Why Is Dropbox Back On the Chinese Market? 46
Nerval's Lobster writes "Dropbox has renewed access to the Chinese market for the first time in four years. But why? The Chinese government first blocked access to Dropbox in 2010, most likely to prevent people within China from sharing data via the cloud. Now Dropbox is back online in China, albeit at slower speeds. Despite repeated queries from Slashdot, however, Dropbox has declined to comment on why China may have dropped the in-country restrictions to its services. "We still have nothing to share," the company responded after the third email. Dropbox isn't the only foreign cloud service available on the Chinese market (although Google Drive remains blocked): in late 2013, Amazon announced it would open an Amazon Web Services (AWS) region in the country; at the time, the Amazon Web Services Blog alluded to the "legal and regulatory requirements" that this new AWS region will obey. So questions remain: Did Dropbox know it would regain entry to the Chinese market? If so, did it need to agree to certain conditions before the Chinese government would "flip the switch," as it were?"
Who cares? (Score:1)
They already provide the same access to US intelligence agencies (who'll forward any relevant data to sufficiently large, ostensibly US but in practice international corporate interests). Why is it news that Dropbox does the same for Chinese wrt. Chinese customers?
It might be news if they provided similar access to Chinese interests as they do to US interests.
Re: (Score:2)
Try reading about the Enercon vs GE case.
One of the unusual survivors. (Score:2, Insightful)
Despite repeated queries from Slashdot . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Dropbox is waiting for a real tech site to contact them.
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Precisely - why does Slashdot deserve a comment or response at all? Its a common journalistic tactic - ask for a comment, and when you don't get a response (why would every enquiry deserve a response?) then its a perfect negative thing to put in your story.
Re: (Score:1)
Just in case: /klout/
Clout
noun
2.
informal
influence or power, esp. in politics or business.
"I knew he carried a lot of clout"
Re:This isn't anything out of the ordinary... (Score:4, Insightful)
the West shuts out any mention of Tibetan terror attacks or ethnic violence against the Han and Hoi people of Lhasa
Perhaps I should notify my ISP... your mention of Tibetan terror attacks and ethnic violence seems perfectly visible here.
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Sorry, but most estimates put China passing the US economy at at *least* 15-20 years out, not 5. It'll happen, but not nearly as fast as you suggest.
Despite repeated queries from Slashdot, however, D (Score:1)
Slashdot Must be confusing it self with real journalism.
Really? (Score:2, Informative)
I'm in Guangzhou right now using Guangzhou Telecom (a region "branch" of China Telecom) with OpenNIC DNS and I can't access dropbox.com (CONNECTION_RESET, which is a typical GFW sign).
C'mon, seriously? (Score:2)
For Dropbox to get access to China, they have to allow the Chinese National Security Commission unfettered access to their resident's Dropbox accounts.
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Slower? Honeytrap (Score:1)
So it runs slower, and its open. This sounds like a honeypot server. Is there end-to-end encryption or is this an invitation built to enhance informed oppression?
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isnt it obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
they gave the chinese gov full access to their (chinese) user identities and file access. i would not be surprised if their china gov approved system is completely contained within china.
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Their Government Data Requests Principles [dropbox.com] is a catalogue of the things they're forced to do that they don't like. The last one on that list would seem to apply to China (but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they've been forced to bend over on this one by US and other Western countries as well).
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In the mid-east it is called baksheesh. In China it is "my son's company will help you with that."
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And that would be unlike the freedom from secret government surveilance we are used to in the free world.
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And that would be unlike the freedom from secret government surveilance we are used to in the free world.
here we can criticize, try to stop and (hopefully at some point) jail them. in china you get fast tracked to organ "donation".
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Yeah, thats funny.
Criticising the gouverment in the internet or sharing some documents is *not* enough to be fast tracked to organ donation in China.
China may not be perfect in terms of human rights but it for sure gets better and better in average.
Nothing to share? Ironic, no? (Score:2)
They likely give the Chinese govt full access (Score:3)
Re:They likely give the Chinese govt full access (Score:5, Interesting)
The timing is suspicious, given the mail they just sent out to all their users updating the TOS with an additional "Government Data Request Principles" section.
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The timing is suspicious, given the mail they just sent out to all their users updating the TOS with an additional "Government Data Request Principles" section.
Depends on what's in the section. Didn't anyone tell you not to judge a book by the cover?
I just checked it, and you're right. It says "We will totally not turn over your data to any government that requests it. Especially not the Chinese. We will definitely not hand over your data to the Communist Party, even if they pinky swear they won't do anything mean to you for it. We will never send information about whether your files contain the keywords "democracy", "Tiananmen Square" or "Communism suxxors" to any third party, such as the Communist Party Committee for Un-Chinese Activities. That is no
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Whats in that section is basically a catalogue of what we already know the US government is doing, and an extra one at the bottom about Governments adding a man in the middle that gives them access to everything.
They say its a list of everything that they promise to resist, but we know from Snowdon's work and other public disclosure that its all actually happening.
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That's right, and I would imagine the people of China know this, and act accordingly.
China's got the right idea when it comes to censorship and monitoring of the internet. They are a ?communist? country so they have the right, or even the responsibility to monitor how people use public utilities. As for America and the NSA, they claim to be an open society with a government of the people, for the people, yet they increasingly treat those same people as criminals and terrorists for doing simple things like
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My guess is that they'll simply disable SSL for chinese users or perhaps provide a local SSL key to China, so that China's censoring system will be able to log all the traffic.
It's been working on and off for about a month (Score:2, Informative)
Near the end of January I noticed that I didn't have to connect to my VPN for my home computer Dropbox to sync. But it's on and off. When it's on, the speed isn't throttled; I get the same slow speed I get to any US server (although my 50 Mb/s connection to APA is generally better than anything I get in the USA).
At work, of course, we have a privileged connection to the outside world, because we're one of the largest non-Chinese companies in the world, and we give a lot of money to China.
Easy to answer (Score:3)
This question is very easy to answer if you know why dropbox was blocked in the first place.
Get this:
* I was living in China, happily using Dropbox.
* Suddenly Dropbox tells me it can't connect.
* Did some digging with tcpdump, traceroute, etc. You know. Nerd stuff.
* Turns out that our of Drop boxes entire IP range, only 1 IP was blocked.
* This IP happened to be the login or authentication server that the client occasionally connects to.
* As it happens, the SAME IP was used for Dropbox website.
* It seemed likely to me that the website was the target of the block, not the login server for the client.
* So I check the Dropbox forum on its website (using VPN) and what do I see there: SONG TEXTS OF TIBETAN NATIONALISTS
Yes, so Dropbox was blocked because some nitwit decided it was a good place to post some pro-tibet/anti-china texts. How do you get unblocked in China? Remove the offending text and change your IP address (or wait a really long time.)
are you kidding me? (Score:2)
I wouldn't return your request for an interview/ more details either.
TOS change (Score:1)