How can "going to the cloud" benefit you when it's all part of the plan?

The media and its focus on the cloud has me worried that not that many people have protection or are educated on the possibilities on how to use this to your advantage. There are many cloud services out there. Amazon has one, Apple is releasing one pretty soon, and my favorite Dropbox has one. Going to the cloud and using cloud services means putting your information into the hands of other companies so you (and the company) can have access of such information throughout various platforms (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Windows Phone 7, Linux, etc.) that has access to the Internet.

Now the government has the authority to access such information and you just made it easier for them to do it. That is, if you're using it blindly. This is Part 1 of a series of post that I will continue to contribute to the ATS community to help them be more conscious of the technology that's out there, how to use it wisely without getting screwed, and how it's "connected" to general conspiracies. The last part is simple, they want all you're information (hence social networks). Here's one reason why (a little off topic but I'm proving a point): they're going to install a new checkpoint of the future using the information they have about you. How is that information received? Through cloud services.

Anyways you get the idea, you use these and you're at risk. That's why I'm here (and Google: 10 Clever uses for the cloud.)

The reason Dropbox is my favorite is because of the grand support it has among developers. Another reason is that it has apps that works across all devices. If you use Amazon or Apple's you're pretty much limiting yourself. I see this one as the most open.

Here's how I'm going to help.

You have two choices, sign up for Dropbox individually, or use the referral link above. Using the referral link will grant us both free space. You start off with 2GB (enough already) and you can get more by visiting the dropbox.com/free url and this tutorial for people who need help doing it. They also do random fun events like scavenger hunts once in a while to increase space (great developers).

Why use Dropbox (by no means am I advertising Dropbox :@@?

1- You can record situations in which the police might be giving you a hard time by abusing their power and your rights. This can be later used in court. Note this though (from Yahoo Answers):

As long as the police officer is in public, there is no state where recording a police officer is illegal. If it is a private conversation, 12 states require all parties to consent to recording voice:

* California
* Connecticut
* Florida
* Illinois
* Maryland
* Massachusetts
* Michigan
* Montana
* Nevada
* New Hampshire
* Pennsylvania
* Washington

No states require consent to record video unless there is an expectation of privacy, like in a bathroom or changing room.

With that said, make sure you're using this technology correctly (not everyone has the chance to get their cased dismissed like the lady from the 19th Ward in Rochester), it's called Dropvox. With this you're allowed to instantly record audio as soon as you open you're app and it's immediately sent to Dropbox's servers.

2- Take notes of certain situations you don't want to remember or that you overheard using Notesy. As the last one, syncs with Dropbox.

3- Take photos of situations that violate other's rights (if the law permits it) by using the iOS QuichShot app or DropPhox. For Android (download the original app but use this tip)

4- Send Files

Before you go on ahead and start using Dropbox make sure you encrypt it and take measures like:

If sending an email of a link to a person (through a computer) make sure to password protect it.

Other great things/extras:

If you send a download link to a friend or family and they don't know how to download it (just put this after the link)

If found something interesting that you think will get deleted real quick or you're not in your computer, first right click and save as webpage and use SideCLOUDload web app. It will automatically download it to your pc.

If you want people to upload something to you're dropbox from ATS or from work, you can send them a temporary invite, or a timed one by using File Stork

Send a screenshot of your pc straight to Dropbox (Dropbox Screen Grabber)

Alternative Dropbox Download Manager

Listen to music using DropTunes web app

Change your Desktop background

How to use Dropbox as a killer collaborative work tool

Use Dropbox to get back your stolen computer

Make Dropbox look sexy? lol (had to add humor, but it's also serious)

Find the IP Adresses of your remote computers

Password protected portal for public downloads

Always remember to use Truecrypt, if not Drag n Crypt or secret sync, to use an encrypt zip file to secure files, constantly (daily; depending how paranoid you are) do a security audit, free up disk space by deleting files in the hidden Dropbox cache folder, how to permanently delete old dropbox files, finally here's 10 Tips and Tricks

Most importantly in case of an emergency, please do a master information kit for your family and friends.

Hopefully I haven't offended anyone with the links, I'm here for your benefit. My next post shall be on staying safe browsing online and how third parties go out their way to get your information and how to prevent it. I spend massive amounts of time looking through my Google Reader to find these links. Enjoy the protection, and keep your information safe from the government! You know they're out enforcing the concept of the cloud with Google Chrome OS laptops (that only perform everything online and is completely monitored by Google) for their own benefit. If you see what I'm seeing you'll know what to do. Thanks ATS creators for letting me express my concerns and help the community. Ask any questions and please move it to the right topic if I made the mistake of putting it here (although I think I got it right).

It will help me because I have a boat load of stock in a company that's a major player, and once we get over 2 billion from Google for stealing Java for their phones, my stock will be worth even more. Join the cloud, make me rich, and then I can retire.

Other than that, it won't help anyone except hackers, other criminals, and the government get more control. I will do everything I can to stay off the cloud.

reply to post by navy_vet_stg3


You can always build your own open source Dropbox-like clone for personal use (basically SSH but with syncing capabilities.)

The most sensitive documents shouldn't ever touch the internet, those you should keep in an XHDD. This is for Music, Photos, Video, Documents, things like that that you would like to have available across different platforms.

reply to post by JJShinobi


i've been careful staying away from the cloud so far and i think i will keep it that way because :

* dropbox is a us corporation (=a business)
* their servers are based in US
(* i have 4gb storage capacity -which is enough for important files & portable apps- on my 20grams pen-drive)

which means to me that at any time:

* they can be bought by another corporation,
* they can decide to charge for the service they were giving for free
* they can stop their activity
* their data can be seized by the feds (if their data-center is not already under monitoring)

so what's the difference with other cloud services ? if i'm mistaken (those are only first thoughts & i'll try to give it a deeper look) please enlighten me.

I use the "cloud" for work related purpose only and handing off files to fellow colleagues, so my personal life doesn't seem in threat on a direct line.

in an NDA environment I could see I different perspective but for me personally I'm not sweating it. we all have back ups if need to access.

Originally posted by JJShinobi
You can always build your own open source Dropbox-like clone for personal use (basically SSH but with syncing capabilities.)

The most sensitive documents shouldn't ever touch the internet, those you should keep in an XHDD. This is for Music, Photos, Video, Documents, things like that that you would like to have available across different platforms.

I'll keep everything local, regardless. I won't trust and external HDD for my backups. I have a file server with RAID5 and a spare, and do weekly tape backups. It's worked just fine, and I don't like the idea of the cloud for anything. I don't use Facebook either, because I'm paranoid...LOL.

reply to post by JJShinobi


I was reading an article the other day about turning wikipedia into a supercomputer. Technology is such now that the only real limits are the repositories of information we have access to. We started off with Mainframes and Terminals. The mainframe had all of the power and the server was just a slave to it. Then we moved into the personal computing era where we tried to stuff as much into one device as humanly possible. That took us pretty far but eventually thats hitting a limit also.

So now instead of having disparate devices we'll have a supercomputer comprised of every cpu in every device on the earth. Realistically if we got our s**t together we could harness that power into an AI capable of creating abundance of everything we could possibly want. Or more likely we'll turn it into a weapon. Artificial intelligence is no longer in its absolute infancy. They are already testing software and hardware combinations that have some form of awareness and can learn. An example is here..

The virtually unlimited power that cloud computing will give us, combined with the centralization of all of the worlds information and put on top of that an application that can learn at a pace greater than us and give us feedback on how to advance? This will either be the absolute pinnacle of our evolution or our self created downfall. Still bloody interesting though.

Used to be that we were encouraged to develop our minds through meditation and improve our memories by constant learning, now we stick our head in a cloud.

The ultimate goal of tyranny is to control everything and everyone.

When we meditate we can withdraw and at the same time soar within our own space, this cloud control thing is just handing over your mind for storage without mastering it first?

reply to post by JJShinobi


You are very wrong on your statement that there is no law saying a police officer can't be taped while in public. 12 states actually have this on the books.

gizmodo.com...

reply to post by theHairInTheSoup


Although it's a US Corporation and they can be bought by another corporation, they will never charge for the free GBs they offer. They already have premium services. They can't delete your files locally. They can delete them from their servers but remember you're just accessing the files from a main computer across from many platforms. That's why you encrypt it and don't put data there that you wouldn't want them to access. The difference with the cloud services is that the Apple cloud service's iCloud and Amazon's Cloud is limited. As in not that many developers support the extra things I gave links to. The other clouds will have less freedom. You can't do all of this extra stuff as they will not allow it. Amazon is just for music, iCloud extends to music with iPass (uploads your songs and makes them from MP3 or whatever to AAC and will check with their servers to give you the most matched song). There's going to be hundreds of Cloud services released, non will have much support like this one. The people who build the extra add ons and such actually care about security (to a certain point). They even tell you to secure it again with TrueCrypt.

reply to post by navy_vet_stg3


I should do something like that when I get the money. I never cared much about Facebook (I'm not that paranoid), they have all the information they have on me. So why not interact with my friends? lol

reply to post by kro32


I quoted something similar from Yahoo Answers..

reply to post by Dr Expired


They just want you to hop on in the bandwaggon without knowing how to control it, or about the security risks. The convenience is great because it's a step into the New Information Age where we can access anything we want and made easy. But the way they don't teach the mainstream about how to secure it and such seems that they don't want you to master it, only they can be the masters (or so they think).

No matter how good the password protection might be, I would NEVER give someone else control over my digital data, period.

The instant that "The Cloud" fails (and there have already been a couple of large scale outages), you lose all access to your data and files.

Also, regardless of how good they claim that their password security is, my guess is, that if TPTB asked to see your data, it would be handed over in a heartbeat.

No thanks. I'll rely on good old fashioned hard drives. If I want data protected, it will be on stand alone computers not hooked up to anything.

reply to post by Imhotepsol


It'll be iRobot, and we will become their slaves. That's the extremist view, they already have simple robots that can have emotions. Imagine that, do you think something that we create that is better than us will be our slaves? That's why I said we will become theirs. The only way to avoid that is too reach unison among each other and establish an understanding (not peace) and pass that to the robots. Not even that, we're doomed cuz I don't see that happening..

Originally posted by JJShinobi
reply to post by Dr Expired

 

They just want you to hop on in the bandwaggon without knowing how to control it, our about the security risks. The convenience is great because it's a step into the New Information Age where we can access anything we want and made easy. But the way they don't teach the mainstream about how to secure it and such seems that they don't want you to master it, only they can be the masters (or so they think).

I was just clarifying that it does not need to be a private conversation at all. Unless it's obvious event such as a news crew filming a story it is against the law for you to point your video camera at anyone and record without their consent. Private conversation or not.

reply to post by babybunnies


I don't put anything in Dropbox that would endanger me if my information were handled elsewhere. If "the cloud" were to fail, I'll still have my files locally. That is what you're not grasping. It's SSH with syncing.

Originally posted by kro32

Originally posted by JJShinobi
reply to post by Dr Expired

 

They just want you to hop on in the bandwaggon without knowing how to control it, our about the security risks. The convenience is great because it's a step into the New Information Age where we can access anything we want and made easy. But the way they don't teach the mainstream about how to secure it and such seems that they don't want you to master it, only they can be the masters (or so they think).

I was just clarifying that it does not need to be a private conversation at all. Unless it's obvious event such as a news crew filming a story it is against the law for you to point your video camera at anyone and record without their consent. Private conversation or not.

True, I shall edit the OP. Everyone should use this software (or the concept of it) as defense only to yourself. Do not be a "meddling kid" like the 19th Ward girl. We all know states keep showing the expanding trend of criminalizing the act of recording police abuse. For me I would rather go to jail protecting my rights then going to jail for someone abusing their power that should be serving me (since I pay them with my tax money).

I have exceeded the maximum window of 4 hours allowed to edit my post..So much for that.

reply to post by JJShinobi

Yes the point I was making though was say in the next generation no on ewill remember that people once had unique information and .....perspectives on things, if the system goes down , in time to come people may in fact be helpless, as memory will have beeen made redundant ?

Originally posted by Dr Expired
reply to post by JJShinobi

 

Yes the point I was making though was say in the next generation no on ewill remember that people once had unique information and .....perspectives on things, if the system goes down , in time to come people may in fact be helpless, as memory will have beeen made redundant ?

I'm definitely seeing the future more Internet oriented and less locale friendly. With everything being more cloud-oriented the innovation moves towards that. The protection software for locale computers/devices will be easily hackable since at one point it won't be upgraded any more. That's why books are becoming apps; tyranny. Right now we're lucky we can do all those things with Dropbox, as the future wouldn't allow us to do so.

Everyone will have to get their things from a certain cloud (like iTunes, Amazon Music, Best Buy Music), YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Cable..everything is regulated to this day. Monopolies will soon be legal. We have to enjoy it now while we can.

Originally posted by JJShinobi

Originally posted by Dr Expired
reply to post by JJShinobi

 

Yes the point I was making though was say in the next generation no on ewill remember that people once had unique information and .....perspectives on things, if the system goes down , in time to come people may in fact be helpless, as memory will have beeen made redundant ?

I'm definitely seeing the future more Internet oriented and less locale friendly. With everything being more cloud-oriented the innovation moves towards that. The protection software for locale computers/devices will be easily hackable since at one point it won't be upgraded any more. That's why books are becoming apps; tyranny. Right now we're lucky we can do all those things with Dropbox, as the future wouldn't allow us to do so.

Everyone will have to get their things from a certain cloud (like iTunes, Amazon Music, Best Buy Music), YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Cable..everything is regulated to this day. Monopolies will soon be legal. We have to enjoy it now while we can.

edit on 2-7-2011 by JJShinobi because: Added last sentence

Too true , anything that starts off free is suspicious?
Perhaps in the future only the Party members will have access to the cloud knowledge?