Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#51

Post by shaftoe » Sat, May 02, 2015, 3:04 PM UTC

capisce wrote: post #50

Nevermark wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is tax minimization despicable? Countries should compete on all levels including economic efficiencies. Lower taxes is higher efficiency and an admirable achievement for a government. What is despicable is that we all pay more taxes than our governments should actually need if they spent the money they took from us wisely.

Countries don't just compete on taxes by providing the same service more efficiently, but also by providing a _worse_ service to their citizens. It's a race to the bottom.

Perhaps it's worthwhile to have a mild counterbalance to the tendency to spend an ever increasing amount of other people's money.

It's not like "better service" is a driving force behind any government, ever.

Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#52

Post by xnull2guest » Sat, May 02, 2015, 3:19 PM UTC

mojuba wrote: post #25

xnull2guest wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. I mean, Condolezza Rice is on the board of Dropbox. If there's a company that is going to have pressure from shareholders to make data available to the government it's going to be Dropbox.

If she doesn't work for the govt. anymore why would she do that?

Well, you could say the same thing about Clinton and the Clinton emails or ex military generals and their (mostly paid) appearances in the media.

Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#53

Post by angry_octet » Sat, May 02, 2015, 3:48 PM UTC

angry_octet wrote: post #47

I couldn't help thinking BIGGEST RSYNC EVER. And, what is the bandwidth of a 747-8 full of 4TB disk? (140,000kg/0.6kg = 233,333 disks, downrate to 200,000 for packaging, 800,000TB. Approx flight time 10h SFO-DUB, load/unload, say 15h; 86400s. ~9TB/s. So pretty fast.

Come on, a down vote for trying to bring the conversation back to something technically interesting instead of angst about NSA snooping and tax avoidance? For shame, you should have your geek badge confiscated.

Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#54

Post by JoshTriplett » Sat, May 02, 2015, 5:07 PM UTC

skuhn wrote: post #40

JoshTriplett wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if they already have illicit access to the systems in question. In which case, considering Dropbox doesn't actually encrypt data at rest, it'd be much easier to get the data at the endpoints than in transit.

Data is indeed encrypted on the storage systems (but not on client machines, if that's what you meant).

If it were only the end-user client systems, that'd be less of a concern, but the servers that run web frontends and similar also have full access.

Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#55

Post by colechristensen » Sun, May 03, 2015, 6:03 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #24

colechristensen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And completely unreasonable not to suspect that the NSA can freely acquire those keys.

Only if they already have illicit access to the systems in question. In which case, considering Dropbox doesn't actually encrypt data at rest, it'd be much easier to get the data at the endpoints than in transit.

My point is that there are a few assumptions you should make

* A significant number of encryption technologies are broken or achievably breakable by the NSA

* The NSA has already or could easily acquire encryption keys from any large tech company with a court order in one of the secret courts

* The NSA has vast means for illicit access into systems and networks

Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#56

Post by lwf » Mon, May 04, 2015, 2:55 PM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #24

colechristensen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And completely unreasonable not to suspect that the NSA can freely acquire those keys.

Only if they already have illicit access to the systems in question. In which case, considering Dropbox doesn't actually encrypt data at rest, it'd be much easier to get the data at the endpoints than in transit.

https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/27

Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#57

Post by lwf » Mon, May 04, 2015, 2:58 PM UTC

angry_octet wrote: post #47

I couldn't help thinking BIGGEST RSYNC EVER. And, what is the bandwidth of a 747-8 full of 4TB disk? (140,000kg/0.6kg = 233,333 disks, downrate to 200,000 for packaging, 800,000TB. Approx flight time 10h SFO-DUB, load/unload, say 15h; 86400s. ~9TB/s. So pretty fast.

Well, you'd also need to buy extra disks for all that; you wouldn't send your only copy on a plane, right?

And then, oh doing integrity checking at the other end would suck.

Re: Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

#58

Post by JoshTriplett » Mon, May 04, 2015, 3:17 PM UTC

lwf wrote: post #56

JoshTriplett wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if they already have illicit access to the systems in question. In which case, considering Dropbox doesn't actually encrypt data at rest, it'd be much easier to get the data at the endpoints than in transit.

https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/27

Not even remotely comforting. Talks all about how employees "are prohibited" from accessing your data, but that's unrelated to whether they're capable of doing so.

I much prefer the privacy policies of more secure services, which tend to say things like "we do not have the ability to access your data under any circumstances".