The documents contained in the FoI dump include correspondence between the tech giant and policing bodies and two data protection impact assessments (DPIAs). The tech giant also refused to disclose its own risk assessments into the transfer of UK policing data to other jurisdictions, including China and others deemed "hostile" in the DPIA documents.
Dependence on American cloud services entails significant risks. Minister Paul of Social Affairs warns of the consequences of a sudden denial of access. "An abrupt denial would affect essential support processes such as email, collaboration via Teams, document exchange, and security monitoring." In such a scenario, the Social Insurance Bank would face disrupted services and an affected communication structure. This vulnerability highlights the profound integration of American technology with government processes.
As AI takes off, the whole cycle promises to repeat itself again, and while AI might seem relatively cheap now, it might not always be so. Foundational AI model-as-a-service companies charge for insights by the token, and they're doing it at a loss. The profits will have to come eventually, whether that's direct from your pocket, or from your data, you might be interested in other ways to get the benefits of AI without being beholden to a corporation.
Bring Your Own This, Bring Your Own That. Enterprises are being sold concepts that allow them to bring their own resources to a vendor's party, potentially cutting costs, addressing data sovereignty concerns, enhancing security, or a combination of all three. However, Tom Wilkie, CTO of observability outfit Grafana Labs, reckons that companies need to exercise some caution and understand exactly what they are getting into before turning up at a vendor's doorstep with their cloud in tow.
Google Cloud is offering organizations the option to keep Gemini 2.5 Flash machine learning processing entirely within the UK to address data sovereignty concerns. This allows customers to select the UK region for data storage and processing, which is crucial for sectors like financial services that warrant local data compliance.