Handing over the right for the government to snoop through information held on corporate servers is bad enough, but as we move to more web-focussed applications it could prove disastrous.

UKNations spy on each other – always have, always will. But the focus today is increasingly on economic espionage. It always happened, remember Concordski, but it’s moved up a step and several European companies have complained that the US and UKare using the Echelon system to win contracts.

Now Google is facing trouble because it may be holding business sensitive information that the government can access at will. It’s a quandary that could stall the whole model of web applications.