“outside the US/UK/etc” means “in a country with weaker constitutional protections against government search and seizure”, for the most part. Be careful what you wish for.

As has been proved, the USA is not the pinnacle of these things (any longer?). I'd happily try my luck with a German Dropbox

I do not think so. Hosting your data at home is significantly more complex than cloud hosting (dropbox, icloud) and will always be - bandwidth is the smallest of all issues. There's absolutely no gain if data is stored on shrink-wrapped boxes that are remotely administered by a provider because then, all data will just be collected at home. So you'd need a trustworthy and extremely simple and robust (open source?) solution that allows every, even the computer-illiterate persons to set up a storage at home. I don't see that coming soon.

here's what you do - design a beautiful cube that has a few ports (USB, firewire, whatever). It should also connect to the local wifi network. It'd ship with Dropbox-like software so synching files to it over the home network is dead simple.

Then, you make some sort of lifetime guarantee that you'll keep up with changes in storage and interface technology. Guarantee that the thing will be later upgraded to seamlessly translate people's wedding photos to the next big image format. Guarantee you'll keep it forward and backwards compatible to future OS updates. Guarantee it'll work with future phones and tablets, etc.

Maybe even build in some kind of automated off-site backups in case of fire, theft, flooding.

If you made it simple, and if you earned people's trust that this is really an investment - I think you could really clean up with local home storage.

Syncing over the home network wouldn't be enough; one of the big features of Dropbox is that you can sync devices anywhere. Eg: my phone, my office PC, and my home PC all share the same Dropbox folder.

Since we're not all IPv6 yet, the cube will need to set up a secure tunnel out of the home network to a public endpoint, probably on a server run by your company. All syncing would have to go through that server, preferably with end-to-end encryption so the server can't access the data. (It can still be captured for offline cracking, though.)

Exactly the product I had in mind. I think you can get customers by selling the box and also by providing a subscription model to backup/replicate the user data. Ideally this box should use a well documented and open API and code so you can sync it with other "vaults" providers or even with other boxes. I would pay a lot for a service like this.

Edit: typo.

This product exists- its called space monkey. http://m.spacemonkey.com

FreedomBox: https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/

I agree with you that today there is absolutely no way, but in the last 5 years the internet changed a lot. Several Europeans countries are subsidizing the optical fiber infrastructure, so the bandwidth will not be problem. To solve the complexity issue, I think the solution could be a of "home server" or "home box", I guess it will could be even provided by your ISP (each day these home boxes come with more capabilities).

I don't think that bandwidth is the problem. Technical knowledge is the problem. See, someone (AAPL) designs a beautiful box that does what you want (call it Time Capsule) and all of a sudden, all that changes is the attack vector: The NSA/BND/... does not require the cloud provider to hand over the data, they just require a data collection interface on the box. Or a sync protocol that leaks or a master key since they're sniffing all internet traffic anyways. All you're doing is playing a game of whack a mole. What's required is a fundamental change in how secret services are monitored and bound by law and that's not something technology can do.

Apple is not the problem. The (horribly proprietary) iCloud is just Apple's solution to the fundamental problem of people collecting data but not being able to manage it.

The article calls out smart devices. I've fantasized about having smart devices of my own, but in my fantasies they answer to me and collect data into my systems. Which means I need to learn a bit of embedded programming and some electrical engineering to build my own, after I've learned how to set up my own servers. I don't see this as viable for normal consumers.

Even I don't manage all of my own information. I switched to Gmail because I just can't keep up with spammers. I have a life.

Apple is clearly the wrong choice, then. Go with a vendor that allows people to own their own equipment, and not one that installs a data collection interface on it.

>sync protocol that leaks

Que? The sync protocol had better be open, or it's worthless.

> "I don't see that coming soon"

I disagree. There are many signs that at least some people are moving in this direction. Think of things like SpaceMonkey, OwnCloud, various plug computers, the 'Raspberry Spring' (small embedded ARM devices) and many others besides.

Sure, these don't fulfil all of your criteria but the fact that they exist at all indicates that we're on the right path.

some. as there are some people encrypting email, some people not using cloud storage, some people not on facebook.

Sure and In The Beginning, there were only some people on Facebook, some people using email and some people using the cloud (only some people were on this internet thing, back in the day).

It's fair to say that the relative number of people doing something right now may be low but it's completely wrong to extrapolate that to the future the way you're implying. We don't know what will happen.

My post above is attempting to support my view that there is growing interest in solutions like the kind you asked for (e.g SpaceMonkey raised 3x its funding goal on KickStarter). Whether these solutions actually become successful in the long term remains to be seen but I feel we're further along than your comment suggested.

My vision: a Federated model in which users self-host using something like FreedomBox (https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/).

The hardware is small, cheap ($20 - $200, or more if you prefer) and low-power. And the truth is: having _any_ dedicated box means you're getting more hardware allocated to your use and data than most SAAS providers provision on a per-customer basis. With modest amounts of RAM and an SSD performance will top most cloud services.

The software is self-configuring. One thing the Debian team has been working on for nearly two decades is how to take all the pain out of deploying systems, and while it's not perfect, it's really damned good. With a focus on "sane by default", there's no initial package selection.

The "Federated" bit says that your data is replicated on other nodes, either of your specific choosing or based on an arbitrary selection. That can include encryption of non-public data.

And there's a possible business model: set up self-hosted systems for individuals or businesses, or host small numbers of sites (it would take a lot of work for the feds to track down tens of thousands of providers rather than a handful of large players).

Email, webhosting, file storage, email, messaging, social networking, on an open framework.

It has big meaning in business where it generally means the organization isn't going to run it's own servers. Or even own them if they aren't requiring a private cloud. Although amusingly, here in the medical sector, the cloud often still has to be in the same state for legal purposes.