[EDIT: CNET has put together an list of Frequently Asked Questions about this new law.]
I’m going to try and keep poltics out of this blog, but this story is just too important to let slide.
I wasn’t mind-reading the other day when I wrote my post about Zonbu needing to consider storage options outside of America, although it was definitely timely.
A reader just send me a link to this story at the New York times, “Bush Signs Law to Widen Legal Reach for Wiretapping”…
The article details new measures Bush has signed in to law, further eroding the the privacy and civil liberties of Americans and those conversing with them or conversing with others on American soil. (Two people conversing, NOT on American soil have always been fair game).
Zonbu & S3 are both based in America
Of equal interest to us, Zonbu/S3 is storing our data on servers that reside on American soil.
God help us, I’m sure the Euro zone will also rush to embrace this alarming trend.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing to hide, but that doesn’t make it right to go snooping around my private documents and correspondence either.
-Mr. Zonbu
“We’ll fight them over there, so we can destroy your civil liberties over here!
Oops, sorry about limiting your democratic rights and civil liberties. But, be reasonable, if we spread our democracy over there, then by definition we have less to spread around at here home.
No are you with us or with the terrorists?”
Please.
The straw man argument doesn’t cut it. Congress passed the law. Pretending it is only the US that runs covert intelligence ops is a denial of reality (and history). Courts have determined that those who think their civil liberties have been infringed in the way you refer had no standing for such a complaint as they had no evidence of anything happening to them.
Then, of course, we have all of the other such reports about hacking and the fundamental lack of security in anything electronically stored.
What does the company do to assure its customers of its credibility to properly manage the data in its systems? How do you know that the company won’t be mining the data it is paid to manage for commercial purposes? It seems speculation about that would be a more appropriate venue for a blog such as this than flawed political mythmongering.
Somewhere I’m glad I opted for the ‘community edition’…
From the Zonbu website:
Total privacy
Zonbu provides an iron-clad privacy policy:
* All your data stored on Zonbu servers is scrambled with 128-bit RC4 encryption before it leaves your home.
* Your data is password-protected. In fact, when you set up your Zonbu, you can even choose to disable password recovery — which means that we won’t have access your password. So even if we received a subpoena for your files, we would not be able to produce the unscramble key.
* We respect every user’s privacy — we will not share your private information with others, nor will we crawl your data to serve you ads. You pay for a service, and that’s what we deliver.
To get more details, please read our complete privacy policy.
http://www.zonbu.com/legal/privacy.htm