<i>As a country, we are having a great national conversation and debate about exactly how to manage privacy concerns</i><p>The phrase "having a conversation" or "having a debate" shits me off more than any other bullshit speak. The reason being, whenever somebody uses it, it is exactly because they don't want to have a debate about that topic because they know they're in the wrong. Nobody ever says "we're having a debate about privacy" and then goes on to actually debate it. It's just used by companies or organisations who are doing something objectionable and want to see whether they can get away with it. If everybody complains, well they "listened to your feedback" and can it.<p>For example, I went to a panel recently about Google glasses that had some Google employees on it. Every time privacy was brought up they said "well that's a debate that we [society] should be having" <i>even though they were literally in a debate about it right there</i>, they never actually put forward their case. They just leave it at this vague notion of a "conversation" that society is having in general without engaging in it themselves. And it's because they know people are opposed to what they are doing, and so engaging in an actual substantive debate about it won't help them at all (not really trying to pick on google here, this is just the first example that came to mind). They just want to ride out the storm and then continue doing exactly what they are doing.
“As a country, we are having a great national conversation and debate about exactly how to manage privacy concerns,” Rice says about her new position. “I look forward to helping Dropbox navigate it.”<p>When dealing with pretty much any national level politican closely associated with the executive branch of either the current administration or the previous one it is really easy to read this in a cartoon "evil villain" voice with an implied ellipsis and malicious sarcasm on the "...navigate it" part.<p>Ouch.
Gosh, if DP wasn't so convenient and worked so well. They've always given off a "not quite right" vibe from the corporate level that I can't quite put my finger on ever since the TC Cribs video [1]. The weird public responses surrounding privacy and security issues since then have kind of reinforced this feeling. [2][3] But it's so convenient and works so well you kind of quickly forget about all the fuss. And even this [4] just sort of blew by like a summer storm.<p>It goes to show how offering a <i>really</i> good service can make all kinds of principles take a back seat I guess. Let's see how many people offering to boycott DP are still on the service in 3 or 4 months now.<p>1 - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAfIDUTPJJM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAfIDUTPJJM</a><p>2 - <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/01/dropbox-has-become-problem-child-of-cloud-security/" rel="nofollow">http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/01/dropbox-has-become-problem...</a><p>3 - <a href="http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2011/04/how-dropbox-sacrifices-user-privacy-for.html" rel="nofollow">http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2011/04/how-dropbox-sacrifices-u...</a><p>4 - <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/dropbox-clarifies-its-policy-on-reviewing-shared-files-for-dmca-issues/" rel="nofollow">http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/dropbox-clarifies...</a>