
Condoleezza Rice Joins Dropbox’s Board As It Names New CFO, COO - hashx
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/09/condoleezza-rice-joins-dropboxs-board
======
cryoshon
Well, that's the end of my usage of Dropbox, effective immediately. I'll make
sure to mention Condi's association with them in every conversation involving
Dropbox, in hope of spreading knowledge about their profane selection of board
members.

It's a shame that they had to pick a Bush crony. These people should be in
prison for malevolently misleading the public in order to start a for-profit
war which killed hundreds of thousands of people.

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>> It's a shame that they had to pick a Bush crony.

Another great example of how partisanship and shitty double standards have
ruined our country. The fact is, the vote to invade Iraq was a bi-partisan
vote:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_t...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Resolution_to_Authorize_the_Use_of_United_States_Armed_Forces_Against_Iraq)

"Introduced in Congress on October 2, 2002, in conjunction with the
Administration's proposals,[2][7] H.J.Res. 114 passed the House of
Representatives on Thursday afternoon at 3:05 p.m. EDT on October 10, 2002, by
a vote of 296-133,[8] and passed the Senate after midnight early Friday
morning, at 12:50 a.m. EDT on October 11, 2002, by a vote of 77-23.[9] It was
signed into law as Pub.L. 107–243 by President Bush on October 16, 2002."

82 Democrats in the house and 29 in the Senate voted for the resolution. If
you're against Rice for her actions leading up the war, then maybe you should
take some action against the prominent Democrats who voted for the resolution
as well:

Chuck Schumer

Joe Biden

Hilary Clinton

John Kerry

Harry Reid

The fact is, BOTH parties are to blame for Iraq. Too bad most Liberals just
like to point the finger at Bush and his administration, when in fact there
were plenty of Democrats to blame as well. Pretty sure you're not going to
boycott any company if one of the democrats listed above lands on a board
somewhere are you?

~~~
afterburner
The campaign to start the war didn't start with the vote, the vote came at the
end of a long campaign of misinformation, orchestrated by the party in power.

~~~
wooter
both parties played their role and I hope we hold them both accountable. Have
you seen any of Kerry's talks on Syria, Libya, etc.?

I also don't feel theres been more justification for our actions in Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, or Egypt than Iraq. So changing parties didn't
help... at all.

~~~
afterburner
The US under Obama managed to avoid getting involved in a civil war in Syria,
despite much rhetoric form the Republicans telling people how weak that
supposedly made Obama look. If you prefer to stay out of such conflicts, would
you really consider voting for the party that was enthusiastically calling for
intervention?

~~~
wooter
> despite much rhetoric form the Republicans telling people how weak that
> supposedly made Obama look

As I said, look at Kerry's talks. He's very much a part of the Democrat
establishment and completely contradicts what you're saying.

Now, look at Rand's position on these same countries. The false dichotomy
you're presenting is exactly that - false.

------
vdaniuk
Sooo, will we be seeing a repeat of the Eich-like public outcry?

Though I may understand the business rationale for this hire, I certainly wont
trust founders, board or anyone else at Dropbox who is OK working with a
person that is partially responsible for deaths of thousands(arguably hundreds
of thousands) people in the Iraq war based on false premises about "WMD".

Oh, and we shouldn't forget about her role in "enhanced interrogation
techniques", too.

EDIT: Thinking a little more about this I will be cancelling my Dropbox
subscription.

EDIT2: Yes, we are seeing an outcry. I am incredibly happy that coolness
factor in tech is now more connected to ethical behavior of its top management
and board members.

~~~
bambax
I feel just like you but rely on Dropbox so much. What serious alternatives
are they? (preferably, non-US-based?)

~~~
rainedin
Hypothetically:

File Manager -> Settings -> Remote storage -> add remote

Choose from:

dropbox, google drive, skydrive, others..., other (some open api)

Select > Authenticate > Mount points > Bring online

Something like that would be nice.

~~~
rainedin
Other musings....

Remote options:

* Connect on demand * Low bandwidth mode * Offline mode

Shares:

* Share file/directory (and some kind of authentication mechanism) * Resource uris * Show public shares * One time downloads * Expiring downloads

Version control:

* View log/history * Retrieve older version / Roll-back

------
acjohnson55
I hope she hasn't ever donated to any disagreeable referendum campaigns.....

....or ever been a core member of an administration that left us with two
disastrous wars, an offshore gulag, the greatest economic disaster in 70
years, a record of legitimizing torture, a decline in prestige on the world
stage. Oh, and a strong record or rejecting marriage equality.

~~~
sigzero
All continued by the current administration and more. What was your point
again?

~~~
cruise02
Please get your facts straight.

* The Iraq war ended in 2011, and the Afghanistan war is winding down.

* The Obama administration has attempted to close Guantanamo, only to be blocked by Congress.

* We are no longer in the financial crisis left by the previous administration.

* Obama ordered an end to torture on his first day in office.

* Global attitudes about the United States have improved dramatically since 2008, according to Pew Research ([http://www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/1/survey/15/](http://www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/1/survey/15/)).

So, you're either woefully misinformed, or willfully ignorant.

~~~
ad_hominem
You should get some of yours straight.

* Obama followed the Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that Bush had signed. He did not accelerate withdrawal of troops at all - if Bush was still president it would have been the same timeline. He also promised to get us out Afghanistan immediately, but he lied: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn134-KLL7Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn134-KLL7Y)

* Obama could release all prisoners of Guantanamo right now (that's what you generally do when you don't have evidence to convict someone). He was only blocked in attempting to _transfer_ them elsewhere.

Here are some more facts to chew on.

* He has maintained a personal "kill list," one murdered target of which was an American citizen. [1] Other American citizens, including a 16-year old boy[2], have been killed abroad by drone strikes under his watch.

* He signed Patriot Act and FISA Amendment Acts extensions

* He campaigned on ending warrantless surveillance, instead he greatly expanded it

* He signed the NDAA bill w/ indefinite detention provisions after saying that he had "reservations"[3] about it. Proved a liar when he instructed DoJ to fight lawsuit challenging the provisions.

* He has appointed lobbyists to numerous positions of power in the federal gov't (one of them being from Monsanto to the FDA[4]), after campaigning strongly against the practice.

edit: Forgot to mention his wars on whistleblowers.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-
Awlaki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-
Awlaki#Abdulrahman_al...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-
Awlaki#Abdulrahman_al-Awlaki)

[3]: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/31/obama-defense-
bill_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/31/obama-defense-
bill_n_1177836.html)

[4]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_R._Taylor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_R._Taylor)

~~~
cruise02
The fact that the Obama administration withdrew American troops from Iraq on
schedule does not refute the fact that it did withdraw them.

He was not just blocked in attempting to transfer prisoners, he was blocked
from having them tried in American courts.

The rest of your points don't seem to be related to the ones I was refuting.
No administration is flawless. I was only pointing out that the parent comment
to mine (specifically) was completely incorrect. Any other black marks against
the current administration are beside that point.

~~~
ad_hominem
But they aren't withdrawn yet - we still have troops in Afghanistan. He
promised to bring them home _immediately_ , not to take 5 years to get to to a
point of "winding down." Also it should be noted that Obama more than doubled
troop levels in Afghanistan. Well done on not extending the Iraq SOFA though.

The Guantanamo prisoners simply don't need to be tried by American courts in
order to be released.
[http://images.politico.com/global/2013/05/03/lettertoobama_g...](http://images.politico.com/global/2013/05/03/lettertoobama_guantanamo_5_3_13.html)

Fair enough on the other points.

------
not_paul_graham
Reasons this might be a great move for Dropbox:

1\. It will help them secure major enterprise clients, probably the govt. or
with ties to the govt.

2\. Great selling point to institutional investors come IPO time.

3\. Navigating foreign business opportunities.

Although I'm not a fan of this move by Dropbox, it is important to note that
Stanford has hired Rice as a professor as well. No one is abandoning Stanford,
and the hits that Dropbox is going to take are going to be minuscule in
comparison to the upside. This is just the hard reality.

Rice does have a lot of experience that is relevant to Dropbox and students at
Stanford and I'd just like to leave it at that because at the end of the day,
connections + experiences that come from being Secretary of State trump pure
meritocracy or idealism.

~~~
zimpenfish
The difference is that a) I don't give any money to Stanford and b) Stanford
don't have 10s of gigabytes of my data.

------
bane
This is probably tied to the DB for business offering and probably a play to
become the official shared files app for USG and expansion into Asia.

Also

 _Dropbox announce two more executive changes today. The company has a new
CFO, Sujay Jaswa, who is being into the role internally. Also, hailing from
Google is Dropbox’s new COO: Dennis Woodside. In the post announcing those
changes, it reaffirmed the above, indicating that Rice will help the company
with its international operations._

Also check out Rice's consulting firm which has been providing consultation to
DB for a while now.
[http://www.ricehadleygates.com/](http://www.ricehadleygates.com/)

The "work" page is illuminating.

\- either way, this is potentially explosively bad for DB.

 _edit_ I'll also refer back to a recent comment of mine about how DP can scan
your files

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498457](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7498457)

Now extend that to China providing lists of hashes of banned files, like Falun
Gong texts or whatever.

If you rely on DP _a lot_ , it's like allowing government(s) to sniff around
your personal hard drive.

~~~
Cenk
> and expansion into Asia.

Well, that’s certainly something Condi know something about.

------
peterkelly
Wow, and I thought the recent Mozilla thing was controversial...

Popcorn status: Ready

~~~
ssharp
I don't know how much of an effect this will actually have. It will be
interesting, though. The SV mob was strong enough to affect Mozilla, but a
service as huge as Dropbox might be mostly immune from the mob cries. They
have lots of equity outside of the HN crowd and Rice is taking a board seat,
not an executive position.

~~~
yardie
It won't have an immediate effect. But once the network effect takes hold
these things pick up steam fast. Bitcoin spent 3 years in obscurity before it
took off.

Also if you think about it are choices of browsers are actually quite limited.
You have Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari. Our choices in cloud storage
provides are unlimited. Even my ISP provides the service now.

------
mathattack
My first instinct on seeing the title was "What does someone like this (or Al
Gore, or any other politician) have to offer a tech startup?"

Then the article makes it more clear: _" What’s interesting about bringing
Rice onto Dropbox’s board is how normal it feels. Dropbox needs people with
international experience to help it at once deal with foreign governments that
have blocked its use — China, for example — and as it works to spread a
product developed in one country to others that are culturally different."_

Her connections at Stanford may help, though perhaps they're not as hard to
find.

~~~
alttab
Oh, she's there for her skills in manipulating foreign govetnments. That makes
me feel better.

~~~
mathattack
If you were a VC or investor in the company, it should give you confidence
that someone is around that can give the CEO advice on managing geo-political
minefields. The last thing you want is the overseas political issues that
Microsoft and Google have had to deal with.

~~~
zimpenfish
Given how well she did giving advice about previous overseas political issues,
I'd wager you'd want her as far away from your CEO as it was possible to get
without sending him to the moon.

~~~
mathattack
Here we are getting a little out of my element, but... How well do we know
that she gave bad advice, versus him not listening? I do know that her
speciality was Russia, not the Middle East, but after all that time in DC I am
pretty sure she's learned a lot. Sometimes you learn from political failures,
just like entrepreneurial ones.

~~~
alttab
So you don't hire against track record? Past performance is still the leading
indicator of future success.

~~~
mathattack
In tech entrepreneurship aren't we allowed to fail?

And she is in an advisory role, not managerial.

~~~
alttab
When your social startup fails, it's not the Iraq war.

------
jellicle
I find this board appointment alarming for what it signals.

We know that the NSA et al. are always seeking access to new sources of
electronic data. It is beyond doubt that they have considered how to get
access to Dropbox user data, and almost certainly beyond doubt that they have
approached Dropbox about it.

To me, this appointment signals that Dropbox wants to reach a _negotiated
settlement_ with the NSA over their access to Dropbox user data. They hire
someone who knows all the key players and issues, to negotiate on their
behalf. Presumably Ms. Rice will be instructed something like:

"We're getting a lot of pressure from the NSA. If the public knows we are
giving away their data, there will be a shitstorm, it'll cost us a lot of
business. So, you have to make sure NSA access to our data is somewhat
limited, there's some kind of plausible legal authority, a court order or
something, make sure they pay us for our efforts in copying the data over to
the NSA, that sort of thing. Set it up so we can put all the blame on the NSA
if anything leaks, and claim we were mandated to comply by law. Okay?"

And then Ms. Rice will be dispatched to undertake that negotiation.

So, if the NSA doesn't yet have a pipeline from Dropbox to that datacenter in
Utah, they will soon.

~~~
AJ007
When the PRISM story broke, the Guardian reported that Dropbox was listed as
planned to be added [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-
giants-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-
data)

There are two perspectives for this one --

#1 Dropbox wants an insider to help them be on the receiving end of better
decisions related to non-consensual government surveillance

#2 Dropbox wants better information themselves on non-consensual government
surveillance

From a PR perspective, this looks bad both to both Americans and international
Dropbox users. It does not instill confidence in Dropbox.

Dropbox is a dominant platform right now but it certainly does not have to be
the dominant platform. Any non-US company doing sensitive work is being
negligent to their investors using platforms which enable easy spying
(remember, the controversy in the US is about the NSA spying on American
citizens, there is no legal barrier nor likely will there ever be one for
spying on foreigners. The NSA has a blank check to do what they want if you
are from abroad.)

------
flexie
I don't understand - is that because Dropbox wants to make it more clear to
the world that there is a free flow of information from Dropbox to the US
government?

------
bachback
"sudo apt-get remove dropbox", never to return. it seems obvious that most US
tech companies have not at all realized that they are a global business, and
the implications of the Snowden summer.

------
ptbello
[https://www.dropbox.com/account/delete](https://www.dropbox.com/account/delete)

Reason: Other

Care to elaborate: Condoleezza Rice

~~~
subsection1h
This is the most actionable comment in this discussion. Thank you.

------
gnu8
The problem with Rice is that she is a malevolent liar. She's unfit for any
leadership position, public or private.

~~~
cantbecool
Instead of simply saying a hit and run statement, offer some additional
details.

~~~
markburns
This is more than slightly off topic but...

Whilst I agree with the sentiment of the comment you replied to, at first I
read your comment, then felt a negative reaction towards your reply. My (very
much initial) thought process was to try and think of a rebuttal to your
request for some details.

Just taking a few moments to think (and whilst I still think that the original
post is probably correct), it's funny just how easy it is to fall into an
emotional reaction and justification pattern of communication.

It's hard to admit, but I'm almost certainly emotionally biased against people
that I think (whether rightly or wrongly) have been directly or indirectly
involved in the deaths of others. It's logically obvious that that could
occur, but it's surprising that my reaction has the potential to override my
(mostly logical mind) that I agree with your point and think the original
commenter absolutely should provide some supporting evidence to such strong
opinions.

Apologies to anyone that found this to be an overly laboured and/or irrelevant
point. It felt to me like an interesting bit of introspection.

------
JabavuAdams
Ok, if I cancel my Dropbox subscriptions, I'd like to maintain some level of
consistency.

Assuming that I have a great disdain for the architects of the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars, which other tech companies should I consider boycotting?

To avoid a combinatorial explosion, I'd limit myself to executives or boards
pulled from state, military, and intelligence roles in the last three
administrations. Oh, and McNamara. Fuck that guy.

~~~
cwal37
I don't know off the top of my head, but I think your best bet is to probably
just check the wikipedia pages of major figures. If there haven't been updates
in the past year or two, do some pointed google searches for news articles on
board or COO/CFO/CEO appointments.

------
higherpurpose
Now I have no doubts anymore about Dropbox "coming soon" to PRISM, if it's not
already in it.

------
BjornW
As a non US person I don't get why she would be beneficial for (as
not_paul_graham states) "navigating foreign business opportunities." My first
thoughts, as a person living in the EU are exactly opposite.

------
matthewmacleod
So I've been wanting to migrate away from Dropbox and onto a self-hosted
solution for a while anyway, and I guess this would be a good opportunity to
do so.

Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any good open-source solutions at the
moment. I'm not looking for a fancy web interface or anything, just a simple
sync between devices, with a usable API for building apps.

In particular, rsync etc. doesn't really offer this interface, and I'm really
not convinced by the usability of e.g. OwnCloud. Any solutions I might be
missing? Or is this something I have to build myself?

~~~
pedrocr
As far as I know the current contenders are git-annex[1], syncthing[2] and
clearskies[3]. They're all still very green. git-annex is technologically
farthest along but is still very unpolished for the basic "sync this dir"
functionality to be reliable/friendly. Clearskies is still at proof-of-concept
stage, defining the protocol and implementing the first clients. syncthing is
probably the best bet right now, but I haven't tested it yet.

[1] [http://git-annex.branchable.com/](http://git-annex.branchable.com/)

[2] [https://github.com/calmh/syncthing](https://github.com/calmh/syncthing)

[3] [https://github.com/jewel/clearskies-
ruby](https://github.com/jewel/clearskies-ruby)

------
tegeek
I ve just removed Dropbox from my life. Here are two alternates.

[https://www.copy.com/home/](https://www.copy.com/home/)

[https://hubic.com/](https://hubic.com/)

------
beaker52
We assumed the best pre-PRISM and we got PRISM'd. Dropbox, I'm out.

I love Dropbox, it's my favourite service that I use regularly. However, I
cannot trust Dropbox with the privacy of my data now.

------
Cenk
[http://i.imgur.com/pVbWMqn.png](http://i.imgur.com/pVbWMqn.png)

------
apenney
I cancelled both my accounts over this. It'll be a personal pain, as
everything on my ipad hooks in nicely to dropbox, but it's worth it in order
to not support one of the Bush era war criminals.

------
znowi
That's unfortunate and I, too, will be closing my account with Dropbox. Moving
to SpiderOak.

I realize, though, that neither me nor thousand others will change the Dropbox
policy. They most likely anticipated the public outcry over Rice and
considered it not a threat.

They play in the big league now, increasingly catering to the enterprise
world. And those guys are not particularly worried about privacy issues. They
rather cooperate, like the PRISM companies.

It's not the first nor last time a nice, user-friendly startup turned "evil"
over a certain threshold of growth. If you happen to find a large influential
company that stayed true to its original promise to their users - cherish it
with all your heart. They are a very rare kind.

------
CalRobert
OwnCloud, while not perfect, is really easy to set up. I had it running on a
Droplet from Digital Ocean in about 20 minutes, and a Raspberry Pi in about 40
(note - it's a bit resource heavy for a Pi)

------
muyuu
You guys ever heard of rsync? It's awesome.

~~~
jonstewart
+1. Extra-credit if you've heard of cron.

~~~
zimpenfish
With 16 rounds of ROT13 encryption for safety?

~~~
muyuu
With your own computers and your own encryption in place. Without sending your
stuff straight to the NSA.

------
wellboy
Finally, Dropbox is also an NSA company. Took them quite a while...

------
dombili
I only had 4 small encrypted files on my Dropbox account, so the decision to
close my account was a no brainer.

I'm not even angry at them for selecting a war criminal as a board member but
she supports the NSA and warrantless wiretappings. This is such a stupid
decision for so many reasons. But I'm not surprised, because we deserve
companies like Dropbox who doesn't care about their users private data,
because we've been prioritizing convenience over security for years. Well, not
anymore. Good riddance.

My problem with this is that even though Condi Rice is a war criminal, no one
will say so in the media (some will, those that public don't really
listen/read). But it was easy to bash Eich (and rightfully so) because
marriage equality sells. Don't expect Dropbox to back off from their decision
because only a small group of people will boycott them.

------
Nemant
Guys you don't get it.

Dropbox is going to improve the internet by finding all of the Documents of
Mass Destruction.

 _Shutting down dropbox_

------
bovermyer
Well goddammit. And here I was, about to completely switch from
OneDrive+Google Drive to Dropbox.

Now I have to pull everything out of Dropbox and put it... somewhere. Google
Drive, maybe. Sigh.

I hate leaving negative comments like this, but I really can see no positive
light to this development.

------
Diederich
My family will be migrated from Dropbox by next week.

------
macinjosh
Shout out to BitTorrent Sync as a great alternative to Dropbox for some. Open
and distributed so its already 2x better than dropbox.

[http://www.bittorrent.com/sync](http://www.bittorrent.com/sync)

~~~
josephagoss
I use this as my main sync software. However the code is still closed and
backdoors could easily exist.

------
rglover
What in the _hell_ is going on?

------
embro
I signed up for Wuala about a month ago. Wasn't ready to make the switch
but... It's time to make it happen.

------
dang
Because this article contains very little information, the Rice/Dropbox story
was posted to HN yesterday, and the current thread has gone both far off topic
(relitigating the Bush years) and uncivil, we're going to demote this post.

I'm going to lighten the penalty on the other major Rice/Dropbox post, though,
because although political causes are usually off-topic for HN, that story is
at least new and the thread hasn't degenerated as badly.

Please note that when we say something is off topic for Hacker News, we do not
mean that the topic is unimportant.

------
ekianjo
> Rice is a famous figure, known in almost equal parts for her ferocious
> intelligence, and controversial role in the Bush administration, which
> included comments on alleged weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein
> was thought at the time to possess.

TC needs to correct that last sentence: "weapons of mass destruction that
Saddam Hussein was KNOWN NOT TO possess" would be more correct in light of
what actually occurred behind the scenes.

~~~
streptomycin
I would say it was more like "weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein
was HOPED TO possess". The Bush administration had a bit of circumstantial
evidence that they sold to the world as definitive evidence, but they didn't
actually _know_ that there were no WMDs.

~~~
ekianjo
Correct me if my memory is failing, but they had several UN inspectors go to
Iraq who found nothing and Tony Blair had his aides fabricate some false
evidence that was later used by Powell to declare "hey, we found 'em, now
let's nuk'em". When you need to fabricate evidence, you do it because you lack
of actual one in the first place.

~~~
streptomycin
Saddam didn't let the UN inspectors look everywhere they wanted to, so that
wasn't conclusive (in retrospect, this was an incredibly stupid thing for
Saddam to do... maybe he wanted to bluff that maybe he did have WMDs to make
himself appear more powerful than he actually was, not thinking that the US
would actually invade?).

IIRC Powell's "evidence" (and some other evidence too) came from Curveball,
not from the UK. It was very shaky evidence, but it wasn't known to be
completely false. And even if it was, there was still the hope that Saddam had
some kind of WMDs that we didn't know about.

I'm veering off into speculation now, but I think their thought process was...
We gave him WMDs in the 80s and he used them in the 80s. What were the odds he
really got rid of them all and hasn't tried to acquire more? I think everyone
in the Bush administration just assumed that to be the case, so they weren't
worried that the actual intelligence was incredibly suspect and possibly even
fabricated. They already "knew" Saddam was guilty, they just needed to get the
authority to take him out, and then they would be greeted as liberators and
find copious evidence of all of Saddam's WMDs and evil deeds.

------
gboone42
I hear Box has weapons of mass destruction.

------
donatj
Do any Dropbox alternatives support Mac resource forks? That's the biggest
reason I stick with them, as even Google Drive doesn't.

~~~
jonstewart
Is there any Mac software that actually uses resource forks these days???

~~~
donatj
Finder. Tags / Colors / File comments are stored in resource forks. I tag a
lot of my work with things like "done" and "in progress" etc. It's really
important to my workflow.

~~~
jonstewart
Oh. Huh. Didn't realize that.

------
rainmaking
Well, this certainly puts all the hysteria about Brendan Eich in perspective.

------
myth_drannon
It's time for Ubuntu to re-evaluate its decision to shut down Ubuntu One

------
27182818284
Partisanship aside,

I am super bullish about Dropbox, and have been since they were
getdropbox.com. I think they have wonderful leadership and I've never had a
single problem with their service. I've used both the paid version and the
free model. I think they have _amazing secret stuff_ planned for the next
couple of years.

Even with all that said, I'm _very_ confused. Does she have a personal
connection with some of the founding team or something? I can't remember Rice
ever expressing much care for tech while in the White House (unlike Al Gore's
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_superhighway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_superhighway))
and even then Al Gore joined Apple, not Box.com or Google Drive. Even if she
had gone with Google, Microsoft, Oracle, or IBM, it would have made more sense
to me.

------
nodata
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7563477](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7563477)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7561483](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7561483)

------
rootuid
I'm more outraged by Condi's appointment than Brendan Eich's appointment to
Mozilla.

Condi preached death and torture, Eich supported bigotry.

I'm sure however that nobody really give a f and the status quo will be
maintained.

~~~
sanbor
IMHO it doesn't make sense to compare Brendan and Condoleezza. Brendan
expressed his vote democratically (different opinions are the base of
democracy, right?), while Condoleezza had a charge of power in the State, she
was an active executor.

------
Cbasedlifeform
As it happens I was just looking at DB alternatives that would be more secure.
The news that they have hired Condi the war criminal Rice to join their board
is the clincher. Bye bye DB.

------
rdtsc
Why? What does she bring to the table?

~~~
rainmaking
My best guess is they have been trying to get lucrative government contracts
for a long time.

------
lexcorvus
"Tech-company boards should have more women and [underrepresented] people of
color!" —The Mob, yesterday

"But not someone whose politics we don't like!" —The Mob, today

------
pointernil
"On a similar Note: Rumsfeld joined the Board of Twitter" \-- NO he did not.
And I really hope he does not. Onion-News-Network please take over ;)

------
nsxwolf
Rice's views on internet privacy, in light of her support of bulk data
collection, are legitimate concerns for her appointment to the board of a
company like DropBox.

The war criminal stuff, though, is just pointless. We're all war criminals for
supporting this or that candidate. It's just more shades of Eich, grist for
purists, but irrelevant to a decision to continue using or boycotting DropBox.

------
duncan_bayne
People still use Dropbox, after they pre-emptively screwed Boxopus?

[http://web.archive.org/web/20130116123236/http://blog.boxopu...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130116123236/http://blog.boxopus.com/2012/06/25/dropbox-
disconnects-us/)

------
arbuge
There is also the argument to be made that Condi is unlikely to add much value
to a tech company like Dropbox in reality, which means Dropbox is
autopunishing itself here.

And if the opposite is true, and she will add alot of value, then who can
blame Dropbox for making this call?

------
med_abidi
I'm dropping Dropbox forever.

------
marshray
Say what you want about politics, that lady is sharp as a tack (and a concert
pianist too).

~~~
HNaTTY
Yes, she is smart, and witty, with a self-deprecating sense of humor, and I
still deleted my Dropbox account today.

------
izzydata
Why is dropbox doing this exactly? What can she possibly do to help them?

------
cheshire137
Dammit, I just got excited yesterday about Mailbox coming to Android.

------
javindo
It's a shame to see such a thing happening to a YC project, but I suppose
they're all grown up now and responsible for their own decisions.

------
boondox
Was thinking of running my own server/Dropbox replacement for awhile now. This
news is just the kick my rear needed to put my plans in gear.

------
general_failure
I am a bit ignorant here. What makes Rice a good candidate for the board?
Because she has good tie ups with political big wigs of other countries?

------
tokenizer
[https://www.dropbox.com/help/41/en](https://www.dropbox.com/help/41/en)

------
Ryel
Can someone post up Dropbox alternatives? Particularly any service that is
blessed by, or maybe created by a HN user?

------
boston1999
Why would they choose her while there are so many other more qualified people
for the board of a technology company!

~~~
rainmaking
I would suspect something along the lines of mandatory dropbox usage in the
DMV to the tunes of 15 bucks a pop.

------
charismaticfoo
How is Condoleeza Rice joining Dropbox, make Dropbox vulnerable in the hands
of big brother than it already is? I do think it is a bit of an over reaction
to move out of Dropbox solely because of this reason. In these days of Prism,
we should assume that most of our private stuff is available for surveillance,
unless we are ready to pay for a trusted fully encrypted (without de-
deplication) sharing service.

------
dllthomas
This seems like a thread that would benefit from that "pending" feature...

------
Eric_WVGG
1 year of Dropbox == 1 "Transporter Sync personal cloud"

I guess this is the push I needed.

------
canistr
What's fascinating about the comments is that, had Condoleezza Rice been
appointed Commissioner of the NFL, would people have said "I'm giving up the
NFL forever"?

Obviously this question should only apply to NFL fans who also make this claim
about dropping DropBox as a service.

------
TheMagicHorsey
What the fuck is this left-wing McCarthyism!

Fuck this shit. I hope Hacker News doesn't fall for this garbage ass new
trend. The Mozilla affair was bad enough. This bullshit is going too far.

I'm a libertarian leaning Democrat BTW, if you need to peg me in a hole.

------
thrillgore
I'm with the peanut gallery on this one. Fuck Dropbox.

------
Zenst
She is an intellegent person, so could somebody explain too me why so many
deem this a bad move without mentioning the War,WMDs,NSA or some political
bias?

I'm all ears.

~~~
muyuu
Well, she voted for unwarranted government surveillance. So there's that.

Not that anybody sane should be using dropbox to store any sensitive/private
information.

~~~
Zenst
That I can apprecieate, but that was in her political role and would be like
working for company X and promoting company X's interest and products in many
ways.

But yes your spot on about what you should store in the cloud and how. That
does nail it but still leaves the unfetted tramplement of rights issue leaving
a bad taste for the customer base. So I get that. Was just hard to cut thru
everything as so many tangents going on that it was hard to get to the real
issue at hand, which has people up in arms.

Thank you.

------
eneifert
If I wanted political rants I would go back to reddit. Come on Hacker News,
you're better than this.

------
donatj
The overreaction and moral indignation of HN of late is irritating to say the
least.

------
zos
DROPBOMBS

------
DominikR
I'd just like to know what the hell they were thinking when they gave her the
job since I don't believe that many US citizens have fond memories of her.

Couldn't she just get herself a job in the Oil/Gas industry or at some company
that creates weapons of mass destruction like everyone else does after they
leave a government position.

------
EC1
Very sad. I just deleted everything from my Dropbox and my account, sent them
an email saying "I do not do business with war criminals."

Good luck Dropbox, I hope you un-fuckup somehow.

------
veidr
Brandon Eich isn't cool. You know what's cool?

(BRANDON EICH * BRANDON EICH)

------
camus2
and Al Gore is on the board of many businesses... what's the big deal with it?
because she's republican?

EDIT: why am i downvoted? because i'm pointing out ex politics on both sides
seat on boards or because i talked about being republican,which is not popular
here?

~~~
Pxtl
No, because she was a republican who was a key player in one of the worst
administrations in the recent history of the US government.

I don't have any problem with people who believe in small government, defense,
the rule of law, and sound fiscal policy. Lying to the American public to
justify a boondoggle of a war in Iraq is different.

Al Gore, whatever his failings, doesn't have that kind of massive black mark
on his resume.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Al Gore was a member of an administration that bombed Iraq, with the
justification that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction.

(Coincidentally, the bombing coincided with Monica Lewinsky's testimony.)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Iraq_(1998)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Iraq_\(1998\))

~~~
venomsnake
And Kosovo. Don't forget Kosovo.

