

Dropbox's Condoleezza Rice advocating for warrantless NSA surveillance - pr0zac
http://www.drop-dropbox.com/surveillance.html

======
iamthepieman
I deleted my account about a week ago. Some things, like google (mail, drive
etc) are harder to drop but with so many cloud storage applications out there
this was an easy choice.

appointing someone who advocates(or at least once did) warantless surveillance
is certainly less overt than more direct cooperation and there are other
organizations more strongly implicated in NSA surveillance. I don't feel like
my cancellation will make a lick of difference nor do I feel like my citizen
vigilance quota is filled up for the year. However it's one small thing I can
do in under a minute.

~~~
BuckRogers
Tough to find another email eh? Excuses for Google all day. Man up, admit you
have no principles.

------
robg
This seems like the most straight forward argument, and far more germane to
Rice's role at Dropbox as a continuation of her role as National Security
Adviser. There she was expected to provide independent advice to the
President. Now she's expected to provide independent advice to the CEO and
Board. The worry is she either got rolled by more strident hawks in the Bush
Administration or went along willingly because she believed the arguments.
Neither explanation encourages much faith in her role as an independent
director at a company with lots of my data.

------
tptacek
According to 'dang, the original "drop Dropbox" story was the most-flagged
submission in the entire HN database, by a factor of 3. This story is a mere
subsidiary of that one. It's worth flagging as well. There are better places
to advocate against Dropbox (which is banned for other reasons at my company)
than on HN.

~~~
dang
It was the most flagged submission, by a factor of 3, out of the most recent
million posts. That probably true of the whole dataset as well, but I didn't
have time to scan everything.

The current story was killed by user flags. We didn't touch it.

------
a3n
I dropped them a couple days ago. Said "Rice." in the reason why box.

~~~
matthucke
Mine was "I don't do business with torturers and murderers."

------
pavel_lishin
To be fair, this was almost a decade ago. Has she mentioned what her stance on
this is today?

~~~
robg
The problem is her APNSA position was central to the use and expansion of
illegal methods that are still with us today in various capacities that we
still don't have a full accounting of. Without Snowden, we'd have far less
information.

Maybe she'll help Dropbox navigate those challenges to help protect the
privacy of their users (black hat to white hat), but I'm dubious. She had a
historic opportunity and went in the extreme other direction.

~~~
pasbesoin
If she actually carries out her role with a primary responsibility to Dropbox,
as such roles and business practices are currently defined, then her primary
concern will be _liability_.

And in terms of corporate _liability_ with respect to extant surveillance
practices, a consistent line of argument and arm-twisting has been to proffer
immunity in return for cooperation. ("Give us the data, and you won't be
liable, criminally nor civilly.")

So... I don't see her new role at Dropbox as particularly encouraging with
respect to the privacy of Dropbox users' data. Her concern, per the above,
will be to ensure that if and when Dropbox provides surveillance access, the
corporation cannot be prosecuted nor sued for doing so.

If you want some context for this argument, just refer back to all the stink
about telecommunications companies' liability/immunity that erupted
particularly into the public dialog around 2007 - 2008. Look also at the deals
that have been proposed for what access ISP's should be required to provide
and what they would get in return. Etc.

------
forgottenpass
It'd be sad if another tech company board member got run out of town. But I'll
say that if dropbox didn't expect this reaction, they're foolish. They hired
Rice for her political ties, so I'm slightly less sympathetic if the public
judges her for her political ties.

------
thyroxo
This seems a little crazy. Just because someone who has different political
views than me is on the board of a company whose product I use, doesn't mean I
must support their political views. By that logic, I can never use a product
made by a company who has a board member who doesn't have the same views as
me.

And to the point that her political views will somehow cloud security at
Dropbox: they probably brought her on to advise on how to deal with security
requests by the government.

In any case, the idea that adding Rice to the board will somehow make Dropbox
excitedly comply with all governments surveillance is preposterous.

------
gtCameron
Original title of this submission "Dropbox's Condoleezza Rice advocating for
warrantless NSA surveillance" is more than a little dishonest.

The article is talking about statements she made on TV in 2005. That is bad
enough, I don't understand why you feel the need to make it seem like she is
going to the White House today in a Dropbox t-shirt advocating for NSA
surveillance.

~~~
nathas
It's not so much the statements as the fact that she specifically helped get
bills passed that enabled warrantless wiretapping. There was no concern for
Constitutional law.

Personally, I don't think people change much. I doubt she thinks she did the
wrong thing, and would not hesitate to do it again if she went back in time.

~~~
tjaerv
And in case she happens to be a sociopath, as so many politicians are, she
wouldn't even fully grok what "wrong" means in the first place.

------
mrjatx
I don't understand this decision. Dropbox in February (2014) was finally
allowed use back in China, so my understanding is they're going hard for that
market of over a billion people.

I wouldn't be surprised if China blocked them again due to this appointment.

~~~
Zigurd
I would guess that someone from the administration that did the most to
unleash the surveillance state on Americans would be highly compatible with
the Chinese government's view on the role of state security in the
communications infrastructure.

Dropbox probably recruited her for her conservatism in this area, and for the
prestige of her previous position. If she causes problems it would be because
her prestige was dinged by backlash in the US.

------
joshuak
I'm no fan of warrantless surveillance, but this is a bit too much
sensationalist thinking for hacker news no? The NSAs ability to look at your
dropbox files has not been affected one way or the other by this appointment
I'm sure. If you catch my drift.

To me the bigger issue for Dropbox is that it's a feature not a platform,
which explains why they're having so much trouble entering new markets.

added: [wow, some pretty aggressive downvoting going on there, must have
touched a nerve.]

------
swombat
I have 15 people on Dropbox for Business, so it's not so straightforward to
migrate off, but it'll be done before our renewal deadline. Mostly because of
this. The $2.5k/y was just an annoyance, but this is a matter of principles
now.

We're currently evaluating BitTorrentSync and Owncloud. Any opinions about
their relative merits for a 15-strong team that's half distributed, half
local, and using this as a "shared drive" of sorts, are welcome!

------
bane
Somehow I think this would be more effective if it was hosted off of people's
dropbox accounts. Use their bandwidth and resources to show disapproval.

------
alfl23
Goodbye Dropbox.

------
BuckRogers
First, Eich was taken down by crusading morons and now this? I don't agree
with Eich's former donation (see how stupid that sounds when actually
stated?), and I'm not a fan of Ms. Rice (oh noes, he's not a fan...) but no
thanks, I'm passing on your political hate train.

------
wdr1
Honestly, I'm getting numb to the political witch hunts.

------
RighteousFervor
I already dropped Dropbox. It's a done deal. I moved everything over to
Yandex.

------
terrble
Looks like a lot of privileged white males having trouble with a strong black
woman.

~~~
dguaraglia
Thanks for the straw man. I'll pass on it, but you can go ahead and beat the
crap out of it.

Now let's talk about the _real_ concerns regarding privacy and the encroach of
politicians in Silicon Valley.

