It's not just about Rice, it's about what this says about Dropbox.
Here's what I think. I think Dropbox said, "As we try to beef up our credibility with large enterprises and government agencies vs. Box.net and Google and other companies, it would be helpful if we had a board member with some street cred that we could use as a selling point with large CEOs, CIOs, and other senior tech people".
This is not an uncommon thing. At that point, you look out across the landscape of "famous people" you can put on your board. It can't be anyone who is affiliated with a competitor, and there's a lot of competitors. It has to be someone with name recognition who also is willing to be a board member and has some sort of leadership experience.
At some point, Condi's name cropped up with a few others, they met her, thought she was smart, she had the time and availability, and they brought her on.
I bet someone at some point said, "Hey, you know, are we concerned with the affiliation with GWB?" and they thought about it they said, "Hey, look, she was SECRETARY OF STATE, the first female african american one, she's a former stanford professor, she's a genius, surely people will recognize that this is different than her work with GWB"
http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities-and-threats/dropb... http://www.wired.com/2011/05/dropbox-ftc/ http://thehackernews.com/2013/07/hacking-dropbox-account-vul...
(This is just a semi-random selection.)
Wouldn't it make more sense, that they hired her because they want her to lobby against the NSA? Who would be better qualified to get some results in those areas?
From Dropbox's perspective the wire-tapping saga is just bad for bussiness, and they want to make money. So, it makes sense, they would try to spend money to put a stop to it.
Who would you hire?