Abroad...
"But the downside for some is that potentially sensitive government data ends up cached abroad. "
How many EU countries have weaker data protection than ours? (genuine question)
The UK government’s internet portal that serves as a one-stop public services shop for British citizens caches its website at locations throughout the European Union, The Register has learned. Directgov, whose content management system, hosting and managed service is maintained by NTT Europe Online, operates from “primary …
If it's just the forms and instructions for renewing my vehicle licence, then I'm not too bothered. If it's the server logs that show which IP addresses have accessed which bits of the Direct.gov resources I can begin to see some level of concern. If it's the personal information which one submits in using the online services then I'm very concerned. There are strict rules about off-shoring (and, God help us, "near-shoring") personal data; I suppose that Direct.gov and NTT can assure us that they've considered all that?
Why is this a problem? The servers are unlikely to be held in any country with more lax security than the UK - has any other government posted the details of half the country on an unencrypted CD?
Not that I use direct.gov.uk ever - even for my car tax, I have a post office within walking distance (next closest one is 12 miles away and run by a surly humourless idiot) that I'd like to keep open despite the government's intensified efforts to close it.
OK, I hope there are good and varied connections with the rest of Europe. What's the name of that place in Docklands that everybody and their sheep seems to use to house their servers? I've known enough network failures where "independent" hardware wasn't, that using a server in another country looks good, but how many links between us and them are genuinely independent?
I wouldn't be surprised if half a dozen telcos have their own optical fibre to Europe, all going through the Channel Tunnel. Demon Internet had two independent routes to the USA that converged, physically, on the same bridge in the USA.