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Google Privacy Quickies
Several notes about Google and privacy. First, Lucas123 informs us that Google's global privacy counsel blogged about an improvement in Google's data-retention policies: the company plans to anonymize data it stores about users after 18 months — a slight improvement on the "18 to 24 months" of the previous policy. This move may have come as a response to pressure from European regulators. Next, Spamicles sends in word that an EFF attorney has been photographed by Google's Street View. The funny thing is, this isn't the first time it's happened. Finally, word from reader tamar that if you choose to share a video from Google Video to another social network like MySpace, your username and password get sent over http in plaintext, rather than the more secure https.
Think the timing of these announcements is at all related to the Google's (false) claim that Privacy International is run by a bunch of Microsoft shills yesterday being exposed? They got some bad pr there so this is part of Google's PR damage control. Kind of like Exxon or BP donating a few million bucks to some enviromentally friendly cause, its nice of them but doesnt change whats really going on.
This is true of most of the western world, too. It's actually not just true outside, either, but anyplace to which the public has access. For example, in a hotel in which you do not have to pass a guard to gain access to the rooms, it is completely legal to videotape or photograph people in the hallways... This is true at the very least in the US and Canada.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
His take on Google's privacy (and eventual disagreement with Priv. Intl. UK) can be found at his blog
I don't think it is reasonable to expect we will expose your password in plain text over the internet to be in a privacy policy.
There is also the expectation that the privacy policy will be within the confines of the law (Google's doesn't or didn't comply with EU law).
Google seems to believe that just because they have the corporate motto "don't be evil" means that people will think of them as good.
It appears that Google is one of the main funders of the recall of a San Francisco Supervisor that voted against the Google/Earthlink wifi deal that reeks of corruption.)
Overall as a linux user with a Gmail account and multiple adsense accounts, I am starting to view Microsoft in a more positive light than Google. It's sad because I know many people that work at Google and almost without exception they respond with "our search results are uncensored" as if that has anything to do with the trashed security, government corruption, and illegal data mining.
Work bio at MMWD
Zoom the image out and pan a little to the left (above the first parking meter). He's walking in front of a security camera.
Not pertinent, but thought it was interesting.
The problem is when what you are doing is captured permanently 'forever' on a platform that is regularly viewed globally by millions.
This is very different then being caught on someone's anonymous home video or even a news report which are generally at hot-spots and people are well aware they are being surveilled...
google's application, although technically cool, seems a bit extreme, for the tired excuse of 'public surveillance', especially sponsored by a for-profit corp.
a slippery slope, where the for-profit corps should get _none_ of the 'benefit of the doubt'.
Anonymize? How do they plan to do that? AOL released "anonymized" search data - they replaced each unique user with a random numeric ID. And people were tracked down. Consider this New York Times article:
The Online Slang Dictionary
People are pointing out that it's perfectly legal for someone to go down a public street and photograph anybody's front door and window, and are using that as a justification for some of Google's problematic privacy policies.
As a recent victim of a burglary in San Francisco, I've come to a different point of view. Sure, it's understandable that an individual should be able to walk down my street and photograph all the property there, especially if it's for some personal project, but when a corporation comes around and systematically photographs every house of a huge portion of San Francisco, and then organizes it into a easily accessable database, and all for profit, then that becomes a issue of a different nature.
In the pre-Google world if a burglar wanted to case a street he or she would have to physically go to that street and take photographs and notes. There is a tangible cost to getting that information that balances out its public availability. Now, all that person has to do is go to Google's street views and get exposed to some ads in order to case out the most vulnerable homes on practically every street in San Francisco. Google's aggregation and packaging of that public information vastly increases the potential for the abuse of privacy, even if the source of that information is public to begin with.
Now that Google acquired DoubleClick, Google has far more information than just what users "knowingly" provide it. Google has the ability now to collate your perfectly identifiable personal information (GMail, Checkout) and can match that with info gathered from its ad service when you think you may not be using Google. You no longer know how much Google knows about you. That may be clear to the geeks at Slashdot, but not so for most public out there. If Google wants to claim that they "do no evil", they need to disclose what info they collect.
Myself included, most people don't care if the data is simply used for anonymous stats and for user profiling for internal use to improve their search performance. As censorship threats grow, we need better laws of disclosure when consumer information businesses grow beyond a certain point. We know ISP logs have been reviewed by the govt. I doubt if similar move has not been made with Google.
Now for conspiracy theories - Imagine a cabal that collects online records of all citizens for future use so that they may be discredited by their past harmless private behaviors when they develop public lives in time.