New EU laws for cloud computing soon?

Cloud computing poses a host of complications in carrying out the law in a uniform fashion, prompting Microsoft’s top lawyer, Brad Smith to pose a suggestion to the EU. The existing European data retention law was passed in 2006, which did not really consider cloud computing implications back then. The data retention law requires the 27 E.U. member states to each set their own length of time for the retention of data (IP address and time of use of every e-mail, phone call and text message sent or received), between six and 24 months. Most of them have chosen widely varying retention times, the root of the cloud computing problem. With cloud computing, a user could reside in one country, while their data is stored in another. Both countries can have different retention periods, causing compliance by telecom and cloud services to be complicated. Smith suggested several solutions, such as a standardized retention period across countries, or a mutually agreed recognition principles so that the retention period applied is based on where the user’s data is stored.

Via [Yahoo! News]