Dropped the box¶
It’s time to drop the box for me. It has never been a secret that whenever you store you data somewhere else than your own computer, somebody else might will have a look at it. Depending on the files and on the encryption level this is OK or not.
For me personally the rules of this game are like this: You don’t bother me and I’ll see that I don’t bother you. Unfortunately somebody is getting a bit too greedy IMHO…
Though the trade-off is fair (The service is for free, so I’m the product) my personal balance between laziness and comfort tends to get out of balance now.
It’s no secret that under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the feds can easily obtain archive copies of emails. When it comes to spying on emails or Gchat in real time, however, it’s a different story.
That’s because a 1994 surveillance law called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act only allows the government to force Internet providers and phone companies to install surveillance equipment within their networks. But it doesn’t cover email, cloud services, or online chat providers like Skype. Weissmann said that the FBI wants the power to mandate real-time surveillance of everything from Dropbox and online games (“the chat feature in Scrabble”) to Gmail and Google Voice. “Those communications are being used for criminal conversations,” he said.
Yep, they’re getting too greedy again. So the old wisdom that the only case in where you’re not the product is when you run your service yourself becomes true again (was probably never untrue anyway).
There are alternatives. And we should start using them.