud in the form of Microsoft Azure.
We have now reached the place where Microsoft can shut off our access to our own network by disabling our Azure Active Directory. I consider this a massive existential threat to our agency and frankly, if Microsoft is compromised by politics or cybercriminals then almost all services in my state can be brought down within minutes.
I say this now because the first tentative steps are being made by the tech oligarchy to seize the controls of our society and our government. The censorship and shutdown of politically incorrect organizations over the past year is but a foretaste of what can happen.
The tech giants are now in a position to shut down states, cities, police agencies, and to some extent even our military. The recent actions of Amazon Web Services (AWS) prove that these assaults on our sovereignty can be arbitrary and capricious. And I expect it will get worse when the new Marxist regime in Washington DC cheers from the sidelines as the tech giants seize more and more power.
A handful of leftist, globalist tech oligarchs has control of our data and internet and they are right now proving they can't be trusted with such power. If they choose to they can shut down our communications, our power grid, and many other of our utilities such as water supplies. What happens when Microsoft or AWS decides to shut down an entire state because that state refuses to bow down to the leftist mob? What then?
How many individuals now host their data on web services that would all be lost if someone on the left arbitrarily decides to deplatform them? You store your family photographs online? They can be removed from your access. What about your banking? Your passwords? In some cases you could even be denied the use of your 'smart' home or your wifi connected vehicle if the technocrats decide to deny you access.
The AWS attack on Parler should come as a warning to everyone that The Cloud is not and never was the Miracle from Jesus that we were told it was. It is instead a means to effect a coup d'état without needing significant military force. Whole states can be shut down if needed and it can be done in the blink of an eye simply by denying internet access.
Parler has been deplatformed but before this Year of Our Lord 2021 is out I am certain that we shall see individuals deplatformed. I won't be surprised at all if Donald Trump is the first and his companies and his family will find themselves unable to obtain internet access anywhere. Thousands and perhaps millions of Deplorables will then face the same disconnection from the technology so many of us now take for granted.
What's the solution? I hate to say but we need to step back from our collective dependency on a very few technical chokepoints and become data and service independent again.
Our critical government agencies MUST be wholly independent from the political trends of the technocracy. Our personal data and our collective ability to converse with each other MUST NOT be held hostage to people who would demand that we only express politically acceptable views in order to have access to public forums, banking, and etc.
It is now time to move away from our dependence on these tech oligarchs lest we wake up one day and find them our masters. THEY are The Cloud and The Cloud can't be trusted!
No, on the on-site. Not sure about the off-site.
Slick marketing. Companies like to be buzzword compliant.
I have said for a long time: “If it’s in the cloud do you really own it?”
I have a SATA drive for storage but would like easy access to photos. Is a thumb drive adequate as a mini back up for my docs/photos? I only keep work related things on OneDrive becuase workplace uses it. I have never trusted the ‘cloud’ I used to work in a secure environment and was frankly concerned, if not shiocked when such systems started migrating to the cloud...
Laura Loomer had her Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, PayPal and Pateon accounts frozen/deleted, and her Chase bank account closed. Uber and Lyft also banned her from using them.
Even when she won the GOP primary for Congress, neither Twitter nor Facebook would re-instate her -- brazen electoral interference. But of course nothing was done.
And WHY was Loomer de-personed? Because she dared to criticize Ilhan Omar over her refusal to denounce Female Genital Manipulation and her attacks on Israel. Both 100% true.
Anyone who trusts a cloud is naive.
Do your own backups on a removable drive.
I uninstalled onedrive.
I never get bothered by it.
That's why I bought a couple of terabyte backup drives. Photos, videos, original music, CDs to MP3s, it's all stuff that I, Sirius own.
Apple keeps sending me messages that I've maxed out my cloudspace. That's nice. Eff 'em.
Excellent. Many thanks for the info!
Will purchase an external hard drive for backing stuff up. Just like the old days.
USB/thumb drives are sometimes referred to as ‘volatile’ memory because they can easily lose data. I recommend using an external hard drive for long term storage of data and I’ll go further and recommend that you use an actual Hard Disk Drive (HDD) instead of a Solid State Drive (SSD) because the HDD is far less susceptible to data loss than is an SSD.
Worst case scenario with an HDD is you can send it out for data recovery by remounting the platters in a reader. You can’t do that with an SSD at least for now.
For security, “the cloud” is a disaster. It’s like a virtual private network. You trust one supplier instead of the entire internet with your private information. Do you know if you can trust that supplier? Do you know if your information will be hacked or stolen?
The closer I can keep my information to home the better.
“The Cloud”
I remember a movie that called the same thing “Skynet”...
DOD is also currently going crazy over the cloud too. Pretty insane if a bunch of lefties suddenly decide they don’t like the next war and pull the plug.
“DOD is also currently going crazy over the cloud too. Pretty insane if a bunch of lefties suddenly decide they don’t like the next war and pull the plug.”
Or maybe the DOD intervenes to stop the current coup and the tech oligarchs pull the plug.
Which is why I continue to drive my daughter & son-in-law (both are 25-year IT people) crazy with my stack of these small, cheap 2TB external HDs...
I hate to be negative, but I suspect if Amazon pulled the plug on our current crop of generals an dadmirals in the middle of a pitched battle the best they could do would be standing around with a dumb look on their face.
In a few days they might get around to getting a weak lawsuit in front of a leftist judge who would immediately toss it for “lack of standing.”
A worthy article. Thanks. Freepmail for you.
And yet, the article was about government agencies in the United States trusting the Cloud, putting the data of millions at risk.
So, was the article only about the decisions of the individual user? Why no, no it wasn’t.
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