Dropbox Attracts Condoleezza Rice and the Ire of Its Users

The nomination was presented as a good catch. But unfortunately, it has been perceived as dubious above all else.

Last week, Dropbox, the popular file storage and sharing service, drew animosity by announcing with great pomp the introduction of Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state and national security adviser under George W. Bush, to its board of directors. Silicon Valley progressives denounced the selection. They did not hesitate to call up the reality of her time in the White House in order to underscore her incompatibility with the entrepreneurial spirit of the American West Coast and of the file-sharing service itself. Dropbox, an important player in cloud-based technologies, needs to inspire confidence in order to be effective, something that Rice’s presence within the organization cannot assure.

“This is deeply disturbing,” say her critics on the website Drop Dropbox, which is leading the movement for the file-sharing service to drop the former politician. They continue on to say that “anyone — or any business — who values ethics should be concerned” by the nomination.

Even though the Republican is a professor at Stanford today, as well as an adviser to certain companies invested in digital technologies, her past catches up to her. Those opposed to the nomination ask themselves how Rice could provide good advice to Dropbox when she promoted, and would even have authorized, wiretapping without a court order during her time in the Bush administration. This national wiretapping would have targeted U.N. Security Council members.

During a troubled digital age, when governmental electronic surveillance of citizens undermines the foundations of democracy, as well as user confidence toward many services offering them the option to place their personal data on remote servers — like Dropbox does — Rice’s CV far from bodes well for the storage service. In this context, the last thing the company needs is doubt about its ability to keep the prying eyes of the Secret Service and public officials away from the private lives of its users. Any appearance of being in league with these artists of digital surveillance could be nothing but harmful.

On the social network Twitter, the hashtag #DropDropbox was introduced to ask Drew Houston, the company’s owner, to reconsider his decision and find a less tainted candidate for his board. The exchanges connected with this hashtag — as they say in San Francisco — are a good opportunity for us to recall that while she was national security adviser, Rice was one of the architects of the Iraq war. She took part in the implementation of the military prison torture program at Abu Ghraib, all the while loudly affirming its legitimacy. Hers is a CV that deserves to be locked away in a box, but clearly not one belonging to Dropbox.