Don’t worry, America. I’m sure the government isn’t driving around in unmarked vehicles using security technology to look through your clothes and see your genitals.

They’ve probably outsourced it.

This could never go wrong, or become an invasion of privacy, could it? If you have nothing to hide, why would you object to random strangers looking at your genitalia without your knowledge?

Do you hate freedom, or something?

Reiss adds that the vans do have the capability of storing images. “Sometimes customers need to save images for evidentiary reasons,” he says. “We do what our customers need.”

Uh-huh.

Image taken from The Eizo Pin-up Calendar 2010.

Over the weekend, we received an email from Dropbox, imploring us to increase our use of the service:

Recently your Dropbox has been feeling kind of lonely

As a reminder, Dropbox lets you:

* Get to all your files from any computer or phone.
* Share documents, photos and entire folders easily.
* Restore your stuff in a snap even if your computer melts down.

If you need a refresher course, check out our tour.

We hope you come back to Dropbox!
- The Dropbox Team

How cute — even a smiley in there!

We thought about replying directly, and thought of removing ourselves from their mailing list, but in the end went for a third option: replying in public.

Dear Dropbox,

No. I will not “come back” to your service.

You might have noticed that I have never actually placed anything into my Dropbox. It was always a service that I used to receive data only. I was never sure, you see, what to make of you. Cloud computing makes me nervous, you see. It means that somebody else has my data.

I use the Internet quite a bit, but generally assume that everything I put online is public (with the exception of my credit card data, which I am often forced to take a risk with).

My lack of faith in cloud computing has recently been reinforced — by your own company. Not only did you lie about encryption and accessibility to your customers, but you make such basic security errors as forgetting to lock users’ accounts, thereby allowing anybody — anybody — to log onto them.

I’m not sure that there’s any information on my computer that people would want to steal. But if there were, I am confident that it could be stolen from your service. I do not think it would even take much in the way of expertise.

I am still waiting, patiently, for somebody to convince me that cloud computing with data that is personal and/or private is safe, secure and private. Rest assured that it will not be your company that convinces me. I am certainly not coming back – I was pretty much never actually there in the first place.

Kind Regards,
Mr. Topp

For those who may be unaware, there’s a group that calls itself LulzSec that has been hacking up a storm lately (most famously targeting PBS) for, well, the LULZ.

Here at the Big Bad Blog, we have been scratching our heads trying to figure out what to make of them. After reading this article by Patrick Gray, we think that we will just co-opt his position:

So for the last ten years I’ve been working in media, trying to raise awareness of the idea that maybe, just maybe, using insecure computers to hold your secrets, conduct your commerce and run your infrastructure is a shitty idea.

No one who mattered listened.

…

So why do we like LulzSec?

“I told you so.”

That’s why.

We aren’t security professionals here at the Big Bad Blog, but that resonates. Because we are sufficiently technically literate to say — at least now that LulzSec has turned on the light — well, yeah, obviously.

Furthermore, this reflects the truth about how we treat our society’s insecurities beyond the computer: The security theatre that we witness at airports, for example. We all know that it does nothing to keep us safe, but governments just keep making more grand, visible gestures, rather than taking any steps to make flight more secure.

Photographers being harassed for taking photos in public places, as a “counter-terrorism measure”. The Patriot Act in the USA.

All these things smell the same. It’s a shame that LulzSec-style graffiti about Tupac in New Zealand doesn’t exist in these contexts, and there is no similar loud, visible way to demonstrate what is masquerading as security all around us every day.

Image by Frankie Eiknarf.
Webcomic is Invisible Bread, by Justin Boyd.

Not all web tools are created equal. Some — such as LiveJournal, WordPress or ToodleDo caught me from the moment I signed up for the service. Others are used haltingly, at least at first, and slowly worm their way into regular use.

Twitter falls into the latter category.

When we first joined Twitter, we barely used it. It was not until we found Tweetie for iPhone and the Tweetdeck desktop client that we became heavy Twitter users. It seems that it was not the service that was the problem, so much as the interface.

Eventually, Twitter purchased Tweetie, and it became Twitter for iPhone.

At first we shrugged – why care?

Then we applauded. Good on Twitter to recognize their user-interface weakness and go out and acquire a company that designed a pretty good one.

Then we shrieked in horror, as the whole thing backfired. Rather than the Tweetie expertise in creating a good user experience for the tweeters out there leading to an improvement to the Twitter interface on other platforms, Twitter instead decided to redesign Tweetie into something I no longer wanted to use.

Today, I use Tweetdeck everywhere — on my phone, on my computer. I rarely remember my dreams, but I’m probably using it there, too.

And now Twitter looks poised to purchase Tweetdeck. To this we say to Twitter: keep your hands off my stuff!

Seriously, Twitter people. You have a great service, but are terrible at designing interfaces for that service. If you do buy Tweetdeck, we will not wait to see what you do with it, but begin searching immediately for a replacement — your interface issues are now part and parcel of what it means to be Twitter. Things would be better if you would accept that and play to your strengths.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Internet, Facebook is rumored to be looking at the purchase of Skype.

If there ever were two services that we use reluctantly, they would be Facebook and Skype.

Facebook is the network that nobody seemingly uses willingly — we all interact on Facebook not because we love it, but because everybody else is there. Every few months, the people at Facebook make design changes that annoy its users. And at least twice a year, they introduce a change which undermines the privacy of their users.

Skype is another service that people use because it is there. Much as Facebook is the default social network, Skype is the default choice for VoIP. Which means that if you want to video-chat with your mother over the Internet, there are no other choices. Call quality is surprisingly (but consistently) poor.

Lately, Skype has been experiencing security issues, with their Mac and Android versions putting users at risk.

At least if Facebook took over, we could be reasonably certain that the leaking of confidential user data to third parties was intentional.

(Of course, after writing this, it is revealed that Microsoft has bought Skype. So we can presumably expect Skype to become yet another quality Microsoft product, free of bugs and never-ending security updates.)

Perhaps we are entering an age of electronic consolidation — the point in an industry where firms merge in order to leverage their talents across every aspect of the industry.

In which case — with the biggest players all having significant flaws — we may all be doomed.