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.
>>> 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:
"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?
You seem to have forgotten that the Bush administration knowingly lied about the intentions and capabilities of Saddam Hussein in order to gain support for the war.
The CIA operative Valery Plame was crucified because her husband (a diplomat) that investigated the yellow cake claim in Africa wrote about how it was a sham drummed up for the war.
"He didn't technically lie" - Sure he did. They knew what the truth was. They knew they needed an event to galvanize American support for action in the middle east. They knew what they were doing with how they worded the "War on Terror" lumping in Saddam with fucking Osama. When 75% of Americans think Saddam had something to do with 911, we are way past just cherry picking stats. We had psychopaths that were concurrently trying to extend American power and their own gain invade a country that had very high strategic interest.
I'm not even partisan about this. Most of the American politicians that I like are Republicans. This is complete horse shit.
They fooled me. I voted for Bush in 2000; I supported the war after the State of the Union address. I maintained that we would find the weapons of mass destruction, long after very many Americans were growing dubious.
Then Rumsfeld said they wouldn't find the WMDs. Then he tried to claim that the war was never about WMDs.
At that point I knew I had been 'had' by a completely (intellectually) dishonest asshole, or perhaps a set of them.
They didn't need an event. It's pretty well known that they had planned to invade Iraq for quite a while prior to 9/11. The reasons we invaded Iraq had little to do with 9/11.
The Bush administration advocated for war by hyping the case ("smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud") and feeding the public selective information. They knew that a lot of these claims (including the 16 words) were from questionable sources, but they pushed them on the public anyway, while downplaying the evidence to the contrary. Perhaps that's not literally a "lie," but its certainly dishonest, especially given that those claims, in fact, ended up being untrue.
factchecker is right. they didn't "lie." as numerous insiders have written (paul oneil, richard clarke), they were preoccupied with invading iraq and cherry picked dubious intelligence that supported their claims... like curveball, the niger uranium, etc.
The administration created its own shadow intelligence operation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Special_Plans) that, effectively, ignored CIA National Intelligence Estimates and cherry-picked unfiltered/unanalyzed intelligence to made the case for war.
The Cabinet Office has disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act that those who drafted the dossier were immediately asked to compare British claims against the US president's speech. The next day the dossier's timescale was halved to claim Iraq could get the bomb in a year.
A Foreign Office official who helped draft the dossier, Tim Dowse, told the Chilcot inquiry that disputed claims that Iraq had acquired special aluminium tubes for a nuclear programme were included because the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, had publicly referred to them.
Both changes to the weapons dossier were part of a detailed process of comparing the British claims with US statements and those in a forthcoming CIA dossier. The comparisons were made on the express instructions of Campbell. He told the joint intelligence committee (JIC) chairman, John Scarlett, in a memo on 9 September 2002, that the British dossier should be "one that complements rather than conflicts with" US claims.
Documents that the information commissioner ordered to be released last year show that the drafters of the UK dossier compared its claims closely with the CIA dossier and raised possible contradictions over estimates of Iraq's capabilities.
The commissioner also accidentally released a secret list of documents that he allowed the government to withhold on national security grounds. These included an email dated 13 September 2002 "covering a copy of a Bush speech to compare with UK dossier claims". The Cabinet Office has confirmed the speech was the one Bush gave to the UN the day before.
A new draft of the British weapons dossier virtually eliminated the difference between the US and UK positions. When Blair presented the dossier to parliament 11 days later, he said that Iraq might get the bomb in "a year or two".
The JIC, which prepares formal intelligence assessments, considered the scenario so unlikely that it did not estimate how long it might take.
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.
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.
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?
The American people were duped. And it wasn't easy; they had to create a lot of lies, some coming straight from the CIA (being pressured to create a case for war). They put on quite a show at the UN. And when the people get behind something, politicians have to take notice; after all, they can't wield any influence on the process if they don't get voted in. The mood in the country at the time was vengeful, hawkish.
And really it's a separate issue. The point is, who would you rather vote for? Would you really prefer voting for the really successful liars?
I would rather vote for neither party. Liars vs. people too stupid to protect us from the liars, while simultaneously wagging their fingers in our faces, claiming to be smart, and pretending they weren't duped by the liars.
You can chalk up the current administration with 4 out of 5 of those same facts.
>>> Now she wants you to trust her with you data.
So does Facebook, so does Google, so do a shit ton of other tech companies. Are you railing against them as well?? Somehow I don't think so. This is the double standard I'm talking about.
Bush has been out of office for almost 6 years and nobody treads at all on the myriad of things Obama has done which mirrors almost to a tee the stuff Bush did. All you want to see is people who were aligned with him are somehow worse than what the current administration is doing.
Did Al Gore knowingly lie to force the country into disastrous and ruinous wars?
Did Al Gore approve warrantless wiretaps, illegal detainment of citizens and non-citizens and the use of torture by agents of the American Government?
In her role as National Security Advisor Ms. Rice did both of those things.
Now you might refuse to acknowledge that she is a war criminal, but that earns you the same contempt as someone who denies Climate Change; which incidentally Mr. Gore did his level best to warn us about.
Now I have to tell you that I find your politics reprehensible, your willful denial of reality as disgusting as that of a heroin addict. And think that you and your fellow travelers in the "Conservative" movement are exemplary of the craven habit of bending at the knee for that most unamerican of practices; the unearned aristocracy of inherited wealth.
You disgust me. You have no thoughts of your own, but merely parrot slogans handed to you by your betters.
a. You don't understand what an ad hominem actually is.
b. Show me exactly where Al Gore committed an outright war crime.
c. If you think that war crimes are a mere baguatelle and should not interfere with a politicians later life in civil society; that is in itself a reprehensible political stance.
If justice were a feature of this world the entire war cabinet of the first Bush administration would be serving time; I'm sorry that you live in such an insulated little bubble that the murder of more than a million Iraqi civilians due to the documentable lies of the aforementioned does not register on your moral radar.
So your point is that our country is being ruined because people believe Bush and his cronies lead us to war. You believe that they did not lead us to war because both parties, after receiving misinformation from the bush administration, voted in favor of it. See anything wrong with your logic here?
I wasn't really trying to mock him or shut him up, but I really do find his argument ("Well, the CIA lied to Bush!") to be a pathetic one. It's the same as the other common equivocation fallacy employed by Republicans ("Look at this long list of prominent Democrats who voted for the war too!"). The Democrats supported the war based on what they were told by the CIA, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the executive branch. Any intelligence analysts who refrained from hopping on board Bush's war wagon did so at peril of their careers.
The whole Iraq war was an exercise in confirmation bias. Congressional Democrats certainly bear their share of culpability, but they also have very good excuses compared to anyone in the Bush administration. In an ideal world with Nuremberg-like tribunals, the Bush insiders would be swinging from gibbets, while we'd let the Democrats off the hook after a few years in Spandau. Claiming that the people you hired lied to you is no defense.
Is it okay if I intensely disapprove of that war, but also have absolutely no affiliation with or appreciation for any political party, major or otherwise?
The smartest among us don't ascribe to partisan policy choices. I attempt to evaluate every position in which I have an interest based on its merits. This means that I disagree with the left on approximately half the issues, and disagree with the right on approximately the other half (that's a rough estimate, in reality, I think I disagree with either party far more than half).
That said, it's hard to be informed and not develop some loyalty to any particular politician. In all likelihood, you'll develop an affinity towards whichever politician you find agrees with you the most, and it's hard to say that "In general, I like so and so, but for his opinions on x and y."
Jonathan Haidt has done some fantastic research on the subject, specifically in the area of political psychology, and I would encourage you to read "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion".
In practice though, most people are happy to swallow whatever their party tells them is true, even when it provably isn't.
Couldn't agree more! It was both parties and every last one of them should be held accountable regardless of affiliation. The votes are public knowledge!
People are too quick to in-fighting over sides. Right now both are doing it and both are getting away with it. Just look at Kerry's recent syria, libya, etc. talks.
I don't forgive Condosleeza a pass just like I don't give Clinton a pass for bombing Iraq. (yea, we should remember that far back!)
- The option of war might seem a priori to be the swiftest. But let us not forget that having won the war, one has to build peace. Let us not delude ourselves; this will be long and difficult because it will be necessary to preserve Iraq's unity and restore stability in a lasting way in a country and region harshly affected by the intrusion of force.
- Faced with such perspectives, there is an alternative in the inspections which allow us to move forward day by day with the effective and peaceful disarmament of Iraq. In the end is that choice not the most sure and most rapid?
No one can assert today that the path of war will be shorter than that of the inspections. No one can claim either that it might lead to a safer, more just and more stable world. For war is always the sanction of failure. Would this be our sole recourse in the face of the many challenges at this time?"
"This message comes to you today from an old country, France, from a continent like mine, Europe, that has known wars, occupation and barbarity. A country that does not forget and knows everything it owes to the freedom-fighters who came from America and elsewhere. And yet has never ceased to stand upright in the face of history and before mankind. Faithful to its values, it wishes resolutely to act with all the members of the international community. It believes in our ability to build together a better world."
(this is a speech by a conservative guy, but a well travelled one)
They only did what Greenspan told them to. It doesn't matter who 'owns' the oil. As long as it's sold in dollars, it props up the value of the US dollar.
The facts have been on the record for years now. She's guilty, but there will never be a formal trial specifically because power will never turn on one of their own if there's nothing to gain.
Was there a similar outcry when she joined the Stanford faculty ? Did everyone decide to shun Stanford ? If not , I am curious why her being a faculty member was acceptable and
being on the board of Dropbox is not, since the outrage is for her being a liar and a war perpetrator and not due to her skills for the job.
She was Stanford tenured faculty (and maybe even Provost) before joining the Bush administration, and took leave to take her appointments. She then rejoined Standford later. People did complain about that, anyway.
I'm not sure what you're trying to prove. I don't care whether Bush et. al. lied about Iraq. I'm not here to prosecute them. I have not called them war criminals.
I am disgusted by the way the Iraq war was sold to the American public. I'm disgusted by the legitimizing of torture, both legally and culturally, and I disdain anyone who was a part of that fiasco.
As a non-American living in another country at the time it couldn't have been more apparent how different the "facts" were inside the US reality distortion bubble and outside of it. E.g. in Canada we watch both US and Canadian news shows. Watching the same events reported in both gives an incredible insight into the amount of propaganda that US citizens are subject to.
Look up Knight Ridder's reporting on the run up to the Iraq war if you want to look at some good American coverage at the time.
You're accusing her of war crimes. The burden of proof is on you to prove that she is a war criminal. Cite admissible evidence only, please (not Wikipedia links). We can try her in court once you give us the evidence. You only have to meet the plausible cause standard.
I've looked at the facts. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be remembered as the end of the American era, unless Silicon Valley can build US 2.0. and disassociate themselves from Washington.
Considering that my normal account was permanently slowed and is apparently unable to post more than once an hour due to this thread, I'd say "hiding" is useful if one wants to express an unpopular opinion on HN, merely to retain the functionality of his normal account.
Agreed. With Condi comes access to all sorts of government entities, and the contacts to make those entities work in favor of whatever Dropbox needs them for.
This appointment smacks of the corporate-political complex. It's practically inevitable that USG resources will be used in favor of Dropbox's business at some point.
But the thing is, a lot of this stuff works quid pro quo. What might happen is, USG will pay Dropbox a nice penny to use some of its service... aaaaaand in exchange they also set up a deal to snoop on Dropbox users.
The worst part of this, for me, is how damn inefficient Dropbox becomes when it's used in a large environment. I pray the government isn't saddled with the same problems I'm facing.
(user management, share management, every user having permission to duplicate or destroy all files they can read, inability of admins to fix those changes, no API access for any administrative or reporting feature, inability to control own encryption)
With my tinfoil hat securely fastened, who wants to hazard a guess that this is just a 'distraction' to the Heartbleed news that the NSA could've exploited for their own nefarious means?
Yes, I think I'll move away from dropbox too before the end of month. Spideroak seems the best possible clone, or Wuala who has servers in Switzerland.
I use BTSync as well and can second this. To exchange files with clients I also use Google drive and Dropbox. BTSync and Dropbox is well behaved on Mac OS X. Where as Google drive uses quite a lot of resources on a regular occasion and pegs a core...
It was certainly morally wrong to overthrow Hussein without a clear plan to stabilize the country once the government had been deposed, and without committing sufficient military and monetary resources to do so.
What's odd to me is the choice of Condi Rice. Even assuming that she was relatively blameless compared to (say) Cheney, what the heck do they think they gain by appointing a polarizing political figure to their board?
Hey now, it would have been for nothing, all years of war and 600 000 deaths, if these people who were in charge and lead the effort, would suddenly find themselves in low-key positions in society.
The top cream must stay at the top.
Besides, her technical skills and understanding of IT for sure are awesome, making her the finest choice for Dropbox business.
And yet, President Obama selected Joe Biden as his vice president, who also voted for the same war. Hillary Clinton did too, and she's the leading Democratic contender for 2016. Why no outrage? Because they have a D next to their names?
Are you serious? Al Gore is on various boards, including Apple. He also supported the war. Will you stop using Apple products now? You're not a hypocrite, are you?
Al Gore was appointed to the board of Apple prior to the Iraq war. Here is the Slashdot thread from when he joined, there wasn't much controversial about him at the time other than 'huh, he invented the internet':
There is a very wide bridge between having a personal opinion as a private citizen in agreeing with the war (as Gore did) and being part of a group of people who planned, orchestrated, operated & implemented two unjust and likely illegal wars.
fwiw, I don't like many of them and don't understand the whole red/blue R/D thing you guys have going on - they all seem very similar from where i'm sitting.
This matters why? Al Gore was on the board after the war started. He made his support for the war clear after his appointment and after the war had started. He wasn't in Congress, but Condeleeza wasn't in Congress too. She had as many votes as Al Gore did for the Iraq war. Why is Al Gore excused but Condeleeza not?
National Security Advisor presumably (hopefully!) has better access to information and internal assessments of the quality of various intelligence sources than does "random ex- politician".
Completely ignoring the point that Al Gore wasn't a public official at the time, let's not forget that congress was lied to just as much as the rest of the public.
That fact check shows that he didn't lie during the State of the Union address, not that the pretense for the war wasn't a lie. Certainly, it says nothing about the fact we went to war with Iraq for an attack they had nothing to do with.
Hilary Clinton is as establishment as it gets. She isn't a valid option and it would be an outrage if she were shoved down the publics throat. Elizabeth Warren is far more likely to succeed.
It's not a question of 'no outrage', it's a question of no power. In the case of Dropbox, we can actually do something they care about: stop using their service.
No sarcasm, seriously, I think both Biden and Clinton should resign from any positions they are holding. If they dont want to, we must make fire them.
But whatever, just like bankers, those who are on top obviously can not make any mistake, no matter how big or what kind of mistake, to jeopardize their income or influence in society.
But those poor people, you slip on one payment, or get caught with one joint, oh fuck god have mercy, you poor bastard. Also "whats this, B-? nah sorry brah you arent eligible for this position."
I didn't vote for Biden, and I didn't forget his pro-war stance, either.
Biden wasn't just appointed as a board member for a relevant tech corporation, though. If he was, I'd be up in arms, too.
That said, even so, Biden's role in promoting Iraq was far less than Condi's. Additionally, Biden didn't specifically push for advanced interrogation techniques AKA torture. Condi did.
Uhh, Al Gore supported the war too and he's a partner of Kleiner Perkins and a board member of Apple, a firm that has funded several Silicon Valley companies. Will you stop using those companies too?
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
Want more?
By the way, Rice never "enabled" for the war because she couldn't vote in Congress. Similar to Al Gore.
> By the way, Rice never "enabled" for the war because she couldn't vote in Congress. Similar to Al Gore.
I just... I can't fathom the idiocy of your post. My neighbor billy bob supported the war too. I guess he had the same degree of responsibility for it as Rice did, because he couldn't vote in congress.
The idiocy of your straw man is quite telling. Rice and Gore had as much pull on the public. I would say Gore had more than Rice because he was far more well known.
Agreed. It's hard to understand HN sometimes. Posts about women and minorities in tech get overwhelmingly positive comments..."we have to do anything and everything possible to get more of minority X involved in tech"...then a popular company hires a double minority and everyone loses their mind.
Stop doing that. You're being dishonest right now. This is not about sexism or racism. My co-founder and best friend of 8 years is a woman, and she had the same reaction of disgust by this move as me. This has to do with Rice's history of warmongering and condoning torture, not her sex or ethnicity.
How do you and your moronic cronies (unless it's all just you) not see that this is a completely different analogy? Gore didn't have privileged intelligence; he was deceived like the rest of us. A lot of us like Gore because he seems to have qualities that we would like to see in a government official: reasoned, intelligent, and a supporter of science. I have very little problem saying that 2000-2008 would have been a very different time had he been in the White House, rather than a bunch of neo-cons with the baggage of an Iraq obsession.
I don't think the parent cares how good a job she does or whether or not she is a techie. It's her actions as a politician he/she has a problem with. Switching away from Dropbox would make my life somewhat more difficult but I'm considering it.
From an outside reading of what seemed to happen in that White House, I'd say "there's no doubting her ability to stay on everyone's good side by watching which way the wind blows and not standing on any principle whatsoever".
Which is probably good business -- but I'd hesitate to call it toughness.
She is one of the smartest women in politics, there is. There is no going around it. She was probably placed on the board to move Dropbox into government storage.
Whatever your views might be, This was a smart move by Dropbox, but for her government ties, but also for her intelligence. If you think she is dumb, or stupid, then I call you ignorant.
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.
Your forgetting she's not only on the record supporting anonymous bulk data collection, AND warrentless wiretapping. She was a key figure of the administration that created such legislation to start with.
An outside explanation is that political and corporate powers tend to cross-pollinate and operate with revolving doors.
Think of what doors have opened for Dropbox now that they've got Condi. Any door that Condi could open (which is quite a few) could now be opened by them.
Well she is a prominent figure in America. Just not for a lot of good reasons. The bet is likely that future government business she could bring is larger then the major exodus of people who supported them early on.
Yeah, that may be their calculation. I don't think this will sit well with german users or french users, for example though. Could really hurt their international b2c business.
I don't see how it'll sit well with anyone in the tech community, other then people who prioritize sexual equality above data integrity. The problem isn't her race, or her sex. Its her opinions, and political past. Its very damning to the company and their goals.
That seems directly counter to the goal of her helping them expand internationally. The person behind that legislation doesn't seem like the person who'd talk China etc. into opening up.
I am also considering cancelling my Dropbox account. However several of my clients use it to share designs with me making that tricky. Can you suggest anyway around this other than asking the clients to use Google Drive/Box instead?
Nope. At this point, people have either forgotten about Iraq or just come to accept it.
The gay marriage issue is a current one. It's a fight that's being fought right now. Protesting someone who is against gay rights has an actual impact in today's politics. Protesting against someone who supported going into Iraq over 10 years ago does not.
Yes, there will be public outcry, because many people view her as a deceiver, and others will think she is a tool of the NSA. But the outcry will not be the same as it was for Eich.
I've been looking at MEO Cloud[1]. It's by Sapo.pt, a part of Portugal Telecom. I first saw it recommended by Rui Carmo of Tao of Mac[2], who I've generally thought offers good advice. (He also is Portuguese...) And, they offer a Linux download unlike most other alternatives.
JottaCloud[0] is based in Norway. 5 GB free, supports win, osx, ios and android currently. Linux client development starts Q2 2014 (now) according to their user forum [1].
They sorely lack an API though. Hopefully they will adress this soon.
Why would it help? ELI5 it for me. American influence is at a low ebb, and adding figures from a disgraced and frankly laughing-stock administration seems a horrible PR move. Will this help with domestic US government contracts?
Oh please. Are we really going to do this to every normal person who tries to enter the tech industry? "Excuse me, sir/madam, you were a Republican recently. Please publicly disavow all past actions, thoughts, beliefs, and interests, donate to the HRC three times, throw salt over your shoulder five times, and take out an Obamacare-Approved® Health Insurance Policy(TM) before you even think about helping these pimply-faced 25-year-olds run their companies."
Eich was worse just because of his background and the immense debt that we all owe to him, and that we betrayed him because we're idiots, but you guys really need to get it together.
WTF? She is not a "normal person" by a long shot. She is arguably a war criminal, a proponent of dragnet surveillance and was partial to implementation of torture, oh sorry, "enhanced interrogation".
Comparing Eich and Rice is misleading. By any sensible rationale, their "past actions", both positive and negative, aren't in the same ballpark, zip code or measurement scale.
You're overreacting. Rice is not a "normal person" whose political beliefs I disagree with.
She was one of the architects of a useless war that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. I understand that in large organizations individuals may not be able to stop the machine, but they can always choose not to be part of it.
She is one of only a few people in history who have had that much influence, and who have used it to such devastating effect.
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.
The housing crisis started well before the Bush administration. The affordable housing act was what enabled banks to start issuing loans without worrying about risk.
* 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
* 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.
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.
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.
Oh ok. So replacing war with unmanned drones and a kill list that includes Americans, continuing horribly intrusive surveillance programs, and cracking down on more whistle blowers than any administration in history is SO much better. Everyone's shit stinks
Golly gee, I wonder why I didn't vote for him again in 2012? When will people realize the two party system is a farce? Both parties are largely the same and neither will ever bring real change.
I have no issue with her sex, or her race. I have an issue with people who were part of the adminstration that created PRISM, the Patriot Act, the 'Secret Court system', and somebody who is on record supporting this. Having a say in how my data is managed.
This. Has everyone forgetten about Snowden while they argue red vs. blue? Bush started it. Obama intensified it. If your main gripe is "She's a Republican!" then you have missed the point my friends.
I don't disagree on these points. But the reality is you are talking every person who has worked for either administration in the post 9/11 era is on this gig. We still have guantanomo bay...etc. None of these people in washington are changing anything. The snowden leaks are from 2008-2009 era. That stuf is 6+yrs old. People thought that was tin foil. For 6 years...
This kind of stuff takes years and has a life of its own.
Crossing administrations, party lines, and cabinet members. The nexus of the Pentagon, CIA, and State departments...has a lot of moving parts...and they can't fire all the career professionals after every election.
No. My co-founder is a woman and she had the same reaction of revulsion as I did from hearing this news. I'm not cool with killing thousands over a lie, denying gays the right to marriage, etc. This is the last day I use Dropbox.
Chelsea Clinton has never even stood for office, much less been part of the senior leadership of an administration that led the US into two wars of aggression and endorsed torture.
I really don't see how a vaguely rational person could even begin to compare the two, regardless of political beliefs.
I haven't seen anyone arguing that Bush was worse than Obama in this thread, so I don't see how that comparison has anything to do with anything either.
I'm sure none of this is relevant but (a) her dad is ex POTUS of a global superpower; and/or (b) her mom was Secretary of state of that global superpower. They also have the son of the wife of the CEO but that's a little different, she was a fashion designer.
Condi was (b) so they are basically the same relation to the US gov't.
I think the generalization that US foreign policy has radically changed its ethics or its data-security between 2008-2011 to be a bit unsupported by the facts.
If anything, as tech has improved we have all become less secure...regardless of the POTUS...because the professionals working in the NSA and the CIA are just getting more powerful.
My mother was an advertising art director, and I learned a lot from her, but you wouldn't say that I was basically responsible for pepperidge farm's late 1970s branding, would you? I don't think one should equate her actions (or even political beliefs) with those of her parents.
Are you seriously comparing being POTUS/SS of a global, nuclear superpower with a mid-level exec working with pepperidge farms? No dis-respect. But C'mon. People get these gigs because they have connections and are pawns in larger power games. Those games scale in proportion to the power in-volved. Sec. State Clinton was on the hook for a bunch of bad stuff (drones/cia etc) and is likely going to be the next POTUS. Which means she be put into these positions again. It's impossible to separate that stuff out from the job {title} itself. Someone has to make alot of ugly tradeoffs and thankless decisions.
The over-personalization of stuff though seems a bit less enlightened. But YMMV.
That being said, this is good energy to harness and use for the next election.
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.
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/
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
#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.)
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?
"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.
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.
"The intelligence was as clear as any intelligence I've ever seen and I've been in this business a long time. ... When you had intelligence assessments that said Saddam Hussein has reconstituted his biological and chemical weapons and could reconstitute his nuclear weapon in a year if he got foreign assistance — by the end of the decade if he didn't — I've actually never seen clearer indications than that."
You sure know a lot about a person you've never met or talked to. You can't seriously believe this about everyone who was involved in the Bush 43 administration.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I've been using ownCloud for over a year and it works great. The only issue is that it is not as convenient as Dropbox. It needs a server to host it, which is not free; and the server requires maintenance, security patches (see: heartbleed), upgrades, etc.
Simple syncing is what ownCloud does. Of course technically a server is inbetween, so it’s not directly between devices. LAN sync is requested sometimes, but currently not a priority.
Please do let us know about the things you miss – on our issue tracker at http://github.com/owncloud/core/issues
And if you use IRC you’re welcome in #owncloud-dev (freenode).
And be sure that we have a lot of improvements lined up for ownCloud 7 which will come out in a few weeks.
EDIT: Also, if you have specific feedback on ownCloud’s usability and design let me know, I work on that.
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.
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.
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.