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Do you still use Google? Not only do they have ties to the NSA:

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/16/googles_secret_nsa_alliance_...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/04...

Hillary hires Google executive as CTO

..and of course the data mining startup that Eric Schmidt is using in an attempt to get Clinton elected as president (the same one that worked for Obama):

http://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working...

Many companies in Silicon Valley are tied to bad politicians and politics. At this point, it's almost necessary to survive.

My point is that if you are using this as a basis for services that you will or will not use, you will be left with a computer running GEOS...and no access to the outside world.

I just don't put any data on any cloud provider that I don't want the government to see. Bittorrent Sync works pretty well as a personal cloud provider.

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> Do you still use Google?

Not op. I don't trust Google. In a transition period I do use some of their services, but I don't recommend doing that, and I'm slowly migrating away. Except perhaps for using their crawler (as in, having my public content be visible through Google search -- I've recently moved to DDG for my searches).

I also consume some content from youtube, but frankly the UI isn't all that great, and I mostly do it for music -- so I'm moving off that to -- to a lesser degree.

> My point is that if you are using this as a basis for services that you will or will not use, you will be left with a computer running GEOS...and no access to the outside world.

Fortunately we have some recourse between Replicant and Cyanogen (helped by Google using open licenses, even if their ASOP effort is... not all that friendly towards enabling all users to compile custom distributions for their handsets) -- and most other services can be self-hosted.

There aren't really any viable trusted/open hardware, so the degree of trust we can put in our computing/communication equipment is bounded -- but it's certainly viable to have a much more trustworthy (IMNHO) experience than relying on services designed on a business model that has spying on users as a core business model.

For "cloud files", I'm planning to use http://www.sxdrive.io/ backed by a rented server. Not perfect privacy, but a far cry from just pushing things to a random SaaS. At some point I hope git annex and/or IPFS might be a viable alternative. I don't see much point in using closed source software as an alternative, if the goal is to move to a "less untrustworthy" platform.

> My point is that if you are using this as a basis for services that you will or will not use, you will be left with a computer running GEOS...and no access to the outside world.

That's extreme and unfair, and a little like telling someone that if they oppose American drone warfare, torture, or the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, they should move to another country.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We should encourage as much protest as possible.

Apple seems like the only big company out there which takes an active stance on privacy and doing everything legally possible to protect it: http://www.apple.com/privacy/government-information-requests...

Have you seen Apple's designs, code, and fabrication plants? Why wouldn't Apple capitulate to possible demands to claim privacy, while actually spreading compromised devices?

No, Apple is not the only one

https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-government-data-reques...

For what it's worth, that page gives Dropbox and Apple the same score. (5/5: 1 point on each of 5 questions.) If you find this surprising, check out their evaluation criteria; they might not be the same as yours. I find the 5th criteria somewhat arbitrary for instance, although I sort of see what they're trying to do with it.

As much as people like to criticize Dropbox for having a republican on their board of directors, Apple's Board of Directors is also interesting:

Arthur D. Levinson, Ph. D. Chairman of the Board, Apple Former Chairman and CEO Genentech

James A. Bell Former CFO and Corporate President The Boeing Company

Albert Gore Jr. Former Vice President of the United States

Robert A. Iger Chairman and CEO The Walt Disney Company

Andrea Jung President and CEO Grameen America, Inc.

Ronald D. Sugar, Ph. D. Former Chairman and CEO Northrop Grumman

Susan L. Wagner Co-founder and Director BlackRock

People like to criticize Dropbox's appointment of Condoleezza Rice for much more substantial reasons than American party politics. 'Drop Dropbox' [1] offers an overview that, while biased, does address that accusation in particular.

A lot of my personal moral concerns with Dr. Rice's appointment are as a result of actions she condoned or advocated for during her time in government. Don Knuth's letter to her in 2002 expresses my feelings on this topic much better than I think I can myself.

[1] http://www.drop-dropbox.com/

[2] http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/rice.html

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