Patriot Act Haunts Google Service

The Globe and Mail has an interesting piece taking a look at Google's latest headache, the US Government. Many people are suddenly deciding to spurn Google's services and applications because it opens up potential avenues of surveillance. "Some other organizations are banning Google's innovative tools outright to avoid the prospect of U.S. spooks combing through their data. Security experts say many firms are only just starting to realize the risks they assume by embracing Web-based collaborative tools hosted by a U.S. company, a problem even more acute in Canada where federal privacy rules are at odds with U.S. security measures."

Comments

Not good enough

[Naughty Bob]

Spurning these services will mark you out for further surveillance straight away.

Have they never read Crime and Punishment?

Re:Not good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

I would, but I am afraid to check it out from the library and get added to the terrorist watch list.

Re:Not good enough

[TommydCat]

This guy spurned the services and look what happens to him!

Re:Not good enough

[GodfatherofSoul]

A government agent in an unmarked car drove up and handed him a wad of cash? Sign me up!

Re:Not good enough

[fugue]

The "wrong book" is in the library in order to fish for enemies of the people. Sort of how Bush was on the ballot to fish for people who should never be allowed to reproduce. Only someone forgot an important detail somewhere along the way.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Conspiracy

[Hao Wu]

I'm not worried about Google enabling or cooperating with the government. I'm worried that Google IS the government... maybe the FBI/NSA/CIA.

Some people say the same about Microsoft.

Re:Conspiracy

[db32]

I can debunk this one easily.

Google works as advertised and works well.

You name one government service that has ever worked as advertised or worked well.

Clearly, Google is too productive and effective to be a government thing.

Only terrorists host files abroad!

[Digestromath]

In this day and age, anyone who 'hides' thier data beyond the reach of America's patriotic government data mining operations is a cut and clear terrorist! Whether it be in some dank and dusty cave in the mountains of Afghanistan, or a climate controlled secure facility in Canada.

Uncle Sam says "Do your part, keep data in America!"

When you host abroad, your hosting with Osama!

Privacy is for the unpatriotic!

Re:Only terrorists host files abroad!

[dgatwood]

I hope the person who modded this insightful understands that this is irony. I hope that this is irony. If either of those two hopes turn out to be unfounded, I will likely lose what little faith I have remaining in humanity....

Re:Only terrorists host files abroad!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, even Elliot Spitzer got in trouble for hosting a broad

Re:Don't keep logs

[innerweb]

Ack... Proofread your posts!!!

Look for legislation with a rider that excuses Google from any legal liabilities for information sharing with government caretakers.

Though, I would prefer the wording of my first post.

InnerWrb

Re:PGP

[Digi-John]

yes, sTeganogRaphy seems like a good idea to me... perhaps we coUld even embed SecreTs iN Our messages ON slashdot or somEthing...

Haunting eh?

[Oktober Sunset]

I pulled off the rubber mask, and it turns out it was old man Cheney, the creepy vice president!

Now to get out of here before the FBI find my Scooby Snacks. Scoobydoobiedooooo!!

Re:Time for google.ca?

[jo42]

Someone should tell the US Gooberment that all their Crackberry©(tm) e-mail traffic goes through a data center in Canada, eh? See how fast The Bushies and Their Henchmen annex The Great White North, eh?

Re:Corporate Espionage?

[hxnwix]

It starts getting creepy when you realize that Google seems to work very hard to keep their employees inside the google campus as much as possible, how secretive their operations are (seriously, nobody can compete with them anymore- it's not like they're guarding the henhouse for competition reasons) and how cult-like the atmosphere is More sympathetically: if you keep the workers at work, they work more. However, I can't discount your view completely. Perhaps they really are preparing their worker bees for the transfer to the comet hale bop UFO, and if you are correct, they'd want to hold those workers close to their incorporeal breast so that word of this lunacy doesn't spread beyond the compound confines.

I emailed a link to a wiki I had just set up to 3 people, two of whom had Gmail accounts. A spider from Google hit the page... Oh my gord. They sent a digital arachnid!?

Hint: why do you think Google has so many PhDs? I don't know. Because they're employing Dr. Evil(s)?

Citizen!

[gnutoo]

Be sure to use Vista, which indexes everything and eliminates all stovepipes that soot up the tubes to central services. If you use older versions of XP or Free Software, the terrorists will win!