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Cory Doctorow's Fiction About An Evil Google

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the government-search-engines dept.

ahem writes "I saw a link on Valleywag to a story written by Cory Doctorow about what would happen if Google got in bed with the Dept. of Homeland Security. Chilling, well written, but the ending was a bit anti-climactic for my tastes."

13 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. Google vs NSA by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You know, the NSA is much more established the google. They knew about the insecurity of DES encryption for DECADES before anyone else did. They even convinced IBM to keep quiet about it when they found out. I'm quite sure anything Google could do they are already doing in some cases ( albeit to non US citizens, except when directed to by the executive branch).

    --
    Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
    1. Re:Google vs NSA by hobo+sapiens · · Score: 3, Interesting

      DES was 56 bit encryption, and it has been speculated by some that the NSA was capable of brute-forcing that back in the 70's. It's probably a safe bet that the NSA is ahead of the game. They are probably reading this right now, or at least, they would be if they gave a crap about me.

      I think the one thing the NSA doesn't have is all of the data that Google has (or maybe they do? ok, the tinfoil hat is off now). If Google gave up their data, the NSA would have more than a bunch of search queries. Think of the queries themselves. Those might cough up a lot of insight into how people think.

      --
      blah blah blah
    2. Re:Google vs NSA by chazwurth · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Or, it's possible that Google has an edge on the NSA in some areas. The NSA has a lot of talented people. Google has a lot of talented people. The people at the two organizations aren't all working on the same problems with the same amount of focus. So we don't actually know.

      Personally, I take the point of the story to be that the federal government could, in the right legal climate, use private industry to do a lot of dirty work, which is why it isn't safe for us to allow Google to acquire all of our information now. Who knows -- in that possible future, Google's role might allow the NSA to free up a lot of talent to work on a whole range of other nefarious projects.

      --
      The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. --Dan Kaminsky
    3. Re:Google vs NSA by vonkug · · Score: 2, Interesting
      ASSUMING that they're not already forking over their massive quantities of aggregate data to the Feds...

      In line with the "do no evil" mentality, I'm curious if Google has any kind of Order 66 for their data servers, something to eliminate / "lose" the data in the event of an attempted takeover. That would be one hell of an interesting internal document. Because an organization of this kind, of this supposed benign attitude, must possess something of the sort.

      --
      I do not fear computers. I fear a lack of them. -Isaac Asimov
    4. Re:Google vs NSA by e-scetic · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, if I were the NSA/FBI/CIA/DIA/etc. I'd be VERY interested in the Slashdot community - and this means you.

      This community is very technical, they know how to do things like make bombs, viruses, trojans, pirate software, steal identities, etc. They know how to do research. And they tend to be anti-government, pro-privacy. The way things are going now you're probably a suspected terrorist or "person of interest' just by being here.

  2. Great commenter on TFA page!!! by drx · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So, people don't value their privacy?

    Look at the topmost comment on the first page of the story! Some dude called

    Alberto S. Lopez
    Lawndale, CA
    Email: albertoslopez@gmail.com
    Cell: 310.686.1259

    explains how he read this story on his iPhone!!!

    AhAh AHaAhHAh HAhaHAAHahAHaaa!!

  3. Re:Fiction? by will_die · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Except in this case he is saying that Google was "in bed", which by slang definition would mean they are cooporating under no legal requirement, so law has no effect. Google is able to sell, or give away, any of the information they collect.
    As for a legal requirement that Google provide information the US patriot act would not had much of an effect compared to the laws in effect before it was passed. The US PATRIOT act made it easier to get a NSL, by bypassing a judicial requirement, and added terrorism as one of the reasons they could be used. So even without the US PATRIOT act there are plenty of laws that allow access to that any of the data Google collects all with the "you cannot call up the suspect and offer to sell them information that law enforcement is investigating them" restriction.
    Then as you mentioned the US PATRIOT act allowance to do this has been struck down so the government could not be collecting this information without the customer knowledge. Which goes to the original point made bythe author and the people who marked the comment informative; what part of the US PATRIOT act allows the government to do this?

  4. Re:Fiction? by Jarik_Tentsu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I may sound stupid here, but I think even if Google was passing info to the NSA or Homeland Security, I'd still use it. Fact is, it's still the best search engine out there. I may be against it in theory, but from a personal perspective...it still gives me what I want.

    Me refusing to use it really doesn't give me, or the cause anything. And hey, it's not like the government will be interested looking at all my "nekked chicks" searches much.

    Once again, you may call me stupid, but that's just the way most people, including myself, think.

    ~Jarik

  5. Former Agent Says Google and CIA in Partnership by kubitus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/01/199212 http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4774 rechecked articles - they are still accessible by 2007-09-21 10:00 UTC

  6. cameras everywhere has hurt gov more than helped i by hopeless+case · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think most of the scary ideas Cory wrote about (cameras everywhere, the ability to track enoumous volumes of information, ...) have been giving the upper hand to the citizenry against the government (in defense of liberty) more than the other way around.

    The police are finding it harder, not easier, to abuse their vast powers when so many people have cameras and can upload the footage to youtube the same day.

    Even in China, you could argue that the internet is working that way also. One person can send an email and inform millions of other people what is going on before the government can act to stop it.

  7. What are you talking about? by rjh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am a grad student in computer science. I have had to (try to) cryptanalyze DES before. It was the torment of the damned. My remarks here are based on that experience. I daresay it's a lot more than you've ever done with it.

    DES is not now, nor has it ever been, a weak design except in the very narrow sense of it having only a 56-bit keyspace. During the time it was created, 56 bits of keyspace was really quite good. Nobody was expecting it to remain a government standard for the next 20+ years. When the only way to attack an encryption algorithm is to exhaust its keyspace, that encryption algorithm is generally considered to be pretty well-designed. Even the small keyspace can be fixed with 3DES, a trivial extension that gives somewhere between 112 and 168 bits of keyspace, depending on just how many trillions of dollars you're assuming the attacker is spending.

    Insofar as its "weaknesses", all that I can think is that you're talking about how the S-boxes were hardened against differential cryptanalysis after the IBM design team independently discovered the attack. The NSA asked IBM to keep differential cryptanalysis quiet, and IBM did: but I don't see how you go from "it's specifically hardened against differential cryptanalysis" to "it has weaknesses the NSA knows about".

    Please do not fearmonger with crypto when you don't even have the facts right.

  8. Don't think this should be on Slashdot. by boyko.at.netqos · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Now, I like Cory Doctorow. I think that he's written some great books - I have three of them myself. And I think the story's a good one.

    But Slashdot is about -news- for nerds...

    My only problem with this is that real life is scary enough. We don't need to be thinking about what -could- happen -if- Google got even deeper into bed with DHS. I don't need those nightmares. I have enough nightmares of my own, traveling internationally for the first time in Novemeber in order to film a documentary. I'm not looking forward to explaining that the $500 Sennheiser wireless microphone is NOT a bomb trigger, or that the pipes that are in my carry-on bags are part of a homemade stabilizer and NOT a "pipe-bomb."

    I'm very scared of what this country is coming to. I don't need more "what-if" conspiracy scenarios, my mind is more than capable of coming up with them on my own.

    This story would undoubtedly be linked to from BoingBoing, which is also a top blog where it fits in. I think Slashdot should stick to news - that's all.

    --
    I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
  9. Re:The ending by FashionCritic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Although I occasionally find boingboing.net amusing, I finally stopped following it because of Doctorow's entries. His suspicion and paranoia seem to have no end. He's obsessed with jack-booted-government-thugs coming for him. Anyone that deranged should seek professional psychiatric care.