Cloud Act: The Real Issue Isn’t Data Location, It’s the Control Plane

In most discussions about the Cloud Act, the focus is solely on data location. Data center in Frankfurt? ISO-certified? Encrypted? Sounds good.

From a technical standpoint, however, this discussion falls short.

The real point of attack lies elsewhere: the Control Plane.

Whoever Controls the Control Plane Controls Everything

In every cloud infrastructure, there are two levels:

• Data Plane: This is where the actual user data resides and moves.
• Control Plane: This is where it is determined who processes what, how, and where. Scheduling, orchestration, APIs, IAM, access rights, encryption management, network control, policy engines.

Control over the Control Plane effectively determines who has access to which data streams, metadata, keys, and control commands.

And this is exactly where the Cloud Act comes into play.

As soon as a provider’s platform is operated from a non-European legal jurisdiction, this provider can be ordered by its national authorities to disclose or manipulate all control levels. And this affects not only the user data itself but all control information beyond that:

• Key Management Systems (KMS)

• Authentication Systems (IAM)

• Scheduling Processes

• Service Mesh and API Configurations

• Network Policies

• Log files and metadata

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With access to these levels, data can theoretically be decrypted, duplicated, redirected, or analyzed at any time—even if the user data is encrypted in the European data center. Encryption becomes worthless if key management, certificate administration, and policy enforcement are under the control of third parties.

Encryption Doesn’t Solve the Problem

Many platform providers argue with “Customer Managed Keys” or bring-your-own-key programs. In many cases, this is nothing more than a shift of responsibility.

As long as the cloud provider’s Control Plane is operated outside European jurisdiction, the dependency remains. Because key management is just one of many control components within a modern cloud stack. Access to scheduling systems, container orchestration, network configuration, and API control remains unaffected.

Even fully encrypted data can be decrypted and intercepted during operation if there is corresponding control over the orchestration and scheduling system.

The crucial question is therefore not:

Where is the data located?

But rather:

Who controls the platform?

Control Plane and Cloud Act Are Technically Directly Connected

The extraterritorial effect of the Cloud Act does not only access raw data but every component controlled by the provider. And the Control Plane is part of the central control for almost all major platform providers, which is managed globally.

Even if subsidiaries or European joint ventures are operated, central parts of the Control Plane remain under the control of the parent company. And this is exactly where the legal vulnerability arises, turning a mere data storage issue into a control problem.

Infrastructure Control Starts Below the Application Level

Anyone seriously discussing data sovereignty and cloud independence must address not only the workloads but the entire control chain of the infrastructure.

This includes:

• Who provides the Control Plane software?
• Who manages scheduling and orchestration?
• Who operates the API gateways?
• Who provides key management?
• Who controls network segmentation and network access?
• Who manages certificates and secrets?

Sovereignty only arises when this control is fully transparent, traceable, and operated within one’s own legal jurisdiction.

Conclusion

The Cloud Act is only superficially a data storage issue. In reality, it affects the entire control level of modern cloud infrastructure.

Those who do not control the Control Plane control nothing at all.