Dropbox corporation has by law to immediately hand over all files in any user account within 24 hours of a non-subpoena request from any of over a dozen Federal LEO Agencies.
With a subpoena, any LEO or prosecutor in the country can access all files uploaded to Dropbox.
This is the law of the land. It has been tested in court at least three times in the last 2 years.
The datacenter management industry is fretting over this law so much so they’ve spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress to change the law, because cloud computing becomes an unacceptable security risk to large corporations.
So, I guess the user shouldn’t use the product if they have sensitive documents. Nor should they use Gmail, Yahoo mail, any web hosting service, any cloud service, MS office online, Google Apps, Remember the Milk, Evernote, etc.
Yes, the subpoena problem is a serious one.
However, Dropbox is an extremely useful tool and this is one of the legitimate uses of that tool. If the user doesn’t expect to be under any legal threat, it’s just fine to use Dropbox. I do think we have at least a few weeks left before Fedzilla is keeping tabs on all of our Dropboxes.