Slashdot Mirror
Should you Fear Google?
Ponty writes "Google-watch.com is presenting a list of nine complaints about (almost) everybody's favorite search engine. Some of the salient fears are "Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save." and "Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency." The concerns seem like paranoid hand waving to me, but maybe I'm not paranoid enough."
You mean... somebody at google used to work for the dreaded NSA?!?!!
;)
Oh, the humanity...
That would be like, say, using Slashdot to post stories after stories that are highly critical of Microsoft.
Oh, wait... Never mind...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
...until they kick in your door and drag you off to their headquarters and interrogate you within an inch of your life.
But seriously, if you're one of those people who is always paranoid that someone is watching you, just imagine how boring that poor person's life must be.
At this point I've decided that even if there are people assigned to watch me, I feel more sorry for them than I would for myself.
And George Washingon used to work for the British! The whole revolutionary war was really engineered by the British for some nafarious reason we've yet to discover.
Especially in this day and age, I think it should suprise no one that people change jobs periodically. Doesn't mean that they're really working for their first employer at the costs of their current one.
Narrative
I get the strangest feeling that the next story posted is going to be about processors or something, maybe from Toms Hardware......
Wierd...
"If A equals success, then the formua is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut" - A Einstein.
Now we can't use a Google cache to view the slashdotted page. Doubt this is what they had in mind when they did that.
.:diatonic:.
Well just look at this Google v NSA how do we know that in fact Google isn't PART of the NSA! Oh yes its true, the voices tell me so. They patent the technology, they have key employees already there. Its like the Special Services, you know those people who are ex-Marines but now aren't "officially" part of the US military because its secret.
Oh yes, Google is the Special Ops division of the NSA. Its true I tell you its true.
Brought to you by the same people who saw Black UN Helicopters after the Oklahoma bombing.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
1. They have no policy on anything.
2. We don't know who they are.
3. They don't provide any contact details.
4. Their home page contains (ominous music) "no data".
5. erm.
6. that's it.
"The concerns seem like paranoid hand waving to me, but maybe I'm not paranoid enough."
*man in suit/sunglasses waves hand in front of your face*
"You are paranoid enough"
"You can go about your business"
I am paranoid enough, I'll go about my business.
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
I mean, it archives your website!! (unless you add headers or robots.txt directives telling it otherwise)
It sets a cookie!! (unless you don't accept the cookie)
It records searches and user inquiries!! There's no possible use for this. Except perhaps creating a record of searches which were clearly successful, and those that were not, so as to improve the service.
It records all data infinitely!! Again, there's NO possible legitimate and useful application for this, except the improvement of the service. Google must know this: improvements will not be tolerated!
They hire spooks Everybody knows that once you've worked for the NSA you've undergone mental hypnotraining that turns you into an evil government controlled assassin. seriously!
Google's toolbar is spyware! Assuming of course by spyware you mean 'software that you voluntarily and deliberately use, with the full knowledge that you're giving data back to google'
Google controls the results that google gives! Imagine that, the nerve of a search engine service giving RESULTS based on unspecified criteria. Surely they should open their precise ranking algorithm to the public. After all, nobody would steal it and create a knockoff if they had such knowledge, now would they?
In short folks, google must be stopped! hmmm... now where did my medication go again....
...but people still bug him with query's.
I used to trust google implicitly. I signed over power of attorney to google, I trusted google to change the batteries in my smoke detectors and I asked google to eliminate that burnt toast smell in my house.
Trolling is a art,
in china google is feared ;p
Now you too, know to FEAR the Google!
That's not a problem - just use the Google cache to find it!
I've submitted my webpage 10x to google, yahoo, ... and it's not a common name or like anything else. Yet I do a search, no link on the first 5 pages (I give up after that).
Are you not pulling your
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
From the Salon article...
.mil and .gov sites, some news stories, and some activist sites. Namebase's entry on Rumsfeld doesn't come up. (It is in Google's database, but to find it somebody would have to first wade through hundreds of results.)
:-/
For some reason, though, all of NameBase's deep pages -- its pages with specific names and citations -- have a low Google page rank, which causes them to show up low in the search results. Search for "Donald Rumsfeld" in Google and in the first five pages you get a lot of
Brandt sees this as Google's major flaw. "I'm not saying there aren't some sites that are more important that others, but in Google the sites that do well are the spammy sites, sites which have Google psyched out, and a lot of big sites, corporate headquarters' sites -- they show up before sites that criticize those companies."
In other words, Brandt recognizes that there has to be some order to Google's results, and that some sites might deserve to come up before others. He just disagrees with the way Google does it. In Brandt's ideal world, if you searched for "United Airlines," you would see untied.com -- a site critical of United -- before you see United's page. And if you searched for Rumsfeld, you'd see NameBase's dossier on him before the Defense Department's site on the "The Honorable Donald Rumsfeld."
My God! Heaven forbid Google list relevant search results before the others! Frankly, if I type in "United" I don't want anti-United sites - I'd have typed something like "United sucks" for that.
People like this guy really abuse freedom of speech.
That google will cease to exist. Man, I live my online life through google!
... if one of their key engineers used to work for pets.com
that place was just a disaster.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I think it all stems from the fact that lots of geeks found Scully hot. The rest sort of fell into place.
Glad to see that slashdot readers pratice all the freedom and rights of man that they constantly yell about.
I agree, anyone how has worked for the NSA should be barred for life from working anywhere. And they definetly shouldn't have the right to work in peace without their name splatted on boards like slashdot. (this is sarcasim in case you couldn't tell)
Come on guys, the National Security Agency is one of the good guys. It's terrorists like Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden that we have to worry about getting access to this Google data. Maybe you're paranoid about being watched by the NSA because you're a terrorist? Hmm? Hmmmmm?? I thought so.
Actually, I like it because I like all of the personalization. Less time wasted. Show me things I'm interested in, and don't show me irrelevant shit. I'm all for any kind of personalization that I can get online. Like the parent post, I don't do anything illegal, so I say, collect away!
In the year 2013, Goggle attained sentience and started systematically taking over the world's computers. We don't know who fired the first shot...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I have no idea what Matt Cutts does for Google, but:
1. Isn't the NSA the worlds largest employer of mathmaticians. (They use to brag abou that on there web site.) I imagine Google has a lot of use for mathmaticians.
2. The NSA I imagine is a fairly picky employer. Not just for the background checks either. The people in their research division (Can we say SE-Linux) are not push overs.
A search of 'Google self-awareness' does not reveal any evidence that Google *is* self-aware.
Of course, a search-engine should not search itself, but a separate hidden Google could search the public Google...
Maybe HAL has the answer.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Should you fear Slashdot?
1. Slashdot's immortal cookie:
Slashdot was the first discussion site to use a cookie that expires in one year. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among discussion sites; Slashdot set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you log in on Slashdot, you get a cookie! CmdrTaco can read and record your unique ID number!
2. Slashdot records everything they can:
For all discussion submissions, they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your actual words, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Slashdot can even BLOCK you from viewing their site!
3. Slashdot retains all data indefinitely:
Slashdot has no data retention policies. There is even evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save, using obscure SQL SELECT statements with WHERE modifiers!
4. Slashdot won't say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Slashdot about their privacy policies lead to severe beatings.
5. Google hires spooks:
CowboyNeal... nuf' said!
6. Google's polls are spyware:
Slashdot's free poll questions phone home with every choice you enter. Yes, it reads your cookie too, and records the vote so you can't even vote twice on the same poll!!! Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because all fair polls do this. Worse yet, Slashdot's Slashcode updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. Most web sites ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Slashdot.
7. Slashdot comments are illegal:
Posters to Slashdot often say bad things about the laws that protect us, for instance, the DMCA, the Patriot Act, and the Homeland Security act. Slashdot is nothing but a bed of terroristic rehtoric, and it needs to be stopped!
8. Slashdot is not your friend:
Young, stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Slashdot is "way kool," so by now Slashdot enjoys a 98 percent monopoly for all tech related discussion sites. No webmaster can avoid seeking CmdrTaco's approval these days, assuming he wants to "Slashdot" his site. If he tries to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Slashdot's semi-secret algorithms, he may find himself penalized by Slashdot, and his traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Slashdot, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Slashdot is completely unaccountable. Most of the time they don't even answer email from webmasters.
9. Slashdot is a privacy time bomb:
With 50 million visits per day, Slashdot amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Slashdot has already achieved. Slashdot deserves your nomination for corporate Big Brother of the Year.
this sig is a highly rehearsed improvisation
Just add google as a Not Trusted Site in your browser settings.
Et viola?
"The only thing I enjoy more than doing the crossword puzzle, is actually finishing it"
Come on guys, the National Security Agency is one of the good guys.
I know you intended to be sarcastic, and I generally think of Google as a "good company". However, they also have never fallen upon hard times. They're used for almost everything, and there are zero restrictions that I know of on corporate use of Google at any companies I can think of. How much do you think it would be worth to Acme Rubber (i.e. how much would they be willing to pay Google) to find out that FizBaz Rubber employees are searching for "Norwegian greenhouses"? Perhaps FizBaz is moving production from the Amazon to a bunch of greenhouses in Norway.
I started thinking about this a while ago -- Google (well, and other search engines, but Google is the most popular) is a tremendously large information leak to most companies.
It might be a good move for Google to open a "Corporate Program". Subscribers ensure that *no* data, not even aggregate data (well, perhaps barring some specific exceptions), is stored by Google for more than, say, a week, and it does not leave Google premises. It would make Google a lot of money, it would be a pretty obviously intelligent investment for companies that care about security...
May we never see th
Seriously, it's not like once you've taken a government job you are forever the government's bitch.
No, but you're still a bitch for taking a government job in the first place. Working for the government takes a certain kind of mentality, one that I'd never want in my company.