Dropbox and its Government Data Request Principles

This morning, I received an email from Dropbox. For those of you who may not be familiar with it, Dropbox is a cloud storage service provider, much like SkyDrive (Now called OneDrive) and Google Drive. The email is about some updates on Dropbox terms and conditions, as well as their privacy policy.


In particular, Dropbox provided some discussion on its recently launched Government Data Request Principles. Here is a summary:

• Be transparent: Currently, Dropbox discloses the number of data requests from the government and law enforcement in its Transparency Report. However, it’s been urging the court and government to allow it to report the specific details about those requests, as well as more information on the national security requests and accounts affected.
• Fight blanket requests: Dropbox believes that government data requests should be limited to specific people and investigations, and will resist blanket data request from the government as much as possible
• Protect all users: Dropbox aims to extend fundamental privacy protection to all users regardless of their location and citizenship. The data requests must be specific, and a neutral third party should evaluate and sign off on requests for content before they issue.
• Provide trusted services: Dropbox believes that government data request should go to online service providers directly, and that tapping into data traffic without permission of the service provider and users is not right.

A couple of thoughts on this:

1. I appreciate that Dropbox summarized the changes to me in natural languages in their original email. (I, for one, rarely read “terms and conditions” when I sign up for a service)
2. As an user, it is nice to see how the service provider is reacting to the data requests from government, and how it intends to resist requests that it considers inappropriate. 

Here is a link to a summary of the updates as posted on the Dropbox Blog:
https://blog.dropbox.com/2014/02/updating-our-terms-of-service/

And here is a direct link to Dropbox’s Government Data Request Principles: https://www.dropbox.com/transparency/principles