I agree with you that many people have this fear. But it's a logically inconsistent fear: (1) As I mentioned, inability to access the cloud with Dropbox and li

I agree with you that many people have this fear. But it's a logically inconsistent fear: (1) As I mentioned, inability to access the cloud with Dropbox and like services -- or government/organizational intervention thereof -- does not impede your access to your data: all synced devices have separate, local instances of the data that are as up-to-date as the last time such device was online. (2) In any event, how is storing data "in the cloud" any different to storing email? It's all "up there" too. I don't see the distinction. My email is "online" and my cloud-stored data is online. What's the difference? And one could argue that email is -- at times, at least -- even more sensitive than actual data. (3) To fear "only ... a hardware failure or a nasty virus" is shortsighted: failure to maintain multiple instances of data, both on- and off-line alike, is far more risky indeed.