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Right - that's fair, in my opinion. For work, I use closed-source software including Dropbox too. I should specify that I agree this is difficult or impossible

by cryptoz 12y ago

Right - that's fair, in my opinion. For work, I use closed-source software including Dropbox too. I should specify that I agree this is difficult or impossible to avoid, and that using these tools enables us to build things faster, which potentially is worth using them. I do it, too. But I do want everyone to care. If you're using the tool because it's convenient, and you know that it could be spying on you, you should care about that. Apathy is what I'm fighting here, not Dropbox exactly. I would love to move my work away from Gmail, Dropbox, etc, someday, but today isn't that day. (Uh-oh, am I like the rest of them?)

TillE 12y ago
There's an odd view among opponents of various issues (eg, environmentalism) that if proponents can't do everything, then they're terrible hypocrites who may as well not do anything. This is of course ridiculous. You do what you can personally, and you try to influence government policy. But not everyone can be a full-time activist.
dasil003 12y ago
I would go even further that moving away from cloud services is nothing more than an individual mitigation that comes at a huge inconvenience and will have no meaningful effect on the real problem. The fact that strong crypto is possible becomes this red herring that computer geeks think can save us from abusive government. But this ignores the fact that true security from government actors like the NSA is impossible without a level of inconvenience that no one will be willing to go through. Cloud services are just too convenient, and there is no way to establish meaningful assurances of privacy with any cloud provider in the current legal climate. We have to fight the ugly political fight to wrestle the power back and put the government in its place. This is unappealing to technologists because it is orders of magnitude harder to accomplish than implementing strong crypto for someone who knows what they're doing, but in turn it is orders of magnitude easier than training up the mass populace on those techniques.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  I bet we could design an adequately consumer-friendly self-hosted cloud-like system, if the existing attempts are inadequate (PogpPlug, AeroFS, Tarsnap, etc.)

by cryptoz 12y ago

TillE 12y ago

There's an odd view among opponents of various issues (eg, environmentalism) that if proponents can't do everything, then they're terrible hypocrites who may as well not do anything. This is of course ridiculous. You do what you can personally, and you try to influence government policy. But not everyone can be a full-time activist.

dasil003 12y ago

I would go even further that moving away from cloud services is nothing more than an individual mitigation that comes at a huge inconvenience and will have no meaningful effect on the real problem. The fact that strong crypto is possible becomes this red herring that computer geeks think can save us from abusive government. But this ignores the fact that true security from government actors like the NSA is impossible without a level of inconvenience that no one will be willing to go through. Cloud services are just too convenient, and there is no way to establish meaningful assurances of privacy with any cloud provider in the current legal climate. We have to fight the ugly political fight to wrestle the power back and put the government in its place. This is unappealing to technologists because it is orders of magnitude harder to accomplish than implementing strong crypto for someone who knows what they're doing, but in turn it is orders of magnitude easier than training up the mass populace on those techniques.

nitrogen 12y ago
I bet we could design an adequately consumer-friendly self-hosted cloud-like system, if the existing attempts are inadequate (PogpPlug, AeroFS, Tarsnap, etc.)