Cyber Security Today; What Should We Do?

[hamilton.jerry]

Today’s Cyber Reality Raises Questions; Is It Safe Yet? :dry: The statements shown below came today in email from an online digital storage service called Dropbox which I have used only to an extremely small degree. I found the terms interesting for what they do not say and for the aspirations expressly stated, more than what they say on the surface. On balance the Dropbox statements leave me wondering about many questions. For example, what are the laws (US, Euro, Asian, South American, African, etc.) that provide for privacy and how might they be improved? Do you wonder as I do about privacy, government intrusion with or without legal authority, and protection of innocent users? What might you and I do to act more defensively or wisely in today’s cyber reality? Dropbox's Government Data Requests Principles We understand that when you entrust us with your digital life, you expect us to keep your stuff safe. Like most online services, we sometimes receive requests from governments seeking information about our users. These principles describe how we deal with the requests we receive and how we’ll work to try to change the laws to make them more protective of your privacy. Be transparent: Online services should be allowed to report the exact number of government data requests received, the number of accounts affected by those requests, and the laws used to justify the requests. We’ll continue to advocate for the right to provide this important information. Learn more. Fight blanket requests: Government data requests should be limited to specific people and investigations. We’ll resist requests directed to large groups of people or that seek information unrelated to a specific investigation. Learn more. Protect all users: Laws authorizing governments to request user data from online services shouldn’t treat people differently based on their citizenship or where they live. We’ll work hard to reform these laws. Learn more. Provide trusted services: Governments should never install backdoors into online services or compromise infrastructure to obtain user data. We’ll continue to work to protect our systems and to change laws to make it clear that this type of activity is illegal. Learn more.

[JamesD]

From my perspective, there's not a lot that we can do short of pulling the plug on our computers. Our identity, our privacy, our security are all affected by what we do online. Therefore we want to be circumspect about our choice of words on forums. The use of certain words can raise the radar and bring us more quickly to a place of increased interest and scrutiny. It's probably a wiser choice to store one's data off-line on an external hard drive as opposed to online servers (i.e. the cloud). Some go so far as to look for encryption for their email communications but that raises problems in terms of your recipients needing the key as well as agreeing to participate. I don't hold out a lot of hope for reversing this trend given your revelation of how the government of our land is now making "rules" outside the legislative branch.