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US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

washingtonpost.com

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Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#91

Post by dsl »

rdl wrote: post #35
nkassis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe they need backdoors, they probably just ask for the data and it's provided to them by those companies to comply with the current laws (or at least their interpretation of it.) I'm pretty sure dropbox can reverse any encryption they use for the files they store. Or do they even encrypt the data?

Dropbox has every encryption key used with Dropbox, so they can decrypt any file. Both transport keys and storage keys. Dropbox does at least (allegedly) encrypt stuff for storage, so they can RMA hard drives without having to destroy them first, but that's pretty meaningless. There are some (flimsy) reasons for Dropbox to have copies of all storage keys (a web UI, which only some users use). Dropbox has done a good…

Dropbox doesn't RMA drives, everything is de-duped then stored on S3. (or at least that is what they told me when I interviewed with them)

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#92

Post by fosap »

alan_cx wrote: post #79
fosap wrote: post #29

Yes, this is bad. Yes, you are right to be upset. Yes you (not not really me, I'm not American and i avoid american hosting and hosting companies like amazon for exactly this reason) should change that. But honestly, are you surprised? Are you really? Government agencies have be building large datacenters, the EU loves data retention. There was no tin foil head required to see this.

Im not sure being not American saves us. Do you use any of those US services? If so, I assume they have your data. If you are British, as I am, I assume our government is shovelling off all our data to the US too. As far as I am concerned, the internet is now pretty much like having our lives bugged. Might as well go the whole hog and have CCTV in all house holds. Heh, for all I know they access out webcams, etc. So,…

> Im not sure being not American saves us. Do you use any of those US services? If so, I assume they have your data.

No, it does not, that is the sick part. But as a non american it's not (or should not) be my business how the usa organizes itself and what kind of politics they make. And yet I'm sure they are infringing my rights.

Point is, I didn't vote for Obama. Nor is it my job to get rid of him.

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#93

Post by objectivefs »

gknoy wrote: post #48
rdl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox has every encryption key used with Dropbox, so they can decrypt any file. Both transport keys and storage keys. Dropbox does at least (allegedly) encrypt stuff for storage, so they can RMA hard drives without having to destroy them first, but that's pretty meaningless. There are some (flimsy) reasons for Dropbox to have copies of all storage keys (a web UI, which only some users use). Dropbox has done a good…

What alternative do you suggest?

ObjectiveFS (https://objectivefs.com) does client side encryption using the NaCl crypto library.

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#94

Post by captiva12 »

gknoy wrote: post #48
rdl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox has every encryption key used with Dropbox, so they can decrypt any file. Both transport keys and storage keys. Dropbox does at least (allegedly) encrypt stuff for storage, so they can RMA hard drives without having to destroy them first, but that's pretty meaningless. There are some (flimsy) reasons for Dropbox to have copies of all storage keys (a web UI, which only some users use). Dropbox has done a good…

What alternative do you suggest?

Use tonido

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#95

Post by andre »

jlmendezbonini wrote: post #53
andre wrote: post #32

Dropbox.... “coming soon.” Time to look at Bittorrent Sync again? Or other open source alternatives?

"Is BitTorrent Sync open-source? BitTorrent Sync isn't open source software, and no announcements have been made to indicate that this will likely change."[1] [1] http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/17782-bittorrent-sync-faq-...

I know they are not open source currently, but for now they are not on the list.

It would be awesome if they did open source it, or at least allow for third party (EFF?) review of source.

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#96

Post by pavs »

guelo wrote: post #86
nostromo wrote: post #41

I'm saddened to see Dropbox on the list. Did they choose to participate or is it mandatory? In any case, we've moved several projects to BTSync recently from Dropbox (for no other reason than to free up space on Dropbox for our personal files) and have been enjoying the service. As a p2p encrypted protocol, I imagine it's much more difficult to eavesdrop on your files and would actually require a warrant to obtain. I…

Is there an open source dropbox-style app that I can install on my own server?

Yes, Owncloud. Easy to install:

http://www.slashgeek.net/2013/05/16/host-your-own-dropbox-li...

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#97

Post by abstractbill »

bosch wrote: post #66
rdl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox has every encryption key used with Dropbox, so they can decrypt any file. Both transport keys and storage keys. Dropbox does at least (allegedly) encrypt stuff for storage, so they can RMA hard drives without having to destroy them first, but that's pretty meaningless. There are some (flimsy) reasons for Dropbox to have copies of all storage keys (a web UI, which only some users use). Dropbox has done a good…

This is a reply to gknoy: I would suggest Spider Oak, however, their support is not timely and there's currently a bug in the Windows 8 client that doesn't let it work. But if they get those issues sorted it could be a decent service. Could someone please tell me why I can't reply to any comments that are below the third level? The reply link simply disappears! Edit: Now that I've made this statement there's a reply…

Reply links don't appear until a few minutes after a comment is made. It's intended to have a dampening effect on flame wars.

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#99

Post by plg »

I can't help think that if this were the 1970s and we were talking about the post office and phone company automatically forwarding copies of all communications to the us gov't, there would be riots in the streets. Oh how things have changed.

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#100

Post by edwardunknown »

Devil's advocate, here: As long as it's restricted to terrorism investigations I don't care. If it stops bombs from going off go ahead and snoop through Facebook's database, big deal.

If it ever trickles down to DEA or local police then it's a problem. If secret courts and SQL dumps become standard procedure then everything falls apart. If this is considered constitutional I don't know how you're going to tell Officer Shitforbrains he can't look at your phone records and Google search history to find out where you bought that joint.

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