Dropbox's Condoleezza Rice advocating for warrantless NSA surveillance

http://www.drop-dropbox.com/surveillance.html

by pr0zac • 12 years ago

104 34 12 years ago

drop-dropbox.com

a3n• 12 years ago

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

matthucke• 12 years ago

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

paulhauggis• 12 years ago

So brave.

alfl23• 12 years ago

Goodbye Dropbox.

pavel_lishin• 12 years ago

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

robg2• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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.

mik3y• 12 years ago

I only have anecdata, but,

I saw her speak at Google in '09. She took questions, which were largely softballs, when finally one guy had the courage to ask something along the lines of, "Don't you want to apologize?" She was visibly annoyed; unapologetic and completely dismissive.

I left the talk, blood boiling, thinking, gee, there really are no consequences for this woman (and the bush admin).

That said, she's a skilled enough political figure that I'd be shocked if she doesn't have a more diplomatic line to trot out now. Hard political lines are bad for business.

whatevsbro• 12 years ago

Hmm.. This person was a sociopath a decade ago. I wonder if she's not a sociopath anymore.

(Yeah, not directly comparable, but she is still very much a sociopath, just like all other high-ranking politicians. True, this is just an assertion I'm making, so take it for what it's worth, but please do think for yourself.)

RighteousFervor• 12 years ago

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

gtCameron• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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.

twoodfin• 12 years ago

Which bills are you talking about?

jkmcf• 12 years ago

Our constitutional lawyer president also doesn’t have a concern for the Constitution.

Disclaimer: voted for him 2008

zabraxias• 12 years ago

It's one thing to agree or disagree with her position at Dropbox but are you trying to argue against what she said on camera? "I heard she might..." is not the case here since she was a public face for quite a while and she defended removing Americans' liberties in favor of something closer to a police state.

robg2• 12 years ago

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.

joshuak• 12 years ago

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.]

bane• 12 years ago

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.

terrble• 12 years ago

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

dguaraglia• 12 years ago

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.

forgottenpass2• 12 years ago

Only a sexist, racist can't see the Former Secretary of State under George W. Bush as anything more than a black woman.

iamthepieman• 12 years ago

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.

BuckRogers2• 12 years ago

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

mrjatx• 12 years ago

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.

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

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.

forgottenpass2• 12 years ago

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.

tptacek• 12 years ago

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• 12 years ago

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.

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

If you seriously think that way, it's a sign that the US tech industry is going to have to get hit by a big expensive cluestick before it realizes it's going to have to get both a legal and technology divorce from the surveillance state and it's proponents.

swombat• 12 years ago

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!

BuckRogers2• 12 years ago

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.

thyroxo• 12 years ago

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.

wdr1• 12 years ago

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

Dropbox's Condoleezza Rice advocating for warrantless NSA surveillance

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