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Double Take: Condoleezza Rice As Dropbox's Newest Board Member

Posted by timothy on from the describe-your-conversation-with-the-inquisition dept.

Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State under George W. Bush, and defender of Bush-era (and onward) policies about surveillance by wiretapping and other means, has landed at an interesting place: she's just become a part of the small board at Dropbox. TechDirt calls the appointment "tone deaf," and writes "At a time when people around the globe are increasingly worried about American tech firms having too close a connection to the intelligence community, a move like this seems like a huge public relations disaster. While Rice may be perfectly qualified to hold the role and to help Dropbox with the issues it needs help with, it's hard not to believe that there would be others with less baggage who could handle the job just as well." Some people are doing more than looking for an alternative for themselves, too, as a result.

24 of 313 comments (clear)

  1. Good choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    She's pretty sharp, well connected, and understands how the government sees these types of date & service providers.

    At a she's an awesome catch for any cloud company. Throw in her political awareness and it's even better.

    1. Re:Good choice by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      She's pretty sharp

      Anyone that thought the Iraq War was a good idea, should not be described as "pretty sharp". There is a saying that 'Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.' Condoleezza Rice is proof that we have moved past that. She is female (and black), and promoted to the highest levels, despite the failure of nearly all her policies. She is proof that you no longer have to be male to be both successful and incompetent.

    2. Re:Good choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Iraq war was good for all the companies involved, just like the other wars. Plus, it took down the criminal who dared to trade oil in euros, not dollars, so it was good for the State as well.

    3. Re:Good choice by khasim · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Anyone that thought the Iraq War was a good idea, should not be described as "pretty sharp".

      That depends upon whether you mean "good idea ... for the USofA" or "good idea ... for me and my friends".

      A lot of companies made a lot of money off of that war.

      She is female (and black), and promoted to the highest levels, despite the failure of nearly all her policies. She is proof that you no longer have to be male to be both successful and incompetent.

      I don't agree with that. I think that anyone, regardless of race, creed, religion, etc, will always have a job publicly supporting the existing power structure.

      She wasn't elected. She was appointed by the people who were elected. And those were white men.

      Which is why I think that she's now at DropBox. She still has those political connections. And DropBox wants to pay her for access to them.

    4. Re:Good choice by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Iraq war achieved all of it's objectives:

      The objective of the war was to destroy Iraq's WMDs. The things you listed were made-up-after-the-fact justifications.

      Prior to the war, we had three goals:

      1. A united Iraq
      2. A secular Iraq
      3. An Iraq opposed to Iranian influence.

      These were also the goals of Saddam Hussein. They are NOT the goals of the current government of Iraq, which has pretty much the opposite goals (for instance, they are supporting the Assad regime in Syria).

    5. Re:Good choice by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The objective of the war was to destroy Iraq's WMDs. The things you listed were made-up-after-the-fact justifications.

      That was never the goal. That was the BS propaganda. Don't believe everything^W anything you see on the news. We didn't even hear the term "WMD" until Blair said that the UK wouldn't join us without a UN mandate.

      The UN resolution that served as the peace treaty that ended the first Gulf War included a requirement that Saddam destroy all his WMDs and provide proof that he had done so. That proof hadn't been provided, so, bingo, pretext for war. Whether Iraq actually had any WMDs was only relevant to ginning up emotional support: the propaganda mill. It was never actually important.

      BTW, it's no more important that Iraq have pro-American policies than that France does. Democracies are more open to trade and less open to war, so we benefit regardless. It's far easier for a dictator to find purely personal gain in expanding his territory regardless of sanctions, as we see in Ukraine now, for example.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    6. Re:Good choice by cusco · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, even Downing Street knew that the whole justification for the invasion was crap, if you remember they complained internally that "the intelligence is being fixed". Blatant falsification of data, deliberate sabotage of the WMD inspections (IIRC they were 97% complete when the US told inspectors they had to leave immediately because bombing was about to start), illegal propaganda operations targeting the US public, the whole run-up to the war was founded on lies that were exposed in the foreign press but knowingly redistributed by the US media. There may be "a consensus building", but joining that group will require deliberately forgetting everything that was actually going on at the time in favor of historical revisionism.

      --
      "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
  2. Force her out! by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Quick, let's boycott Dropbox so we can force her out of the company. Then after we've succeeded we can have a another Slashdot story lamenting how intolerant we've all become and we can point fingers at everyone else.

    --
    Better known as 318230.
  3. Baggage? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know you all think Bush and Obama are the same, but there's no way Secretary Rice has "close connections to the intelligence community" under the Obama administration.

  4. meh by schneidafunk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I really don't care, this is a private company and they can hire who they want to. That being said, I assumed dropbox already was infiltrated by the NSA.

    --
    Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
    1. Re:meh by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That being said, I assumed dropbox already was infiltrated by the NSA.

      And now it's confirmed. Freaking astute move by the board members with gag orders and National Security Letters if you ask me.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  5. Re:Wiretapping? by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really? National Security Advisor who supports wire tapping sitting on the board for a cloud based storage solution company. Could your post be code for stupid.

  6. Congratulations Dropbox ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've been meaning to disable this for a while.

    If she's on your board, I'll get that done now.

    There is now zero room to trust DropBox as an entity.

  7. The important stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Did she donate to a Prop 8 organization?

    1. Re:The important stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, she supported propping up eight dudes and having female soldiers point at their junk.

  8. Re:Oh why not? by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really?

    She was intimately involved in the decision to go to war with Iraq and spoke publicly in support of it.

    She was an integral part of the Bush administration's campaign of lies surrounding the war, working to further public support of the war by lying about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

    Rice played a central role in affirming the "legality" of the Bush administration's torture program.

    Rice not only spoke in favor of the Bush administration's warrantless wiretap program and expansive domestic surveillance program, she authorized the warrantless wiretap of UN Security Council members.

    But you keep thinking that a extremely brilliant and accomplished individual, having obtained her Masters degree at age 20, isn't smart enough to ask the right questions or able to go toe to toe with Cheney or Rumsfeld....

  9. Re:Oh why not? by alexander_686 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That is not quite true. To simplify, she was a neocon who was overconfident of what US military force could do. That would put her on the side of Dick Cheney, but on the opposite side of Rumsfeld and Powell who were urging caution.

    I will second you point on that she is very sharp but that her management of the state department was subpar.

  10. Uh oh! by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apparently they never checked her stance on Gay marriage:

    “I don’t ever want anybody to be denied rights within our country. I happen to think marriage is between a man and a woman. That’s tradition, and I believe that that’s the right answer. But perhaps we will decide that there needs to be some way for people to express their desire to live together through civil union.”

    Condoleezza Rice — Dec. 20, 2010

    I guess websites will have to protest and such and then she'll resign after 2 weeks right?

  11. Re:Oh why not? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Oh please. We all know the real reason they hired her is because they only have to pay her 77% of what they'd pay an equivalent man. She's a bargain!

  12. Re:Wiretapping? by Fwipp · · Score: 4, Funny

    White male tears are my favorite beverage. :)

  13. Re:Low even for Slashdot by dcollins · · Score: 4, Informative

    Let's say Republican Senator Susan Collins took this position instead. Then: No issue and no uproar.

    The problem is not that Rice is a Republican, it's that she was a part of the most terrifying Republican administration in history, and oversaw defense of torture and mass-surveillance wiretapping programs.

    --
    We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
  14. Sum up... by freeze128 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not that using Dropbox is now a bad idea because Rice is on the board.... It's that using any "Cloud Based Storage" is not a good idea. Savvy readers can probably already setup and host their own servers... Why do you want to risk your data to someone else who does it "for free"?

  15. Re:Oh why not? by khasim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But you keep thinking that a extremely brilliant and accomplished individual, having obtained her Masters degree at age 20, isn't smart enough to ask the right questions or able to go toe to toe with Cheney or Rumsfeld....

    The problem is that, while she is smart, she is also ideological.

    If her ideology conflicts with the facts, the ideology wins.

    Not only was she NOT willing to ask question, she WAS willing to give press interviews with WRONG information. Because that WRONG information suited her ideology. Even though it would cost lives.

    NOT the kind of person YOU want on the Board of Directors of a company tasked with providing access to YOUR data.

    She didn't care enough about the lives that would be lost to ask any questions. And she cared so little for those lives that she provided wrong information to support the drive to war. Do you think that your DATA will mean more to her than that?

  16. Re:Surely by Goaway · · Score: 4, Informative

    Of course there are:

    http://www.drop-dropbox.com/