Patriot Act haunts Google Service

Slashdot references a piece in the Globe and Mail about Google's current problem with its year-old user tools being at odds with another new aspect of information technology, that of the unprecedented powers of security officials in the United States' surveillance of communications.

This conflict emerged recently in a deal Google brokered with Canada that puts Lakehead University's (Thunder Bay, Ont) use of Google's new tools in the center of a conflict between the U.S. Patriot Act, which gives authorities the means to secretly view personal data held by U.S. organizations, and Canada's privacy laws, which require organizations to protect private information.

Security experts say many organizations are only just now starting to realize the risks they take on by embracing Web-based collaborative tools hosted by a U.S. company.

See globeandmail.com for more information.