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."
Google is a pretty public thing. Now, consider what sort of capabilities the NSA/echelon really has, considering they've been working on this sort of technology for years.
Well, I wanted to mention in the submission that it seems like the authors are pretty darned dumb. "They are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save"? Duh! They're a search engine. If they didn't easily access all the information that they collect and save, they'd be a pretty bad search engine.
All of their practices that are decried in the webpage are either perfectly normal behavior (the cookies) or just not an issue (NSA, etc.)
No, you do not have permission to set up a spy cam in my living room. Feel free to set one up in your living room (that is, the property you own... as google owns their servers and associated resources), and I'll probably still come and visit without complaining, as long as you tell me (as google does in their privacy statement). Now, you could argue that if the camera is in your room, you don't have a responsibility to inform me... but that's a moot point now, since google very clearly does.
You need make no effort to maintain your privacy. As long as you do nothing, your privacy is inviolate (at least by google). It is when you take an active action and hand some third party your information on a silver platter (or a tcp packet) that it is, yes, your responsibility to ask that third part what they plan to do with your gift (there's no contract, is there?) to them.
I've had this sig for three days.
This is just a guess, I have nothing to do with Google.
If I recall correctly, Google did advertise for folk with _security clearance_.
One of Google's revenue streams is the sale and support (and operation?) of the Google search technology for private use - such as on a large Intranet.
Somebody who _might_ have a large Intranet, that _might_ wish to use the best search technology around is the US Government.
And if they wanted Google people to manage it, they would need to be security cleared, or at least they would in a similar situation in the UK.
Back to the article, since number 8 is practically word for word pulled from that loser who's suing them for decreasing his page rank, I'm really skeptical about the motives of this site. Google has no obligations to web masters. They're responsible to people who do searches to return useful results. As long as they continue to do that, then they'll be on top.
If you think it's bad to read your old newsgroup post from 10-20 years ago, think about the search terms you've typed in over the same period of time. And that is information you never thought would be made public.
It's very simple to correlate search request to a person. Most people will search for their own email, name, phone number, address, etc. to find out what's available on the net. If there is a persistent cookie, then all your search request can be tied together. And blocking cookies may not help if you have a static dedicated IP. Google saves every little bit of information they can,.. forever...
There is no time limit for them to destroy this data.
There is no way you can write them and ask them to delete your records.
There is no way to ensure your information won't be leaked by an employee or seized by court order.
I suspect the big google/china ban thing a while back is because the chinese government didn't want google have access to so much information about all of their citizens, including government officials - especially since the US appears to be half-way in bed with google now. Basically it amounts to spying. The terms of the deal with china weren't disclosed for allowing google back online there - but I bet it had something to do with this issue.
With features like google-bar with pagerank google has access not to every search you've made, but also every page you visit! Even without google-bar, many browsers have a bug that returns the last page visited as the referal when you hit the home button or favorites link. Since google is highly likely to be used this way rather than typing in google.com - they will also correlate this information.
I've used google since their early beta days - but now I'm beginning to think they are on the path to evil weither they intend it or not. The fact they are a private company makes them even scarier - no public disclosures of how they are using their data. And with something like 80% of all searches going through google, they have collected a lot of data. Be afraid, be very afraid.
-- Virtual Windows Project
Following is the email I just sent to Public Information Research, the guys that do GoogleWatch. I'll post the reply if I get one.
Hi,
I just came across the page and had a few comments to make and questions to ask.
"1. Google's immortal cookie"
Given that all browsers allow you some control over accepting cookies, and the better ones give you more fine-grained control, allowing you to reject cookies from specific domains. I would say this is a moot point.
"2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration."
Well, the cookie tracking can be resolved as above. It's interesting to note that they don't record my IP address - at work they get my proxy's address, at home they get the addresses of the transparent caches that my ISP uses. I'd say that as transparent caches become more prevalent, that becomes less of an issue. More on this later. Browser configuration? How do they get that (apart from the easily-spoofable UA string)?
I'd also suggest that your ISP does all this as well, especially if you use their proxy, or if they use transparent caches. This is far worse becuase they will be reording *everything* you do on the web. I'd suggest this is a bigger problem right now.
"3. Google retains all data indefinitely"
Can you prove that? If true, it does suck, but they're probably well within their rights to do so. AFAIK, the US doesn't have the more-enlightened privacy laws that the EU and other countries do.
"4. Google won't say why they need this data"
Is that suprising? What do other US companies say when you ask them similar questions?
"5. Google hires spooks"
I'm sure lots of companies hire ex-NSA engineers. Perhaps they hired him because he is a competent engineer? I hope you realise that this point makes you sound like someone with a paranoia disorder of some sort.
"6. Google's toolbar is spyware"
Don't install it then?
"7. Google's cache copy is illegal"
If you don't want something cached, don't publish it on the Internet. Print publishers can't recall magazines and newspapers, why do you expect anything different on the 'Net? If it is illegal, it's probably because the US copyright laws are seriously broken. It *would be good if Google abided by the HTTP cache control headers, rather than resorting to stupid HTML meta hacks.
"8. Google is not your friend:
Young, stupid script kiddies and many bloggers still think Google is "way kool,"
Thanks for the insult. You're an arrogant, paranoid, stupid, wanker. I use Google because it gets me results for random questions. I don't use Google to find a place to buy CDs online. The people out there trying to scam Google probably aren't the kind of people I want to deal with.
"9. Google is a privacy time bomb"
I'd suggest the current US administration is a much bigger, more dangerous, more volatile bomb than Google is or ever will be. If Google is a nasty monkey, the Federal US Government is a 900-pound gorilla.
Mike.
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
On the surface that seems reasonable, but stop and think a little more carefully for a minute.
First, I am a fan of google. I like what they do, and I use their site all the time. I hope the keep going.
HOWEVER, that does not mean that we can just write off the power they have. Since this is slashdot, I think I have a good analogy for you.
Microsoft.
Microsoft is not in any legal sense a monopoly (prior to the court ruling, anyway). No one says in law that you have to use any Microsoft product. Heck, my home machine is strictly Linux, and so far that's legal. But remember a certain court fiasco a while back, and the one bone we got tossed.
Microsoft is a monopoly.
Why did they come to that conclusion? No law says we can't use Linux or Mac. Lots of people do. Most people would agree both are better than Windows.
In the computer world, people are the cause of monopolies.
Not to say they are to blaim, although that may be true at some level. What I mean is, people create the conditions of a natural monopoly through lack of willingness/time/whatever to learn new things. There is a high cost in training time to use anything computer related. Most people have paid that price for Microsoft, and didn't enjoy the experience at all. They wouldn't change if you offered them the perfect OS, because they wouldn't want to suffer through retraining. That's why most Linux GUIs target Microsoft. Not because it's good, but because it's what people know.
Google has a massive inertia behind it. It is now, for many people, THE interface to the web. For many people, they are not going to want to put in the effort to find a new/better search engine even if google starts to do little annoying things. They'll live with it, because it is faster than researching to find a better setup. That also presupposes a better setup, which would be tough. Google has put a lot of work into this.
Thus, Google has power. Not by law, but by market reality. Thus far, they have done the right things with that power. For that they should be cheered and supported, and I'll gladly join that crowd. But no one with real power in a market can EVER be totally trusted, no matter how good they have been to their customers in the past. All it takes is a change of management and the whole thing can go down the tubes. Google is a flashy bandwagon, playing a great song. I love going along for the ride. But if they start playing yellow submarine, I'm ready to dive off. And most people aren't. And that's the (potential) problem.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
It is, right?
Right?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
He runs NameBase, a search engine for citations. From the Salon article:
"When you type "NameBase" into Google, Brandt's site comes up first, but Brandt is not satisfied with that. "My problem has been to get Google to go deep enough into my site," he says. In other words, Brandt wants Google to index the 100,000 names he has in his database, so that a Google search for "Donald Rumsfeld" will bring up NameBase's page for the secretary of defense. "
So, in other words, Brandt built a search engine... but really wants to just build a database and use Google's search engine to search it - he realizes that they have a better search engine than his, and wants to use it to search his entire site, and is pissed that they aren't doing his business for him.
Additionally, Brandt has a political agenda that he wants Google to enforce: (also from the article)
"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." "
This guy is a kook and a troll.
-T
This argument is fine when the law is fair and reasonable, but let's just say hypothetically that there is something you like to do, that is one day perfectly legal, but that becomes illegal - say because you moved states or countries. Hemp law is an obvious example here. All of a sudden you have become a law breaker, and depending on where you moved you could face harassment, a fine, jail, torture, or death - all for behaviour that was perfectly legal, and still is perfectly reasonable to you personally.
many laws are only on the statute books because they give the state the power of selective enforcement, that is they can choose to prosecute or not based on all manner of reasons which may have little if any relationship to the law itself. In Holland it is not legal to smoke grass, but there is a policy of selective enforcvement. If, hypothetically, the Dutch govt. knows you are a pot smoker and takes offence at something you have done - like pissing on the american embassy in museumplein (not likely now they've put a bloody great tank outside it) - they can arrest you for posession of pot, or at least threaten you with that. Drug laws in particular are always used for this type of social control.
so while "I don't break the law, thus do what you like" seems like a valid argument, it fails to recognise that many laws are stupid, and should you find yourself in disagreement with a stupid law, you must resort to criminal behaviour if you want to resist.
each new law creates a new class of criminal.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Microsoft.
I have to disagree with your analogy, because there is nothing google has done and can do (at least that I am aware of) to enforce it's monopoly.
If google suddenly becomes crap (either because of the user experience or their behind the scenes actions), then there is nothing to force you to keep using google. There are however many reasons that force lots of people to keep using Microsoft products against their will.
Do you really think I'm go to put something novel here?