title: EC2 instance - sending user data - is it secure?
body: <p>I have a Amazon EC2 instance and the purpose of this instance is to do a computation based on some medical information. I'm booting the instance from Java via the Amazon Java API (<code>RunInstanceRequest</code>). I'm giving the EC2 Instance some user data (e.g patient id) that the instance needs to do the computation. </p>
  
  <pre><code>request.setUserData(getMyUserData());
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm just wondering how secure is to do this - is this info. encrypted somehow ?</p>