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Agreed and this begs the question where does Dropbox sits with surveillance thing because US govt. makes it clear that non-americans are fair game.

So as a non-american I am asking - will Ms. Rice work to protect data that we trust Dropbox with or when Dropbox is asked to turn over our data (of non-americans) will she advise Dropbox board to play along and not give a damn about our data.

Knowingly I will not support a company that works with politician who are known to support and subvert privacy of individuals.

IMO, it's a fools game trying to figure out what exactly Rice & dropbox are getting from eachother. In the absence of knowledge, it's easy to just jump to a conclusion that it has something to do with one's pet issues. On HN that's probably NSA/privacy DMCA/copyright stuff, etc. In reality it could be to do with anything. Think of all the powerful people she has access to. It could be nonspecific.

I think we can be pretty sure that she's not on the board to give engineering advice though.

I'm also not trying to figure out why Rice is on the board. I'd like to think she's on the board because she has intimate knowledge of how Washington works, and how privacy van be invxed. I seriously doubt she's been hired to promote a serious agenda.

On a more practical note, I've stopped using Dropbox (and any other cloud service) for storing the few things that I really want to be kept private.

Knowingly I will not support a company that works with politician who are known to support and subvert privacy of individuals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China

If people want open-access to technology around the world, do you really think a 28 year old founder is going to get a fair deal from Vladimir Putin or the Chinese Government/? The US Potus has a hard enough time (with all his staffers) dealing with the complexities of internatinal relations. The same goes elsewhere... So, one can show up un-prepared or not show up...again no easy answeers.

(also) http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china...

> Every ranking official of any country (or company) owns a big share of that country's sins and there are no "clean" administrations.

This sounds a lot like apogolism. These war crimes are VERY far removed from the standards of contemporary western civilized countries.

Obama administration continuing many of the evil policies doesn't make it any more acceptable, taking this as "the new normal" would be apathy bordering on nihilism.

From a broader POV, this line of reasoning exemplifies the syndrome "perfect is the enemy of good" (also known as the Nirvana fallacy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy).

What he is saying that ANY high level ex-politician will have the same issues. You can probably dig up similar dirt on Al Gore and boycott his seat on the apple board for example. In my foggy childhood memory, I remember a few wars, PGP & Clipper chip fiascos and so on when he was VP in the 90s.

He said every politician is guilty, and you're interpreting that as him saying they're all ok? I think you're reading what you want to read, not what he actually wrote.

I'm saying very few high level politicians in western countries are guilty of things of comparable badness.

> In truth I don't really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations to justify the partisanship you guys seem to have.

Right at the beginning of the page: "This is not an issue of partisanship" and then it launches into detailed points about Rice as an individual.

While there is often little difference in foreign policy, their approach to social issues is vastly different. You probably don't pay any attention to this though. It does however ultimately affect you, since such a powerful but broken country could wield incredible damage abroad.

However even in foreign policy matters, there would have been different results with respect to the Iraq war. The invasion was a quick and massive pivot away from the more justifiable war in Afghanistan. Given that Saddam Hussein tried to have Bush jr.'s father killed, that leaving Hussein in power was possibly some unfinished business of that same father, that Cheney's pet company Haliburton made ridiculous profits on government war contracts, and that it was a Republican sub-faction of neo-cons who were so desperate to invade, I think there's a good case for there being a big difference between the parties. Not to mention the key personal opinions among top Republican admin officials seemed to drive the use of "enhanced interrogation".

>While there is often little difference in foreign policy, their approach to social issues is vastly different.

I think that this is a fiction put forth by the parties to inspire their more extreme members, but is false when you consider where the two parties fall on a full political spectrum. Take for example a couple of the most divisive social issues today:

Same Sex Marriage: Clinton signed DOMA 15 years ago, Obama was against SSM 3 years ago, and I would be surprised if the 2024 (or even 2020) republican presidential candidate wasn't OK with SSM. I would guess those numbers to be similar in opinion polls, meaning that Republican voters' opinions on SSM probably lag those of Democrats by about 10 years or so. It's hard for me to get behind the idea that one party is evil and worthy of divestment when the 'preferred' party only came around in the last 5 years.

Health care: One party wants a huge single payer system for the old and the poor, employer provided coverage for most others, and a highly privatized and mandatory system for the rest. The other party wants a huge single payer system for the old and the poor, employer provided coverage for most others, and a highly privatized and optional system for the rest. Who wants single payer for all? Who wants to abolish medicare?

You're right, from an extreme position Republicans and Democrats do look very similar.

You are looking at the end results only, not the goals, the efforts taken by both sides before the result. With regards to health care, the Democrats have been expending huge amounts of political capital over decades trying to move the health care system towards single-payer, while the Republicans have been resisting such change. The Democrats finally succeeded with Obama's reforms, and Republicans have been desperately hoping it will crash and burn, and repeatedly trying to or threatening to repeal it given the first chance they can; they even tried to get the Supreme Court to declare Obamacare unconstitutional. Your claim that both sides want the same thing makes no sense.

The direction the parties are pushing policy towards are what makes the party. Remember when Bush tried to dismantle Social Security, to the cheers of practically no-one?

I don't really see a big difference between whatever political parties exist in whatever country you're in.

To go through a few places the two parties in the US differ substantially - voting rights, civil rights, healthcare, minimum wage, immigration, unemployment benefits, unionization, SNAP.

You know, small stuff.

The bush administration asserted that it could detain anyone without a trial and torture them. This is not equivalent to any average administration as you implied.

And the current, Democratic, administration hasn't exactly rolled back many of these changes, right? My point isn't to criticize the Obama administration, but rather ask: if Hillary Clinton was asked to serve on the board of $your_favorite_service, would you consider dropping that service?

Hasn't exactly rolled back? In some cases they were expanded, including to the point of shoot first and ask questions later. As for your hypothetical, since she's apparently going to run for President and would have a decent shot at winning, I wouldn't hold my breath.

You mean the current President that authorized the assassination of a U.S. citizen abroad?

Not to mention the countless drone strikes that kill numerous civilians in the process. Don't let that fool you though. They're apparently not as bad as waterboarding for some reason.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04L8Sf3K4Lw

I think we've always held that torture is worse than killing a in a war.

I am not an American, so I am not really acquainted with transgressions of Hillary Clinton but if the tech community would provide the reasons to do so, I would definitely quit using the service.

The current administration asserted that it has the right to assassinate anyone it wants, American citizen or not, outside of a battlefield, without any oversight or due process.

That's why the US citizen should not elect the same PMs or (maybe) even the same party (although If I were a US citizen I'd sure as hell be a democrat).

Could you provide a source for this? There is an entire process that is full of oversight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki is the case most people bring up. Killed by a drone strike without due process, but nobody claims that he was anything but a terrorist.

And his US-born US citizen 16-year old son was killed in a separate strike. Nobody claims he was a terrorist.

I never said the Obama admin was better. I was replying to the implication that the bush admin was typical.

I agree this was bad. I disagree that it was uniquely bad. I strongly feel that it's a red herring.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but Americans seem have become easier to whip into a tribal-political rage recently. That in itself is dangerous. It makes the country more susceptible to populism.

To me, this immediately registers as a visible hint at problems in the system which are never eliminated but need to be constantly challenged to keep them to a tolerable level.

It's a sign that there is a market where political capital and influence is being acquired, traded and sold. It implies crony capitalism, corruption, class entrenchment. If your reaction is 'Look a Republican! Charge!' then you bury the other stuff. The real, genuine, scary problems with the system, not a party and not an old administration.

Compared to the Obama administration's assertion that it can kill any American it wants without trial? Here's are reports on this policy from two traditionally liberal news organizations (the conservative ones are equally damning):

1. http://www.salon.com/2010/04/07/assassinations_2/

2. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/obama-assassin...

Don't get me wrong, I believe the Bush administration was horrific. But the Obama administration has turned out to be equally immoral, and in some cases (spying and assassinations) even more so.

I was replying to the implication that the bush admin was just your typical political sin of power. Why you viewed that through a partisan lense I do not know.

I didn't view it through a partisan lens. I don't give a damn what party Bush or Obama belong to -- they've both been horrible presidents from an international relations and domestic privacy/constitutional rights perspective, regardless of what letter comes after their name.

What would you suggest to improve the situation?

> In truth I don't really see big enough (non cosmetic) differences between the parties or administrations to justify the partisanship you guys seem to have.

Then you don't know American politics.

How different might the country be had Gore been seated as President in 2001 after winning the election?

> How different might the World be had Gore been seated as President in 2001 after winning the election?

Umm, I think you're the one who doesn't know American politics.

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

Ridiculous. Read the full speech and see how its message compares with your cherry-picked quotes: http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2004/gore/gore092302sp.html

Wow, I've seen some cherry-picking in my day but parent tries to bring out a message that is the complete opposite of what the speech says.

How dare you introduce nuance and, um, "inconvenient" facts into a political discussion! You're distracting the masses.

Gore: good! Bush: bad! four-legs-good-two-legs-bad!

Still probably would not have gone to war over it.

I know right? It's like you have to have your head in the sand to not see the differences between the Bush and Obama administrations. I made a list a while back to give people an idea of the real differences between them.

-Likes beer and sports: both Obama and Bush

-Spends money the US doesn't have: both

-Directs Taxpayers' Money to Special Interests: both

-Supports Irresponsible Deficits: both

-Grants Taxpayer-Funded Corporate Bailouts: both

Disregards the Constitution via:

-Guantanamo Bay Detentions: both

-The Patriot Act: both

Fails to React to Domestic Disasters such as:

-Hurricane Katrina: only Bush

-Nashville Floods: only Obama

Supports NATO-led Killings in:

-Kosovo: only Bush

-Afghanistan: both

-Libya: only Obama

-Liberia: both

-Pakistan: both

-Supports US Occupation of Iraq: both

> -Likes beer and sports: both Obama and Bush

Probably technically true, though Bush is a recovering alcoholic and claims that he hasn't touched alcohol in decades.

The US prints its own money, it will always have enough. The question is whether inflation eats away its value.

Wrong. You should read further US money processes topic, you'll be surprised.

Right, like when Delta ran out of frequent flier miles.

The US's monetary base is $3.8T. Total outstanding public debt is $17.5T.[1][2]

If the US government were to print $17.5T in cash to cover their liability, it's not even a question that it would hurt every American with exposure to the value of the dollar. Debt is debt, and it has to be paid in the future. Every trillion borrowed today is not only a trillion we will not be able to borrow in the future, but also a trillion*exp(rt) that we will have to put towards paying debt back, rather than spending on our future needs. Printing money may sound like it's some meaningless and magical action, but it's not. Printing takes the money from people who have cash exposure. Taxing takes money from people more directly. Stealing from other countries via war takes the money from another source. But it has to be paid back in some way, Debt is debt, despite how much politicians make you want to believe otherwise so they can spend your future now.

[1] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/BASE

[2] http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current