Slashdot Mirror
Google Slips Talk of Online Storage Service
sonsonete writes "Reuters reports that Google is preparing to offer online storage, according to company documents that were mistakenly released on the Web. From the piece: 'The existence of the previously rumored GDrive online storage service surfaced after a blogger discovered apparent notes in a slide presentation by Google executives published on Google's site after its analysts presentation day last Thursday.'"
It's hard to get worked up about the idea of the government snooping through our hard drives if we back them up on Google when they have already asserted the right to break into our houses to access the originals without telling us. And encrypting the contents seems beside the point when they have also asserted the right to torture us to reveal the password. [Fingers are easier to break than PGP.] Besides, it's not as if you even need to have *done* anything to end up on the other end of a feeding tube in Guantanamo. So I respectfully suggest that we have more pressing concerns at the moment than the possibility that Google will make targeted marketing more accurate.
It would be cool if Google provided automatic encryption, but I wouldn't care if they didn't.
Not a good idea, right? I mean, if you are going to encrypt it, Google can't do a thing - on the other hand, if they encrypted it for you, they can always be forced to give in.
And I'm sure that even if they did encrypt it for you, it would come with disclaimers that would effectively make the whole thing meaningless.
If you're real goal is genuine security, you're better off doing it yourself.
Remember, any security mechanism is as strong as its weakest link, and leaving the keys to your safe with a corporation is not particularly a good idea - even if that corporation is a Do-No-Evil (conditions apply *) corporation.
*Unless you are Chinese, in which case we don't care about your human rights.