The Take Back Your Privacy site offers simple ways to file complaints.

Don't like what a website has done with your personal information? Don't understand its privacy policies? A new privacy complaint site is now open for business--created by an Internet freedom and privacy advocacy group in Washington, D.C. called the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).

Complaints can be shared with your social network via sites like Twitter and Facebook, and also forwarded to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). If enough complaints surface, it's possible that the FTC will launch an investigation into whether a website is violate existing laws.

The larger point is to create a cudgel to get Congress interested in enacting comprehensive Internet privacy legislation. CDT has already put out a pretty good guide to online privacy problems, explaining existing and often narrowly-written patchwork of court rulings and laws, most of them falling hopelessly behind rapid technological advances.

"In the past ten years, the ability of Internet companies to collect and aggregate information has increased dramatically," says Leslie Harris, the group's president. But while some states have taken action, Congress has not. "We see next year as the first time in a decade that we will have serious debate in Congress on whether we will have comprehensive privacy laws."

Among other things, says Harris, "we ought to have a tool that takes you out of online tracking; with one click, you delete all tracking devices that have been put on your computer." Users should also have the power to force Internet companies to delete personal data, such as search requests, after the passage of a reasonable period of time, she adds.

This week's Gmail outage highlights the key problem with cloud computing: it means handing both your data and your infrastructure over to someone else.

Understandably, many businesses prefer to have more control. Struggling to repair an email server is, after all, marginally preferable to refreshing the Google maintenance page with both fingers crossed. So as Google tries to encourage more corporate customers to use Gmail, Google Docs, etc, expect the company to push the option to mirror data locally (something that's already possible through Google Gears). Microsoft has already announced that customers using the online version of Office 2010 will be able to store data in their own data centers if they choose.

Perhaps the retreat from the cloud dependence could go further still. Why not let companies switch back to using local servers whenever the main service goes down, as inevitably it will, from time to time. This might be technically difficult, but it doesn't seem impossible.

And, if your heart sank when Gmail fell it may be time to consider the benefits of an old-fashioned local mail server. Sure, you could spend hours configuring it or troubleshooting problems, but at least you'd know someone was working on the problem. And it would let you safeguard your own data and protect your privacy.

Danny O'Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls this "Living on the Edge" and argues that it may the best way to preserve certain freedoms in an age when more and more information is floating off into the cloud. (I saw him give an interesting talk on the subject at OpenTech 2008--you can see a rather shaky video of it here). For more on the possible dangers of cloud computing, also check out Cory Doctorow's latest column for The Guardian.

Readybot operates autonomously or through remote control. (Courtesy of Readybot)

Readybot, a research group that last year released videos of a simple prototype cleaning robot, has revealed that the robot is managed through a combination of cloud-based software and skilled remote teleoperators.

The company's Cloud Robotics Collaborative Control (CRCC) system monitors a semi-autonomous robot via a broadband connection. When faced with a particularly tricky task, such as opening a cabinet door, the robot will send a request for a human supervisor to step in and take over. The human operator does this by selecting or refining one of several prepared code of instructions ("scripts") or writing new ones, according to Readybot's director, Tom Benson. The CRCC system is designed to let a single user supervise a large team of robots.

"This has the potential to deploy large quantities of robots much sooner, because they're cheaper and because you aren't required to build high levels of autonomy," Benson said. "It's much more forgiving in the sense of allowing you to have less sophisticated systems and still do the job." Benson says that Readybots would be best suited for applications like home assist or manual labor.

Using a regular mouse and monitor, a user can switch between 3D simulations of different robots (with a video feed showing the bot's environment) and can swap between supervising and taking completely control of a robot. Currently, the software can control a single prototype Readybot and up to nine virtual robots.

The company says it took inspiration from video gamers by examining how people playing World of Warcraft, The Sims, and other games and designing the system based on those observations. Gamers who tested out Readybot's operating software were able to operate it quickly and efficiently, according to the group. People who have played a lot of video games "can manage large amounts of remote devices and can think in that way," says Benson. "They are capable of managing vast amounts of multitasking."

Courtesy of Readybot

So far, Readybot can clear a kitchen table, load a dishwasher, transport objects, paint walls, and clean and dry surfaces. The group is currently looking for partners to build more prototypes and to expand the capabilities of CRCC.