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Google CEO Says Privacy Worries Are For Wrongdoers
bonch writes "In a surprising statement to CNBC, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporter Maria Bartiromo, 'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.' This will only fuel concerns about Google's behavior as it becomes an ever more powerful gatekeeper of information; though Google says it is aware of these concerns and has taken steps to be transparent to users about the information that is stored."
With that attitude, I guess Google will have to start worrying about privacy!
Why, no, I haven't meta-moderated lately. Thanks for asking!
Well, I think judgment matters.
Then we get a voice over and a cutaway. Then the snippet in question is suspiciously selected with nothing preceding it. That's his direct quote and it was stupid to say 'maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place' but what was said before it seems to be edited. If the context is search engines (which I think it is), then what he says is true. As in 'if you're looking for ways to murder your husband, maybe you shouldn't be using the Google Search engine to find that information in the first place.' Here's what follows the inflammatory statement:
But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines--including Google--do retain this information for some time ... um ... and it's important--for example that we are all subject to the United States Patriot Act--it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities.
I don't want to sound like a fanboy bending over backwards to absolve Schmidt but I want to point out that the important message people should take away from this is simply that your searches are not private. Your searches leave the premises of your private property. They go to a semi-public resting place where--under the Patriot Act--the government has the ability to access them with little commotion.
I mean, if you enjoy doing something illegal like smoking weed, don't do it in public. You shouldn't be doing it in public in the first place. Do it in the privacy of your own home. If you go to a cafe or place of business and smoke weed, the owner and workers at that cafe might be obligated to call the authorities. Similarly if you're buying weed, don't use the Google search engine to do it.
I would like to hear his whole unedited statement.
My work here is dung.
Herpes is not a crime, but I bet if you had it you would want to keep that fact private.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The problem is that everyone is a wrongdoer by someone's definition.
Privacy isn't about hiding a wrong.
But whatever, by his logic he'd be happy to share his credit card details and the key-code to his security at home?
ilovegeorgebush
'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.'
Or perhaps if I have something that I don't want anyone to know, it's NONE OF THEIR FUCKING BUSINESS! I'm tired of this presumption of guilt that's become all the rage these days. We really need to get these idiots out of positions of power.
That's an arrogant statement by Schmidt (and yes, I read the whole thing). How often have we heard the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" argument over the decades? Add Google to that long list - and it's not an honor roll! I guess "Don't be evil" is leaving the building. It was a matter of time, anyway.
Do your own thing. And overdo it!
This is the reason that people who want help with social ills are afraid to seek help. A guy who has a problem with drugs or alcohol or a less-than-ideal medical issue are afraid, at the very least, of the stigma of what will be associated with them if they come out to find proper help. It would be nice to think that the internet could be a place for these people to take a first step towards recovery but even those who supposedly do no evil aren't willing to give these people a bit of wiggle room to find themselves the kinds of assistance that they need.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
It's an obvious fallacy. The old "You have nothing to worry about if you're doing nothing wrong" argument rests on a belief in perfect justice. You'll only be punished for things which you shouldn't be doing. However, history is riddled with examples of people doing and being things for which they should not be punished, but are. Like black, gay, catholic and/or protestant in Northern Ireland, Jewish, a journalist anywhere the state doesn't want its secrets told, etc. It assumes punishments fit the crimes, which in many cases they obviously don't, like becoming a registered sex offender for peeing on a tree in a world where you can kill someone without becoming a registered murderer. You have nothing to worry about if you're not doing anything anyone in the world considers wrong.
News flash: You -are- doing something someone in the world considers wrong.
There are lots of things which are perfectly legal yet something one would prefer to keep private.
My favorite example is a primary school teacher who happens to like BDSM sex. People who are into this adhere to the Safe, sane and consensual principle. (Note: NSFW image in Wikipedia article.) In short, whatever happens happens between consenting adults.
Yet I'd wager that given the average primary school class at least one of the parents will throw a fit if they find the kids' teacher is "a sick pervert".
So no, it's not as simple as simply abstaining from anything you wouldn't like other people to know. This is an extreme example, but I'm sure other people can come up with more subtle ones if need be.
.: Max Romantschuk
"If you've got nothing to hide" is a tool of tyranny. I thought it was well and truly debunked, and yet it seems it just won't flush away.
Individual privacy doesn't need a reason. The goal of privacy is privacy.
If you're going to search for something that you don't want google spunking up 5 years later, to your post democratic, tyrant overlords, you better start taking precautions.
This is a start. https://ssl.scroogle.org/
Are the searches your property, or Googles? Really, if, truly, everything you write on the internet is your content, then you should have the right to revoke the distribution of that content. You can't have strong property rights only when it is convenient, you know.
This is my sig.
> Eric Schmidt told reporter Maria Bartiromo, 'If you have something that you
> don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first
> place.'
Has a Webcam in his bedroom, does he? I can find his medical records with a Google search? Everything he says at board meetings is published?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Google is just a victim of laws that we as citizens let eat away at our privacy. Google cant withold information that the governments asks for if it doesnt have any support in law.
Its also easy to forget that Google is just one player, ask yourself what other information is readily avaliable except internet logs? Utilities, water, credit receipts, health records, travels etc etc. Even if you could be 100% anonymous on the internet your private life is still non existent.
The problem is that privacy has been abolished everywhere and people just dont seem to care about it. History repeats itself, again and again...
HTTP/1.1 400
I just want them to not invade my privacy.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Google and privacy. You might want to check out this, this, this, or this. People also forget that the majority of the world population is not living in the USA. US agencies are allowed to spy on non-US citizens as they like, although this is usually not emphasized for diplomatic reasons. Thus, not only terrorists and wrongdoers should be concerned about their privacy...unless Schmidt thinks that all non-US citizens are terrorists. Foreign governments should actually be much more concerned about Google than they seem to be, but as far as I know only former French president Chirac was concerned about Google and as a politician he turned out to be a wrongdoer, of course. LOL
You can make scroogle your search engine of choice although we all know that it helps less than some people might expect, because normally configured browsers leak a lot of information.
Same false argument has been put forward to defend of CCTV.
I prefer to shit in privacy, but it seems Eric Schmidt doesn't.
He should read this article.
Solove, Daniel J., 'I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy. San Diego Law Review, Vol. 44, 2007; GWU Law School Public Law Research Paper No. 289. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=998565
Google will do no harm.
Google is the uber employer.
Google is not like old fashioned corporations.
Google, Google, Google; see, it's even fun to say.
Google uses the Linux.
You wankers.
I have long suspected that you and your company were, in fact, completely evil and not deserving of the hype surrounding you, nor the trust placed in you. I will now no longer be using my Gmail account, which I have had for years. The few things which are still sent there regularly, I will be changing to send to another address on my personal mail server. I will continue not responding to Voice and Wave invites. I will no longer be logging into Google for search results, nor will be accepting cookies from you, and as soon as I can find a reasonable search engine to replace you, I will not be coming back.
At least this will give me something to do this morning.
I wonder how Thomas Paine, George Washington, and the rest felt about the need for privacy and secrecy in late 1776?
I wonder how those running the Underground Railroad felt about the need for privacy prior to the end of legal American slavery?
I wonder how those who have "alternative lifestyles" feel about keeping certain facts away from their employers and family members?
I wonder how Google's employees and executives would feel if Human Resources records were open to the world?
Privacy is for everyone.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I completely agree with your point about context being very important, but there are many legal things people may search for which they still might not want to be public knowledge.
Suppose you did some searches on atheism, then non-believers were the target of the next witch hunt?
How about looking for information about an STD that you've contracted. Do you want everyone to know about that?
What about questionably illegal activities? Suppose you and your wife decide to try anal sex and search for some advice on avoiding problems. What if you live in a state (not sure there still are any) where that is illegal?
Maybe Mr. Schmidt would do well to remember the time he complained in the media about the fact that a lot of his personal details, including his address, etc - were found in Google search. Apparently he was doing something wrong, and had devious plan - I mean, if we listen to Mr. Schmidt, his apparent concerns at the time were enough to justify many articles in the mainstream press....Hashe been investigated yet?
Maybe Mr. Schmidt shouldn't be the CEO of a company that deals with so much personal information if he doesn't understand the need for privacy and how important it is to most people.
The argument he makes is the weakest argument people who advocate destroying personal privacy can make - and one of the worst things about it, and something they never seem to consider is that it is a COMPLETELY UNAMERICAN argument, and the reason I say this is because it assumes that the authorities (government) are completely infalliable and should be trusted. One of the main premises of the way our system is supposed to work is checks and balances, they point of which is that we aren't supposed to trust authorities, this is WHY we have checks and balances....and corporations - please.
'If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't live in a judgmental society which bases its morality on a code of ethics that has been outdated for about 4,000 years now and is purposely designed to make you feel bad for being human.'
There, I said it. Our society looks down upon individuals for engaging in such a wide swath of behaviors that you either have to avoid living your life to the fullest, or keep some things to yourself if you want to be a productive member of society. Hopefully we can get to the point where people learn to mind their own business about such things, but until then, we all have a damn good reason to want some privacy.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
The problem I have with this sort of stuff is look at Tiger Woods, even President Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc...
People without skeletons in their closet are extremely rare. Nearly everybody has something to hide, if not from criminal matters, from embarrassing personal matters.
Then again, yeah, if you lack even those personal embarrassments, you really do have nothing to fear. But then, most people who make these statements DO have skeletons in their personal closets, and sometimes their own laws catch them.
I don't read AC A human right
This is about the third or fourth time I have posted this on Slashdot. I'm glad I copied the text of the post when I saw it. Please note, the text is not mine. I just found it brilliant, that's all.
Please help metamoderate.
Will Google be doing all negotiations in public from now on?
What a moronic thing to say Mr. Schmidt...
That statement is exactly in line with the ugly police state mentality that asks, "If you aren't doing anything wrong, what are you worried about?" The answer is that as a responsible, law-abiding adult in a free society, you have the RIGHT to go about your lawful business and live your life without interference from either the government or other citizens.
There are many, many things some people within a free society might disapprove of, and they might very well have the opportunity to affect your life. Try getting hired at a company full of true believers if you happen to be an atheist...and they know it. Or watch what happens to your kids if your standards of acceptable behaviour (though legal) aren't the community norm.
If that's what Eric Schmidt actually believes, he's a crypto-fascist, and we'd better start keeping a very close eye on Google.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Then he won't mind me watching him make love to his wife. Because if he does, he shouldn't be doing it.
``If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.''
What a great idea!
. . . said the teenage girl impregnated by her stepfather
. . . said everyone everywhere who has a disease that they want to keep secret
. . . said the Chinese dissident trying to communicate with her child
People use envelopes on their personal letters to be private, not criminal. People keep their medical, and other, records private because they're personal. ``None of your business'' does not mean ``I'm committing a crime.''
Privacy is about being a human being.
Doing anything new or innovative.
Taking pride in my work.
Discussing trade secrets with colleagues.
Discussing competitive business strategies.
Uisg any word that could be misunderstood my someone as something illegal.
A few years ago, I was at a bar with a client. He had observed in his web-site logs that many of his visitors arrive from searches for "child pornography". My client is a comedian, and one of his blogs used the words within a joke. Suddenly, some drunken idiot from across the bar stumbled over with the intent of physically brutalizing us -- having overheard two words out of two hundred. Needless to say, drunken stumbling idiots aren't difficult to subdue.
You just alienated the largest pool of geeks on the Internet.
"You may think you're not doing anything wrong, but you may indeed be wronging someone you don't know."
"But who defines what's wrong?"
"Someone you don't know."
Excuse me while I iron my burka...I'll probably be needing it soon, just to be sure I'm not breaking any future laws.
I'm surprised that the senior officer of a company that does nearly all its business on the web could spout such an absurd comment with a straight face. Do the words "identity theft" not resonate at some level, or the fact that the information collected by these companies can be abused by anyone that wishes to take advantage of someone by knowing something about them? Companies have long understood the absolute necessity of maintaining the privacy of their information to avoid making things easier for their competitors to use it against them. The entire industry of programming, service applications and other valuable intellectual property is based on the maintaining of valuable knowledge. How blithely foolish does someone have to be to fail to understand that if "knowledge is power", privacy is the only currency of value. "Don't worry about what we collect, it's harmless unless you are doing something wrong...." I've faced enough discrimination, fought enough battles with healthcare companies over what they consider pre-existing conditions and dealt with enough credit scammers and spam to value my privacy far more than google seems to. I wonder how the person would feel about his purchasing habits, social security number, home phone number, bank accounts, private club memberships and web browsing history posted as the new home page of Google. After all, he's not doing anything wrong... what would he have to worry about?
Personally I reckon they're probably worse.
Microsoft is out to get your money. They do this by selling you as many Microsoft products as they can(sometimes whether you want them or not) and occaisionally knifing a competitor. Not exactly perfect behaviour, but predictable and relatively harmless. Microsoft doesn't really care what you do with their products so long as you pay for them. Want to write political manifestos in Word, Microsoft doesn't care. Features of Word may make your document easier to tie back to you, but it's other people doing the tieing.
Google on the other hand has been collecting information on everything they can for as long as they've been around, more and more and more every year. They know about your web searches, if you hit a web site with analytics, they own everthing you create in their application framework, now they're going to start logging your DNS searches.
Why are they doing this? I don't really know. At best they've falled into the "perfect information" trap and and have convinced themselves that if they just knew more about people they could make the world better. It's a common pitfall for IT workers, particularly the kind who are bright enough to get hired at google and sufficiently social retarded to willingly work the kind of hours the company seems to expect. Even that's not exactly a great situation and there are plenty of alternatives which are far more worrying.
Sure they've got to turn this stuff over to every government they deal with who wants it, that's part of doing business. Companies who disagree with that sort of thing tend to fight it by limiting their logging to what is legally required though, and Google sure does't do that.
We've all heard the stories of people walking out of Federal Research Laboratories with paperwork and thumb drives full of information such as Jessican Quintana. While stealing nuclear secrets might be a bit harder to use/sell than say 10million email addresses plus associated personal information. I'd be a bit more concerned about some angry employee grabbing a tape (which I doubt they back much up to tape) or just copying off some data onto a thumb drive and walking out the door.
This might not be so hard under their "20% personal projects plan"...
"Hey boss, I've got an idea for a personal project.. I'd like to create a google map that maps someone and all of their friend's email addresses on it! Kind of like overlaying their email address next to their home address and phone number. I just need access to that personal data."
While the CEO can say all sorts of stuff about privacy, there's nothing stopping some kid who makes 1000x less than the CEO and will never become a millionaire from walking out the door with this information and becoming a millionaire that way. If you don't want people to know a secret, don't tell them. Google shouldn't be allowed to collect this stuff anyhow, that way it can't leak out to begin with.
Stupid or not, one can think of it as a Freudian slip, or maybe his 'Tiger moment'. Google clearly has inflated its corporate ego to Galactic size. They assume (with some justification at the moment) that they can do as they please because they are too big, smart, and rich to have to worry about repercussions. So now they even baldly state where they are coming from, because they think it doesn't matter.
IANAL. However, this meme is based on this court decision: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Company
The article linked offers a refutation of this interpretation, which I am not competent to support or argue with. I ran across this meme first while reading the book version of The Corporation, which may have helped spread it lately.
Please stop spewing ridiculous idealism.
Nearly everyone in here broke the speed limit on their way to work, has pornography that is considered illegal in some states, software that is being used outside of its licensing terms, used drugs that are illegal somewhere in the world, music or movies that violate copyright law, and probably had sex in a way that is illegal in many states and cities. Not to mention the fact that you will be hard-pressed to find someone who does not have opinions they have expressed that could be used to incriminate them of something in the wrong context, or that some people who want to be political power consider to be illegal.
Laws are arbitrary rules written by those in charge. Rules that can change, rules that can be enforced capriciously and inconsistently. YOU PERSONALLY have done something illegal in that last year, and probably several things that a large number of people would like to make illegal. Lawyers and judges study the law for years, and even they only know a small subset of what actually is legal and illegal in any given area.
It's a trite maxim, but it's true. Here's a great video from a lawyer and a cop about why the right against to self-incrimination and privacy is so important even to people who don't think they have anything to hide. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik
The argument he makes is the weakest argument people who advocate destroying personal privacy can make - and one of the worst things about it, and something they never seem to consider is that it is a COMPLETELY UNAMERICAN argument
I think it's also rather undanish, ungerman, unnorwegian, probably very unswedish, not particularly finnish either, etc.
True, Google is seated in Mountain View, CA, in the US. But it operates elsewhere, and will probably need to respect local laws in ${not the USA}.
Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft program manager, (1996): "If you want security on the 'Net', unplug your computer."
Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, (1999): "You, us folks, peasants, you already have zero privacy. Get over it."
Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, (2009): "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
Our corporate masters have always felt that our private lives are their property to abuse as they see fit.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
MS collects the same info via bing, msn, and even from Windows. To say that Google is worse is like saying that W was worse than Hitler or Stalin. He had actions SIMILAR to them, but nothing was over what any of them did. Likewise, Google has not been shown to have done anything worse. Yet.
However, I DO now think that with that statement, that Google SHOULD be looked at a big closer.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What would Google think if someone released their customer list?
We have it. A sample of Google AdWords advertisers:
There are about 22,000 Google AdWords customers known to us. Every time Google puts up an AdWords ad, it exposes the identity of the advertiser. Our AdRater browser plug-in rates on-line advertisers as their ads are presented to users. Unlike most plug-ins, we don't monitor user behavior. Instead, we monitor advertiser behavior, which is in some ways more interesting. This doesn't violate Google's terms of service. Every request made of Google was made by a user, not us, during ordinary browsing. We're just watching the ads go by. It's like clipping ads from newspapers to see what your competitors are doing.
As we point out occasionally, about 35% of Google's advertisers are "bottom feeders". Google needs to raise the bar on who can run ads with them. Search Google for "Craigslist auto posting tool" and look at the paid ads. You can buy "Easy Ad Poster Deluxe", a program for spamming Craigslist, through Google Checkout, so Google isn't just advertising it, they're taking a cut of the revenue as well. That's embarrassing for Google, or should be.
If you don't you are obviously hiding something.
You're so cutely naive that I want to pat you on the head.
Google is evil--they're a publicly traded corporation, dedicated to the stockholders and the executives. They have been quietly taking over the internet. They don't care about your privacy, they don't care about technology, they care about MONEY, and how to get more of it. That's all. This is old news, but they were smart enough to lean heavily on their "don't be evil" image to avoid being recognised for their actual behaviour.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
People have generally described this as a big misstep on Schmidt's part. Maybe it is, but only in that he revealed a bit more of Google's attitude than they normally do.
Google has been prancing around for years saying, "oh, don't worry about our data collection. We're the GOOD guys! We even have a motto that says don't be evil, and in fact we're so good that it's not even official." In the meantime, they've been behaving just like any other smart corporation in a sensitive monopoly position. It amazes me that nobody in the media and damned few people in the industry seem to care about what they're doing, just that they've said "don't be evil" and so everything is OK.
So either Schmidt has revealed more than he meant to (which would be a misstep), or he realises that they are so powerful that they don't have to pretend anymore. You can be sure, however, that he did NOT misrepresent Google or its values.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
People have made these statements before.
The exact wording was different, because it's usually in a different language, but it's the same meaning.
Usually it's just before a totalitarian regime takes over.
That kind of thinking is always evil.
We've fought Wars of various kinds to block it.
Privacy isn't just a nicety, it's guaranteed in various forms by the Constitution of the United States of America.
Even that isn't it's origin as it's been accepted and expected by most of the worlds populace since time immemorial.
Don't let that evil blowhard get away with this, tell him your opinions.
Small bit of advice, be civil about it or they'll just round-file your messages.
(A thousand profanity filled attacks are worth less than one polite and reasoned statement.)
Having read Yahoo's correspondence with US Marshall's Service regarding price of information and the need to keep it secret, and subsequent correspondence between Yahoo's lawyers and Cryptome, I thought Schmidt was taking a potshot at Yahoo.
The Yahoo lawyer clearly states that the public release of their sale of information to law enforcement would undermine their user's trust regarding privacy. This can only be taken as we don't want them to know that they in fact have none.
When I read that snippet from Schmidt, I immediately thought he was talking about Yahoo. I don't see him as the "if you have nothing to hide" kind of guy.
Audere est Facere
Alright, Google. I can't do much about your beliefs on privacy. After all, you are free to run your company as you see fit within the bounds of the law. However, I do like my privacy on certain personal topics.
So how will I serve both? Simple: I'll stop using the internet entirely.
I'm sure you'll agree that this is the preffered solution for both parties: you get to keep using the information that you've already obtained freely (so long as it's legal), and I get to retain all of my personal information that I collect from this point forward.
I like this idea. In fact, I like it so much, I'm going to tell my friends to do it; most of them have issues that they want kept private, and the internet is only a source of idle time-wasting anyway. And they will tell theirs. Assuming the trend keeps up, after a while there won't be anyone left who uses the internet at all.
But that's not a big deal to you, right, Google? After all, it's not like the internet is part of your business in any way...
Just put all his private stuff up the Internet. Indexed by Google itself. ^^
Then lock the FOX speculation-hate-machine onto it.
Let’s see him not worry about his privacy then. ^^
For fun and giggles, we can add some fake stuff in there too that will get him into pound-me-in-the-ass-prison.
Is that some kind of Streisand effect, or do we need a new name?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.