I'm proud that I'm building something that combats the unconstitutional spying of American citizens, and also helps others around the world avoid surveillance.

This app is largely a response to the overreach of the US government. While I believe in fighting for our constitutional rights politically, private solutions are also a viable means of protest.

We probably will have liability issues down the road. Nobody said this would be easy. However, being completely transparent and publishing all our code open-source will help mitigate a lot of these issues. On top of this, by making the clients able to secure their own data, the company itself can respond to any government information requests without actually revealing any customer data.

I'm not sure if I follow you, this seems a lot like attacking Iraq to me.

Would you mind elaborating? Is "attacking Iraq" a metaphor/figure of speech that I'm not aware of? If so, wouldn't that imply the project is based on completely false grounds (ie, "WMDs" that don't exist)? It's been shown pretty clearly that mass surveillance exists and is a part of our every day lives now.

Mass surveillance and copyright have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. If you're going to attack copyright in order to rid us of mass surveillance that's like attacking Iraq in order to get rid of Al Qaeda.

Thanks for clarifying. Admittedly, the article was a PR move to show the inherent security weakness in apps like Dropbox, using copyright as an example. I touched on the actual surveillance aspects of the app here because the original comment asked if doing what I'm doing is something to be proud of. Violating copyright holders' rights is not (and I don't condone it), but providing storage for people who need/want privacy is something to be proud of.

Then don't position yourself as a mechanism to evade copyright law or as a champion against that. Those are different goals with different consequences and it opens you up to a whole pile of attacks that would otherwise be a non-issue.

All Internet services, especially US-based internet services, are going to have to start working this way because trust has been thrown on the pyre by the NSA.

> I mean, is not being able to take action on illegal file sharing when the feds come knocking really something to be proud of? It's a liability from a company perspective, not a strength IMO.

In the Post-Snowden world, I think it is.

This being said, shouting "yes we can do this if you share copyrighted works!" means begging to be sued by the content provider on a contributory infringement basis. Hence it is far better to point to non-infringing uses, and general privacy features.