Big name tech CEOs gathered in Washington last week to sound an alarm that Big Data and the cloud may never live up to their potential. Why? Because of problems with privacy, security and government intervention. Hardly a shock, right?

Which is to say that whiny CEOs, who haven’t figured out how to solve privacy and security issues, are concerned government may try to do it for them.

Let me make sure I understand: When businesses can’t get it together enough to protect public safety, isn’t the government then supposed to step in?

I know, Silicon Valley has a libertarian bent these days and folks really want to just be left alone to write web apps and make money. Privacy and security can be a distraction, especially when they hamper someone’s ability to monetize information they’ve gathered.

Many tech execs also consider Edward Snowden a hero, but what he did was demonstrate how the world’s largest tech companies cannot protect themselves from the world’s largest electronic snoop.

We may someday agree that how thoroughly the NSA did its work wasn’t something everyone on the planet needed to know. Especially, when we know very little about what other countries are doing that actually hurts American interests.

There is, however, one pretty sure way for tech companies to get government out of their hair: Fix the shortcomings. Solve the problems. Protect our data. Share it appropriately. Protect us from undesired outcomes resulting from data sharing.

Boundless Potential Stymied?

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“CEOs at some of the nation’s leading tech companies see boundless potential for big data and smarter, integrated systems to address major social challenges in areas ranging from medicine to education to transportation — but at the same time, they worry that policymakers at home and abroad could stand in the way of that vision,” writes CIO.com about the meeting.

Attending the Technology CEO Council meeting were the leaders of Dell, IBM and other companies.

“The biggest barriers I think that we see are not around the engineering. It’s around regulation. It’s around protectionism. It’s around trust, or lack thereof. It’s around policies and procedures,” says Xerox Chairman and CEO Ursula Burns, who also chairs the CEO council.

When I first thought about this column, I agreed with Burns. But I have since done an about-face.

The most important issue is trust. More precisely, the total lack of trust. The industry has been unable to secure and protect data. Is there any company you really trust with your data? Or have, dear reader, you simply resigned itself to its misuse, hoping it doesn’t hurt too much.

Failure to protect data is why some countries want to create national Internets where their data lives exclusively on their own soils. Other countries want to shut their citizens off from a world where freedom of speech and open ideas are more the norm.

I believe law enforcement should have a legal, regulated way to get the information it needs. Much of what the NSA does would make excellent sense if properly regulated.

Data protection, like free speech, shouldn’t be a suicide pact. We need for data and communications to be secure, but we also need a lawful means to unlock that information when necessary to protect national security and lives.

Thus, data will never be 100 percent secure, but it can be a lot more secure (ask Target) and we can have better control over how it is used and by whom.

Doing that, however, requires more building and less whining. We need to stop complaining about security and privacy and start doing something.

photo credit: Nick Kenrick . via photopin cc