Thursday Roundup: Amazon's Public Sector Summit, encryption concerns, and tech execs' take on Obama and Romney

The downsides of email encryption. An online survey of 203 federal government information security and email managers conducted by MeriTalk, on behalf of Axway, reports that while email encryption is supposed to improve security, “80% of federal information security managers fear data loss through encrypted email; and 58% state that encryption makes it harder to detect data leaving.”

Amazon touts its government cloud growth. According to Teresa Carlson, VP of Amazon Web Services' public sector business, "government agencies and education institutions are rapidly accelerating their adoption of the AWS Cloud." Information Week reports on Wednesday's AWS Public Sector Summit, and Amazon's announcment that "more than 300 government agencies and 1,500 educational institutions now use Amazon Web Services."

A new threat to the Internet? FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (pictured) announced Wednesday that proposals for the upcoming International Telecommunications Regulations treaty negotiations would pose a threat to the internet, and would "increase uncertainty and raise costs for online innovators everywhere," the Hill reports.

Pushing for planning. In the "hit or miss" world of federal IT strategic planning, DelTek's GovWin blog questions whether agencies are adequately preparing for their big data projects: "If we stop for a moment and consider the potential cost of not taking baby steps toward big data then the wisdom of strategic planning becomes clear." 

Campaign 2012 from the tech perspective. Career federal tech executives might hesitate to voice a preferences for the November elections, but their private-sector counterparts have no such compunction. A DLA Piper survey of "senior executives and advisors in the technology industry" found that 64% said that a Mitt Romney presidency would be better for their field than would a second Obama adminstration.