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Google CEO Schmidt Predicts End of Online Anonymity
Andorin writes "A tweet from the EFF pointed me to a short article detailing part of Eric Schmidt's speech to the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe on August 4. According to Schmidt, true transparency and anonymity on the Internet will become a thing of the past because of the need to combat criminal and 'anti-social' behavior. 'Governments will demand it,' he says, referring to full accountability and a 'name service for people,' possibly hinting towards mandatory Internet passports. The CEO of Google also made a couple of somewhat creepy references to the availability of information: 'If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go ... show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos!'"
Yeah no photos of me ... no Facebook account!
... will just fight back. The idea they can end internet anonymity is bullshit, programmers and smart people can always way's to game the system.
I suspect that entire subnets of the Internet will be encrypted and continue to allow anonymity. Not to mention, there is always your public library or Internet cafe. It's not like spies will stop using the Internet, so "solutions" to this problem will inevitably surface.
Remember to maintain your supply of
...masturbates to the thought of attaching your name to your every click. Film at eleven.
What Schmidt actually meant was "True transparency and anonymity on the Internet will become a thing of the past because we here at Google can make a bundle by eliminating it. Advertisers, governments, you want it, we got it!"
I am officially gone from
He wants to know who you are for marketing and advertising purposes to increase corporate profits. The rest is the usual FUD. That is all.
--jdp Maintainer of VisEmacs
What worries me isn't his opinion, or what he thinks is coming. What worries me is his lack of resistance to it and his acceptance of "oh well, that's how it's going, that's what we'll do".
This seeming blazay attitude, coupled with his comments a while back where he said something like "People only need privacy when they're doing something they shouldn't be" really worries me, since he commands a lot of power and sway online. Eric, imagine if someone posted a video of you taking a dump and posted it on youtube, your views on privacy and "I have nothing to hide" might change...
He's probably right in that every government will want online identity, of course they would. But it's up to us to battle for "what is right" and we always hoped Google would help us. If he just rolls over and accepts it, that's terrible for us.
I have been very very careful about my identity on the internet. My user name is a random collection of letters and gives no hint of the hostels and room numbers I had in my college years.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are"
I highly doubt that. I assume we're talking about a globally unique identification of a single individual. I call crap, given that we can't even do that with anything at all - fingerprints, DNA, or anything else. No biometric is that good. And, besides, if you have 14 photos of me, you know who I am anyway - I'm the guy who's in the photo. It doesn't exactly prove much at all, or help you out unless the photo shows me doing something illegal and I need to be traced. I *guarantee* you that other humans will catch me from my photo in a newspaper before any computer-based system does, and probably with much smaller margins of error.
And 14 photos is a HELL of a lot. And it depends on their quality, and your clothing, and the lighting, and the angles, and the focus, and anything obscuring the picture, and the resolution. Otherwise you're magical "14 photos" system could be used on 14 frames of any CCTV footage and instantly pinpoint the criminal. See what a ridiculous assertion that is?
If there is a problem with online banking, why not put all the banks in a different net, accessible only to identified persons? Putting all the websites in an ID-net, for the problem of just one small segment of the whole net, seems a bit of an overkill.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
He is right. I do not like it, but he is right.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
What about 99% of the population who won't take the time to carefully maintain pseudo anonymous identities?
Fuck 'em. It's their complacency and ignorance that has put us in this situation, and is forcing their betters to waste inordinate amounts of their time developing cryptographic and other methods of protecting the privacy they should be able to enjoy be default.
They get exactly what they deserve.
You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos!'
The learned Mr. Schmidt should know that there are folks like me for who, Facebook and themselves do not mix [for now] and probably will not for the foreseeable future.
Everyone loves gmail & google apps. But it came out early on that google had no respect for people's privacy. I've avoided every on-line product of theirs besides google search & earth.
I like how he uses "anti-social" behavior as one of the reasons that Governments will demand an end to online anonymity. When did it become a job for Government to deal with "anti-social" behavior? Are there FBI agents trolling through this discussion waiting to pounce on the GNAA?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
What a fucking asshole. Government has been using the threat of "criminal" and "terrorist" activity in order to diminish freedoms for decades. That was the justification for the Iraq and Afghan wars as well. Oh yes, I will bow down before the fucking Google gods because my information is perfectly safe from Chinese hackers.
Fuck you Eric Schmidt! When you put your house on Google Street View, and give me high rez sat pictures of it, then you can open your mouth.
Looks like it's time to abandon Google. First the half-assed denial of turning their backs on network neutrality, now this. If Google does not understand that anonymity enables people to share more information, then others will and take Google's market. If your neighbor could see everything you searched on Google, would you still do it?
There's been a war regarding privacy for a long time. Now days in the legal system it's all 'think of the children and this will help stop terrorists' on the internet it's all 'Look at these awesome features you can get if you just give us all your personal info and colonic map.' Everyone wants to make the idea of privacy seem like you're trying to hide something but that's nothing further than the truth. You let the government in you let them compile huge dossiers on you (more so than they do now) and all you do is hand them everything they need. Because there is no telling what it looks like you do to an outside person or what they can make it look like you do in a Court room. It's the same reason why my lawyer always tells me to never speak to the cops, you never know what some casual thing you say will be used to hang you, or in this thing casual thing you do. Bottom line is you can have my privacy when you come and take it from me, and I won't let it go with out a fight.
And Google wonders why nobody wants to join their social network? Schmidt makes Zuckerberg look good.
because it's not going to work if you allow bytes to be transferred, computers to be bought and all kinds of electronics to be available for pennies.
if it was something you could just decide and make it happen by being the "government" then we would already be there with non-anonymous internet.
and what good is having the supposed identity of some guy who -doesn't even have a real identity from his goverment- logged into the computer on the other side of the globe in some cafe. so schmidt, fuck you, your lucky break was that altavista turned to a shit portal.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
...masturbates to the thought of attaching your name to your every click. Film at eleven.
Eww. I think I'll watch Law & Order reruns instead.
I'm going to send Eric Schmidt 14 pictures of my ass.
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
No I don't.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Don't you have to have a FB account to begin with, to even appear in the tagging dialog overlay that appears for that process?
Reply to That ||
He said that addressing issues such as identity theft, for instance, required "true transparency and no anonymity".
This will come down to a simple equation. Is the cost of developing a system that's foolproof to anonymity greater or less than the cost incurred from identity theft, fraud, etc..
Are there FBI agents trolling through this discussion waiting to pounce on the GNAA?
This is slashdot. They'd need a steamroller.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
In the US definitely not, but the UK has had ASBOs for quite a while, and they seem to think that it's appropriate for the government to clamp down on anti-social behavior, as does the Chinese government.
That would inevitably trigger a broad demand for "internet passport" credentials, illegitimately obtained from others. And they would probably be easier to get than CC numbers and/or SSNs (which are all rather easy already).
Reply to That ||
... is rolled over in laughter.
I was pondering about the Internet the other day and also came to the conclusion that there will probably be some sort of license to access the Internet.
I am kind of glad that I am living now, 200 Years from now people will probably run around with a government issued RFID/GPS butt plug.
No thanks.
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
They already do attach your name to every click. Use noscript sometime, and find how many sites DON'T get you to load something from google.
.
It is one of the reasons they will give.
Anti-Social Behavior Order . Governments consider it their business to deal with all behavior.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I predict Erik Schmidt will make George Bush look like Mother Teresa.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
You've got Facebook photos!'"
Does that hold if I'm one of the last... what.... 3? people in the western world who aren't on Facebook? I suppose they could identify me through other peoples photos but even then there'd have to be an entry point tying my name to a face on a photo and as far as I know even my employers never succeeded in putting a photo next to my name on the internet.
then new internets will arise, mirroring data from the existing internet in many forms of neighborhood wireless networks, walled off with some, connected with others if they choose.
google exists because of the people, without us, where would they be?
Internet users need to embrace the concept of disinformation. If you post enough bogus information about yourself and pictures that are not actually YOU, then you can throw a monkey-wrench into such attempts to create a dossier of yourself.
John Q Citizen
If Jobs would even REMOTELY hint at what Schmidt is getting to, the whole Internets would be abuzz. All I see are double standards and the omnipresent Google-love that prevents ppl from a full fledged and rightful assault on Google’s hidden agenda.
Sounds like some new software google has been cooked up and he is just waiting for the privacy laws to move to a point where he can monetize it.
I don't have friend ;).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
They're on their way out.
For the present, anyway.
Schmidt has never been one for individual rights, he gladly admits selling people's information (or even giving it away to the government). Who doesn't remember his famous quote that if you're doing something you don't want people to know about on the internet "perhaps you shouldn't be doing it at all?"
And of course, a quick peek at whitehouse.gov has our dear fascist friend in Obama's "Science and Technology Advisory Council." For all their mock smug righteous fury at China, they seem to do a pretty good job of censoring and screwing the public.
People who thought M$ was bad don't know Google.
I think you've got that exactly backwards:
Google currently makes billions being the middleman that helps everybody aggregate clicks into identities. If everybody's traffic was already associated with a globally-unique identity, then why would they need Google?
is that the privacy battle has been lost and lost comprehensively. For the average person doing average things it effectively no longer exists. Sure, there are ways round it, but you are just not going to get most people to use them, most of the time. I don't think here is a way to put the genie back in the bottle, so we need to instead think of how we can live with it. The problem is not so much that privacy dissapears, but that it is asymmetric. Corporations and governments know a lot more about us than we do about them. Google could start by publishing minutes of ALL their meetings, salaries of all their employees etc, Similarly the balance of Freedom of Information to Security in government needs to change. I don't see why people in positions to affect markets or pass legislation should have any expectation of privacy AT ALL while they are in those positions. Lets stick 24 hour live feeds on all legislators and executives and really live in a post privacy world.
will exist just as banking and tax havens abound now. There is a great demand (meaning high willingness and ability to pay by a small set of individuals) for online anonymity. Else connecting to your offshore bank account will be pretty meaningless if they know you just connected with your 'internet passport'.
This is America, we don't stand for no frilly French accents in our words, only "Freedom Letters".
When they a fake war, broke their oaths, and installed those fucking FIOS splitters.
I like how he uses "anti-social" behavior as one of the reasons
Especially given his anti-social behavior that he has his name attached to.
If you've got the photos in my facebook account, Then don't you already know who I am?
With those rules, I could Identify you with one facebook photo.
I have a very unique name, as do some of my old classmates. Searching for me, or them, yields no results from any web search. That being said, I'm sure we are in some database somewhere maintained by some government entity, as someone pointed out earlier all of our photo's are taken by the DMV's, various employers and other entities who wish to remain nameless. So who do we need this 'protection' from. And if they already have all this information, and it's so 'readily' available, why doesn't the government just make this database on its own, without any consent. My guess is they NEED us to do this, so they can 'better track' the peoples. Perhaps they're just doing this to find Julian Assange...
He states this as if there's nothing anyone can do about it - when google itself is the one of the worst offenders by storing FULL IP addresses for half a year. And even that was sold as a concession to privacy. I still don't know why it's allowed to do that in germany, where even the BKA (FBI-equivalent) is not allowed to store it's website visitors IP addresses
That's even worse in the US since I think that unlike in germany there are no restrictions on how long your provider can store your data (max. 7 days here).
Oh, and don't give me the "I'd rather have google have my data than the government" argument. Everything google has, your government has should it choose so. It doesn't have to do more than ask, google made that clear several times iirc.
There are certain problems that strike me as inherently logically contradictory. One of them is the concept of DRM. I believe, as I suppose many on slashdot would agree, that DRM will never ultimately work, because it contains within itself a fundamental logical contradiction: you want to give your customers access to something without giving them access. You can deny someone access, you can grant someone access, but in the end, if you grant them access, they have access. All someone who is determined enough needs is for your software to decrypt the content once, and they can capture the decrypted content. You can't really stop them (though that doesn't stop companies from trying).
I see the same problem with user privacy: it's quite possible to have privacy on the Internet: never send (unencrypted) email, never post to any kind of public forums, mailing lists, don't setup myspace or facebook pages, don't twitter, don't post photos of yourself on flickr or whatever other service.
Of course, if you actually want to share information about yourself, then you can't also have privacy. You either choose to have privacy, or share information about yourself. You can't really do both simultaneously.
When politics demands things in opposite to people, it will probably fail.
Internet must be a mirror of the real world. In that sense, must be private by default, but we could require identify to access to some services.
When people want to be anonymous, why politicians should stablish another rules?
I'm going to use yours.
Hurrah identity theft!
You've got Facebook photos!
Good luck with that. Well, maybe they will be able to identify social[web]ly hyperactive teenagers. Lots of people I know don't have facebook accounts. True, also lots of them have some kind of public photo collection, but without proper annotations it's not easy to correlate a face to an identity. As a rule, in 99.9% of times I never publically share photos with me on them, and in I try to not publically share photos with people I know on them.
Privacy matters.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
If something like this were to happen, everyone could just use "John Smith" as their name and use the same pics, address, etc. on anything internet-facing. Once enough people do this, and it wouldn't take that many, it would be impossible to tell which "john smith" had posted what.
stuff |
I'm cancelling my google accounts
and Google will have no part in it at all, surely... Esp. after they put money in Recorded Future together with the CIA.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Gods, why can't all the states be that progressive.....
Population 1.32 million
White 95.5%
[25% French-Canadian]
Hispanic 2.6%
Asian 1.9%
Black 1.2%
Native American 0.3%
Women owned business 25%
Minority owned 2.7%
QuickFacts New Hampshire
The Free State Project is a proposal to have 20,000 individuals move to New Hampshire, with the intent of reducing the size and scope of government at the local, state, and federal levels. The Free State Project holds the annual New Hampshire Liberty Forum and the annual Porcupine Freedom Festival, also known as PorcFest New Hampshire
As of August 2010, there were 10,300 participants, 838 of which had moved to New Hampshire. Free State Project
officials.
The whole point of the typical construction of our "western" governments acknowledges the danger coming *from* the government: That's why we have separation of power, for example.
'We *know* from experience that governments are dangerous, or can *become* dangerous. All of this: "you have nothing to hide" is just idiotic. We have things to hide. Maybe I don't have anything to hide from *this* government, but who knows who is in power in 20 years?
And who will strive for power if we offer a facist-regime-in-a-box, with no privacy, permission to torture, and other measures which sound so good when used against terrorists and child molesters, but offer unprecedenced (and attractive, for some) opportunity to suppress and enslave the people, which *will* be used, if they're available. Today it takes a good amount of masochism to become police officer or any part of the legal system in our countries. Often you will see people you're *sure* are guilty walk free. But if that changes, and officers are offered more and more sweeping powers, a different type of character will try to get into policing. One which will love to use power for his/her own sake, not for any kind of justice.
The underlying asumption of all this "you have nothing to hide" is that the government stays relatively on this side of legality, now and in the future, or that the people acting for the governments now are a picture of ethics and moral behaviour and totally incorruptible, both of which seems highly doubtful to me. Google corrupt police officers, and you will find examples in every country with a free press (well, censor the press and that problem goes away :)
So, let's hide many things from our governments, stop them from invading privacy, stop them from trying to offer "total" security, so that we and our children can hope to have a relativly free life in our future.
Using the internet is similar to using unencrypted wifi at your home.
Most people don't realize that they don't have control over who can view their activity. Anyone with access to your proximity can sniff packets near your home, just as anyone with access to the countless routers, gateways, and other infrastructure over which your activity passes can recognize with great certainty what you are up to.
Furthermore, governments know that encryption schemes are broken over time. They know the data people want to hide the most is encrypted, and so surely store all of it is retained and cataloged (by encryption scheme, time, source, etc) to be broken open at the earliest possible opportunity.
The people who we would rather not keep track of us are the ones most likely to be doing so, so the safest bet is to assume you are always being watched, and to advocate the idea that the internet is a public place where our actions are subject to permanent retention.
In the future, suppose some very restrictive country gains control over a population that has been traditionally much more open. They would need to instigate their restrictive ideals over a massive number of people, and would have to somehow identify and make examples out of people who are "incompatible" to reprogramming. The obvious method of discernment would be to troll through all of the past behavior of families and individuals online to decide who to imprison/kill/subdue. There may be "Internet Dragnet Camps" where masses of the population who were involved with demonized behavior will be detained and possibly killed.
Using a mandatory identification scheme like this is probably the only way to really get people to stop leaking sensitive data over the internet.
It is unlikely that the government would advocate such a system, as it would prevent the secrets they want so badly from ever being broadcast within their reach...
Performing a Google image search for my name (which is pretty unique, I'm really the only person on the internet with my first/last name combo), and I get a lot of anime character images. And on facebook, well, they'll think I look like my cat. So, unless you "play by the rules", it's unlikely they are going to be able to *really* identify you.
As for the whole privacy issue: I would suggest that someone start a website ala Wikileaks, where they publish everything known about every corporation, and make that publically accessible. If I want to know the BP CEO's home address, how much he makes, his social security number, yadda yadda, then perhaps there will be more concern over privacy.
The only way to win is to turn it around. If citizens can't have privacy, then neither should corporations or governments. We should be working hard to open up these areas. Right now corporations have a powerful position because they are essentially running the government, and they know more about us then we do about them. But it's time we turned the tables on them and re-took control.
When people fear their government, there is opression, but when government fears the people, there is freedom.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I imagine that if Satan (called "father of lies" in the Christian bible) had a motto, it might very well say "don't be evil".
This is evil.
Free Martian Whores!
This is the same rhetoric that Sun's Scott McNealy said back in '99 or so. Am I the only one who remembers that?
It doesn't matter if these two idiots are right (WRT what actually happens) -- people will find ways to remain anonymous. Which is great, except most of them will be accomplishing it for nefarious purposes, but I digress.
Instead of "predicting," which is a self-righteous exercise to make himself look more intelligent or important, why doesn't he do something about it? As far as I can tell Google is on the side of evil on this one.
I fear the day that Facebook buys out myspace, or other way around.
You're going to use 14 photos of me on Facebook to figure out who I am? WTF? Does he even know what Facebook is? Apparently not given Google's recent "successes"
AI Conclusion: Probably heading to Rachel's House.
OOoooooooooh!
Its not the first time he goes on about how people shouldn't expect privacy. With him at the helm its no surprise Google can't live up to their old (and obsolete?) "do no evil".
Citizens have a right to anonymity Schmidt! Leave Google if you can't accept that.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I wonder if Eric Schmidt would change his toon if people started using the same information to track him and his family.. but again if you have noting to fear then it is no problem.
()
After years of reading slashdot, this is the first time I have felt compelled to comment: How long will companies keep hiring morons like Eric Schmidt and Steve Ballmer to head their companies?? They look dumb, they talk dumb. No reasonable investor should invest in a company with a CEO like that, no matter what their connections are.
Who wants to take bets that some day Google's motto will become one of histories great, tragic ironies? I'm talking Ministry of Love type creepiness.
A company which to a large degree earns its profits from knowing everything about us and tailoring adds to us tries to make it legit for governments to "Big Brother" its citizens! its UGLY! and it scares me!
Maybe google will sell the information it gathers about us to our governments? i'm canceling my gmail while i still can...
Use it.
Its become apparent to me that Google was from the start and to today, is an agent of the very same governments "who will demand it".
Their rise to this uber success smells of unseen hands is all aspects of its rise to dominance. In fact, the original intention for Google was/is to serve as a massive data mining operation and to draw out any who would oppose what the NWO has in store for you and yours.
Google that fuckface Googlebots!
I've been looking at either an Android phone or tablet a lot recently. But, stories like this make we wonder about my privacy when I'm running a Google designed OS, regardless of how much of it is open source. Can anyone point me to some credible sources for/against Android as far as privacy goes? Yes, I can "Google it" (however ironic in this context). But, I'd like input from fellow /.ers who've looked into this kind of thing. How can I make sure Google cannot collect more info than what I volunteer when I visit Google maps or some other Google service? That is, if I add info for contacts, or put family photos on the device's flash drive, or anything else I don't want out, how could I be sure that that info is not being sent in the background to Google (regardless of what their privacy policies may say)? Or is that even a realistic expectation or hope?
I'm not trying to start a flame war, just genuinely want /.er input.
For 'Schmidt World' to happen:
1) Every net user would have to get an official 'net passport' where they've been authenticated and biometrically IDed.
2) Every time you log onto the net, you'd have to authenticate again, using your biometric ID. New hardware would have to be added to every computer to do that. (It's really easy to spoof a photo ID if you're the one taking the picture.)
3) Every country would have to use an equally trustworthy and inviolable authentication technology.
4) Every country would have to share their user database with every other.
5) All databases would have to be kept up-to-date.
6) The majority of citizens of every country would have to agree to national ID cards (the first step in creating a net database).
No time soon.
Hello,
What would you recommend to a gmail and search user for an alternative? I value /. opinion since after all, collectively the tech heads are responsible for the decline of AOL, ya'll have a lot of untapped power!
How do you make the funny e character when typing?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
What about /b/?
No, we changed the spelling. Do stop reading books and keep up!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I like how he uses "anti-social" behavior as one of the reasons that Governments will demand an end to online anonymity.
Prying into someone else's private business is pretty damned anti-social.
Free Martian Whores!
Schmidt, as long as governments can have their privacy and hide what they do from the public, citizens should also have protections and privacy.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Cookies can be exchanged with others or - better still - edited at random. Those cryptic hashes are unreadable anyway so why not replace them with some other random string every time a site or time limit is crossed?
More problematic are sites which use other sites for eg. authentication. When they say you can use your Google username to login just don't. Run your own OpenID server and be creative with the accounts you create on it.
Flash and its ilk can be used to track you as well. This is made harder by making its configuration directory read-only - so it can not store its own 'cookies' (which are more like wedding pies given their size).
I've seen reports on the Chromium and Google Chrome browsers - and maybe others? - which claim they can send a UUID. If this is true - I have not verified the claim which might be nothing more than fear mongering - that code is ripe for some creative editing, if one UUID per browser is good then one per request is even better.
More ideas?
--frank[at]unternet.org
This guy & his crew have been working for over 10 years on making sure this happens, and he knows that when the Goverment will want that, they will be the only that will be able to provide it to that extent. What saddens me is that I'm sure he's not even saying the whole thruth, if he admits to this, it's probably worse than this. They probably already have everything they want to know about us & more, things we even don't know!
Ever since I have seen an targeted ad for something I work on, something that anyone not working directly with it wouldn't know nothing about, I have changed my browsing habit. I clean the cookies every time I exit my browser, I erase history ,no FB account. I don't stay logged on, but there's probably more I can do still.
This is not a trend I like at all.
I don't have an intelligent phone, so I need to be.
"'Governments will demand it,' he says, referring to full accountability and a 'name service for people,' possibly hinting towards mandatory Internet passports."
I don't care about "governments"; I only care about MY government. If they want to try and shove that through the meat grinder called Congress, best of luck to them. I will hold out until the very last minute, then it will be time to call it quits.
"The CEO of Google also made a couple of somewhat creepy references to the availability of information: 'If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go"
No, you can't, because you can't GET enough of "my messaging" that tells you squat about where I am and where I might be going. Since I don't use ANY of the "social web" crapplications, it's going to be VERY tough getting either where I am or where I am going.
" ... show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos!'"
There are VERY few photos of me online and, of the ones that are, there is no identification that can be traced back to me. I sure as fuck do NOT have any goddamn Farcebook photos, nor will I EVER have such.
Yet more doom'n'gloom prognostication from someone who has become increasingly out-of-touch with reality. Here, let me adjust that tinfoil hat for you, Mr. Schmidt.
The only reason it is possible for anyone to be "easily identifiable" on the 'net is because that person actively and consciously GAVE the 'net enough personally identifiable information to make that possible. If that person then realizes "hey, maybe sharing all that deep personal info was a bad idea after all", well, too fucking late.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
> They already do attach your name to every click.
No they don't.
> Use noscript sometime
I always use NoScript, as well as Privoxy and cookie blocking. Which is why they don't.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
... Do not welcome our new tyrannic overlord!
It simply provides an entirely new avenue to execute the same exploits people could use before the Internet. It all ultimately comes down to practicing good OPSEC. Before the Internet and particularly social networking became popular, were you one of those people whom would brag to your friends about a new big screen TV and home theater system you installed? Your friends talk to other people too, those other people might decide you are a good target now. Were you that person who took the boxes for your brand new TV and home theater system and put them on the curb? You just advertised to your neighbors and passerby's that you have a collection of items worthy of stealing.
Fast forward to the Internet as it is today. Did you take a bunch of pictures of your new setup and post them on Facebook, photobucket, a home theater discussion board, etc? Even worse, did you take the pictures with a smartphone or camera that has GPS features and because you didn't know any better did you post the pictures online with GPS coordinates embedded in the exif data? Same exploits, different medium. As long as people are uneducated they will continue to be exploited.
I won't take any bets on anyone finding you with "just" your name. That depends on who is looking, how many resources they can spend on the matter, and how dedicated they are.
But, the thing is, they don't HAVE to just go with your name. You know someone on Facebook - Mama, sister, brother, the geek in the marching band - SOMEONE. Most likely, you know half a dozen people or more. When one of them posted your photo(s) some of the other saw them, and commented. The IP address of each commenter is available, as well as that of the poster. If Uncle Sam, or a hacker, wants to find you, all the data needed is either available online, or avaialable by means of an interview with each of the people who publicly acknowledged that they know you.
Even without interviews, the feds could come to the hometown of all these people who know you, and just keep their eyes and ears open.
Hell, we have the basis on which to build another epic tale of adventure, as our young hero fruitlessly attempts to elude BIG BROTHER!! All we need to decide, is whether we'll have Elves, Dragons, Aliens, or Angels in the story. Crap - let's have them ALL!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I for one welcome our new corporate overlords. I offer them my undying devotion, loyalty, and worship.
Oh, and I just reported all of you.
...the end of google.
Some governments still don't demand it in meatspace. You'd think meatspace would be tied-down first.
I had such high hopes... Here was a smart, fresh upstart company that seemed to be all about slick programming and a better Internet experience. Just the thing we needed to keep the M$ juggernaut in check. Now they seem to be just another big company we have to watch out for. Sucks....
In Soviet Russia, facebook has YOU!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
My real name IS Anonymous Coward! I'm tired of people attributing all these stupid posts to me.
With an end to anonymity, the real slim shady could finally stand up.
Any time I realize that
every thought I have
every sentence I write, every character I type
every mouseover, every click I do
everything I purchase or ever purchased
everything I ever put in my shopping bag
every cent on my bank account
any flu or cold I ever had
any travel or booking of mine, any place I've ever been
any people I have met or ever spoken to
any planning or calendar event I have
any subject I search and everything I ever searched
any email I read or write
any image and video I store or watch
any document I create, open or modify
the contents of any file I ever owned
any tiny little action I do
any dream I ever had
any breath I take:
can all be dutifully registered,
relatively easy to capture and store forever
geotagged with my name and full identity,
which in turn can be connected to a folder
containing everything else I ever did in my all life
and that all is linked
and that people sees things just black or white
and sues, fights, destroys lives, loses jobs, starts wars for just one single wrong word
or for one thing it wants
otherwise just tries to take profit of it all
or abuse of it all.
Any time I realize that
all my dreams have been stolen
all my innermost feelings
and emotions
are not mine anymore
but lost in a virtual sea
of spying corporations
or governments
or unknown people
and marketing departments.
That if I want to live
in this world
there is little or no places left
to escape.
And the kids of today
stuck
into their golden electronic cage
will never have a chance
to dream
and what's worse
will never even notice
what they've missed
Any time I realize that
sadly
I am a number.
I am not free.
Nobody is.
You bet I'd tend to get into anti social behavior. Or be just slightly upset..
Look at France (then learn french if needed)
I've done a bit of research in this area & this is my prediction. Future government agents will be able to easily track location of network address & end points (source & destination). Open source encryption will be embedded into virtually every communication system (mobile or wired) & seamless to end users so only real communication analysis will be on location & end points (basically, a pen register trap & trace). Government will check location of network address & if they are lucky can find suspect on a video tape / finger prints / other evidence.
It is through communication analysis that government agents will determine your identity. If you are someone who posts personal information on Internet or traffic patterns match your personal traffic patterns you can be determined.
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." - Gerald Ford address to a joint session of Congress (12 August 1974)
How can you say being forced to carry mandatory health care increases personal freedom. Last I checked being forced to do anything was the exact opposite of freedom. It may increase personal security but not freedom you just replace "being beholden to your employer" with being beholden to the government.
"Progressives" do nothing but take rights away in the name of personal security. Without risk there is no reward. Without reward there is no incentive. Without incentive there is no drive. Without drive there is no progress.
Hillary Clinton has already called for this as well. She is "doing it for the children"....
Can I borrow some of that AI to track some of these online porno starts that exchange a week or two of room & board for sex? You take Paypal...sorry...Google Checkout?
I'm not ready for this. I'm not convinced our social developement as a society is ready for this. But I agree that Facebook is just a little ahead of the curve - its the sort of profile that I sense will involuntarily be assembled by various monitoring groups from what data can be harvested ans assembled. Identities are already starting to crystallize - it feels like the Internet is going through a phase change akin to water going from liquid to solid.
The problem is that anti-social is a moving target and my experience has been that any monitoring bureaucracy, whether government or corporate, evolves over time to target the vulnerable groups (politically, economically, socially) that are least likely to fight back. They become tools of bullying rather than instruments of the common good.
I'm about as straight-and-narrow a person as you'll ever find, but I get claustrophobic in the presence of a police state mentality. I need my freedom. Without it, I lose ambition, lose imagination and become useless - to myself and to society. However, it will probably be easier to just label me anti-social than to accommodate me.
If I needed an identity card to log onto the net it wouldn't bother me a bit. Nor would it bother me if the government could track my every move 24 -7-365. I don't do anything particularly illegal compared to the next guy and I don't depend upon anyone's opinion of me for income either.
Frankly i think it would be great if we could track down killers, armed robbers, drug dealers and users etc.. The quality of life would go up for most people if they were under close scrutiny at all times. One benefit is false accusations are not a hazard simply because if one is watched closely there can be no accusation that is not true that sticks. And I love the idea of burglars and petty thieves being shut down completely. Stalkers would also be out of luck as getting close to a victim would reveal itself every time.
Google = SkyNet
Currently the internet is headed for a wall mostly because of corporate overlords and governments being greedy f**ks and most of the population thinking Internet Explorer IS the internet. Facebook and the like will self destroy eventually starting with privacy concerns. Indeed it was better when computing and networking was a geek thing, only people with some understanding of what was going on could manage to get online, now we have handed to the keys of the promised land to morons (most of the population uses the network without knowing jackshit about it) On a personal note, all the above is making me slowly lose interest in computing and networking, the older I grow the more I see the internet being turned into a corporate dumpster; eventually I'll get tired of going online at all. In the future VPNs will be formed by geek groups that will be based on trust and sharing (just like the good old days); and the cycle starts again...
this guy is evil who the hell is going to off him before he capitulates us all into the big brother society our govt wants.
Anti social behavior? Is he for real? I think it's time someone digs up the dirt on this jackass and release it all over the world.
I'm astounded but not surprised. Google's empire and ambition is so vast that you have to wonder whether there's a hidden agenda. "Do no evil" indeed. Google just became the New Microsoft but with much more sinister implications. Now that this is out of the bag shouldn't we be expecting a mass exodus of smart people who work for Google and who genuinely believed the Google lie? I will be immediately deleting all my Google accounts and removing all traces of Google software from any machines I own or manage. Google is now nothing more than a back door for government surveillance and we geeks have to fight back.
I agree that you should have the right to anonymity. I also think, though, that you are not in a free society if you *must* act anonymously at all times. I have a Facebook account and have been able to exercise that right with no negative repercussions yet.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
I think we can all /. all we want about this topic, but we're screwed. Net Neutrality is soon to be a thing of the past, and Privacy along with it as we all have to start putting in our credit card number just to watch a video at a decent speed. The maturation of the internet is coming about, and the ultimate goal of sucking the bucks outta all users is soon to be the established norm. Perhaps it's time to look for something else altogether.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
Speaking of governments, they'll know everything governments using Google Apps for Government knows too.
Facebook isn't really the area of new risk. The area that's going to see the most impact if his prediction of "Internet Passports" is that of whistle-blowers, the non-violent but anti-establishment types, and of course the "criminal class", the never-to-be-forgiven felons, sex offenders and so on who are already locked out (by policy) of Facebook; people who are criminal by law such as adult drug users or polygamists who are actually engaged in consensual, informed, adult activities (which, IMHO, makes the government the actual criminal entity.) And I've probably forgotten some important other classes of people who need anonymity in order to pursue even normal Internet activity -- certainly if they're going to speak their minds in a hostile environment, whatever the current public opinion of them is. For some people, simply being atheist is enough to earn them severe censure in their own communities. Who are we to say they *must* be outed?
I really don't think it's a good idea to support repressive ideas like Schmidt's. Anonymity is what enables many of the "squeaky wheels" in the system; lose it, and you force those people truly underground, making even the act of speaking anonymously on the Internet a crime, instead of just a choice.
This is really a highly repressive idea -- it's not going too far to call it evil, frankly. An "Internet Passport" would be a very bad thing for the tatters of liberty and freedom we have left in the USA. For countries that have even less freedom, the Internet is the single gateway to freedom of expression that depends upon anonymity. Anonymous voices from repressive countries bring the world's attention to the plight of various individuals and classes; they really do make a difference. Should those people need an "Internet passport", their ability to speak out will be outright amputated.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It is easy to decode what he was really saying What he says is not really a prediction, it is an admission that Google stores uniquely identifiable data about everything its users do. He is probably right that many of us have predictable search/browsing habits. He is offering to sell Governments a product that matches a browsing profile with users.
I have nothing that I can think of to hide, I think that this kind of thing sits poorly with Google's claim of not being evil.
Shall we all use Microsoft's search product instead?
Of course, it is hard to blame google. Most of us rely on an expensive service they produce for free, and have not been very picky about the terms of service before we have done so.
We might not be able to keep our information off of the internet, but how about poisoning the well? Put up pictures of yourself on flickr, facebook, etc labelled as being somebody else. Buy unusual things, subscribe to contradictory news feeds. Open a fake facebook account and post status reports of you doing things you'd never do. Everyone knows that you can't trust what you read on the Internet; governments and corporations should be taught the same lesson?
Hell, we have the basis on which to build another epic tale of adventure, as our young hero fruitlessly attempts to elude BIG BROTHER!! All we need to decide, is whether we'll have Elves, Dragons, Aliens, or Angels in the story. Crap - let's have them ALL!!
John Ringo's even completed a whole series on it. Damn that magnificent bastard!
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Eh, as long as other governments exist, we will have tools for anonymity. In general governments want control of their own people but have an interest in other governments not controlling their own. Just look at all the money the NSA dumped into projects for helping chinese citizens get around various protections. Who knows, in 10 years maybe we will have chinese sponsored darknets to help americans get around their government....
"According to Schmidt, true transparency and anonymity on the Internet will become a thing of the past because of the need to combat criminal and 'anti-social' behavior." Of course he would like this. Another way to make money at user expense.
This is posted using Tor. [http://www.torproject.org/] [http://www.torproject.org/easy-download.html.en].
The Tor windows installation is portable [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_application] and anti-forensic [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-computer_forensics].
Happy Computing
If something is convenient, the lemmings will use it that way. That is what he trust to. :)
EFF "tweets" about this issue, I hope they don't setup a Facebook group to effectively protest it.
EFF is the organization who still kept that God damn Google search on their site anyway, now they switched to Yahoo like there is NO OTHER solution for a site wide search, e.g. some open source system.
Google is the worst thing happened to the Internet, now Adwords dealers can down mod me. Oops, bitched about Apple app store too, I deserve all I get.
Google analytics, embedded in page source itself.
Please, please try to find the real problem, it is not about some nerd coolness like scriptblock or flashblock whatever. It is the generic end user who's privacy is raped every single second and no he/she doesn't really have a single clue about javascript or analytics.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
-- attrib. Cardinal Richelieu
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Check out Scroogle.org;
an anonymous, encrpyted access point to Google Search;
heck, donate a little bit, if you can!
Yeah, unless you, you know, grow more food.
This is why I have no use for libertarianism - I end up rolling my eyes so much it becomes physically painful. The idea that you having to pay taxes == "OMG I'm being repressed" is just too dumb for words.
Dude, this is mind-bogglingly dumb. Sure, you have the right to go die in a ditch. You also have the right to stop eating and starve, or the right to hold your breath until you pass out. Practically speaking, though, no one chooses to die in a ditch, starve, or pass out (with certain minor exceptions, and in those cases I doubt you really care what the government has to say about it anyway). What drives me crazy about libertarianism is that they prioritize the "freedom" to do something absolutely no one wants to do over the freedom of access to things people actually do want - like health care.
Will declare bankruptcy before 2016.
Yours In Akademgorodok,
Kilgore Trout.
P.S: I'll let you do an Intertubes search to find out why I predict this event.
If you have a new child, name him/her the most popular birth name for that gender for that year. This will absolutely ruin the hash of (gender x birth year x first name), assuming a large number of people use this strategy.
>> And to prove his point I'm going to send Eric Schmidt 14 pictures of my ass.
> And his response will be: "You again?"
Mr. Goatse, I assure you that we're entirely too familiar with you and your work.
Have they ever taken your picture? If so, you probably do have Facebook photos.
Google do not want a privacy bill in the US as it would inhibit data-mining.
The obvious strategy for them is to encourage government to allow data accumulation for national security reasons.
Though currently Google is just playing the politics of the situation to its advantage as it becomes more invasive it will become more important/dangerous to government.
Google is growing into a big problem for US/world citizens: either the US gets a strong privacy bill or Google gets clandestinely plugged into government.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/
No one will be anonymous. We will all just be other people. Also, you don't have to steal an identity to be someone. You can just create one in many cases.
These philosophies of uncontrollable openness by both Facebook and Google will spell their demise. A competitor who thinks otherwise will have a huge value proposition to use against them, and that is the value of control. Is it possible? Anything is possible.
A big problem in our community is this insane belief that the Google founders really matter in all this. They don't. It sounds like only Sergey had a problem with how they did business in China, and the point is Google is a corporation, not Larry and Sergey, two guys who've already announced they're selling off their controlling interest.
People need to stop acting like Google is run by their buddies, and always will be. Neither is true. Time to get over your romanticized version of Google. It doesn't exist, it never did. Google *is* evil, because it choses to do evil things.
So no pictures. I take my sociopathy to a whole new level, I falsify my facebook data. My friends also do not know what I look like, because I do not speak with them face to face, like you assume. Eric Schmidt, you are being recognized as this years Supreme Dictator Elitist Pig. Congratz, on your bid to help create Dr. Forbin's project COLOSSUS! ...we will try to destroy you, with the help of Martians, but we will grow to love you.
He was a douche at Sun, then at Novell and now at Google.
starting to mirror Wikileaks files and other material of public interest.
I would say its on the corporate side that we don't have enough whistle-blowers, but you can sometimes also glean info about corporate goings-on through the release of government info.
I am sure it has been said already, but these shit-heads always "predict" what they want to happen at the time. Their "predictions" are nothing more than lame attempts to get people to believe and accept what the "predictors" want people to believe and accept.
there, I said it..
In real world you have an identity and if necessary the police can locate you to make you accountable for your actions. Why should this be different in the Internet? Why can't we find a way to make people accountable for their actions in the Internet? The communications should be private, most actions should be private, but identities should not. In real world if I have private meetings with people regarding political discussions, for instance, the information in the meeting is private, the gathering may be private, but my identity is not, everyone knows who I am or at least knows my face and probably my name.
Don't be evil don't mean much if you redefine evil eh?
You seem to think no one is any smarter than you are.
You're wrong.
Some of us know what your company is really about, and we use defensive methods
to prevent you from amassing data on us.
Fuck you, Schmidt.
I can't help but wonder why it's always straight, white, rich men who always proclaim the end of privacy? The total lack of empathy that comes with being abjectly devoid of anything approaching discrimination or prejudice is a wonder to behold. :)
I think Google will enable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_state
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
i want anonymity as much as possible. i dont give a flying fuck about governments' demands. they will heed our demands. not us theirs.
Read radical news here
Schmidt had better kept his opinions to himself, given the kind of hot water that Google is in with privacy advocates. Instead of predicting the end of anonymity, he should apply the resources of his company to make sure anonymity remains possible, because his company is the most likely to suffer if, oh, Google Docs and Google Mail can't be used anonymously anymore. Unlike those services, OpenOffice on my desktop still is anonymous.
Having followed the over the top and criminal behaviour of Israel and the IDF since the flotilla and made certain comments, essentially training people to identify fake profiles and moderate forums where Israelis were attacking Palestinians with comments like...
All Arabs are fucking ugly whores!
You wemen are all sluts!
Tell me one Arab that ever won a Noble prize?
I use their language and deliberate misspelling so you can 'feel it', it didn't impress me at all. Being involved with Palestinians on Facebook exposed me to certain truths, the faking of the flotilla video but the IDF, lies about Hamas rockets... blar blar bottom line is the Israelis flagged my account as a fake person and I'm bingo locked out of Facebook. This is an account I've had for 4 years which is highly integrated into my life. A month now and I still haven't had my account reinstated. Obviously I've set up a new account. But as I have discovered my new account while active can't be verified and after exposing another Israeli trick today I can no longer post until it is verified.
Now this leaded to the topic... if you are forced to use your true identity as is being suggested then once you are blocked, as I have been by Facebook you are effectively a NON-PERSON, I feel so damn Palestinian, I feel like I have been treated to a virtual dose of how Israel treats Palestinians in real life.
So clearly I think this is a rotten idea. Insisting on such identification means you put your virtual life at risk of becoming a non-person at the judgement of others, this is why there is a call to do this, to track people sure but that can be done now, more importantly it to control people and indeed if you say too much you will become a non-person.
I call on you guys to reject such a concept with a passion!
I agree, I'm definitely with you.
For some time, I've thought that the ideal situation is one in which individuals have privacy, but large institutions are completely public and transparent; and that unfortunately, the trend has been for the opposite situation, in which institutions have privacy and individuals don't. We should have completely open government and public accountability, with protection for individuals from institutional harassment.
Then, it occurred to me that any technique that allows for individual privacy can be abused for institutional privacy. Anything that can be used to defend the privacy of an individual can be used to protect the secrecy of an institutional agent.
While I worry about the secret police coming in the middle of the night because of my outspoken political views, or the Gattaca corporation refusing to hire me because of my DNA, I am less worried about their scrutiny of me than I am worried about their ability to hide the existence of the secret police or their DNA databases. Sacrificing individual privacy certainly doesn't guarantee the elimination of institutional secrecy, but I don't see a way to guarantee individual privacy that doesn't facilitate institutional secrecy, and I see that as the greater danger.
Well, Zuckerberg is going the same way, and he is apparently not doing it for greater profit. He has a personal ideology that sees great things happening when we can all form some sort of uninhibited, "light-speed" friendship networks online. The problem is that we are listening to what a couple of geeks think about socializing. Their perspective is extremely biased by their background. They are not "gentlemen who never tell". They come from a sheltered lifestyle where they grown up thinking authority is ultimately good and no one has anything to hide. They're both just naive. And the more their naive views make it into their online products, the longer it is going to take them to develop a more popular, balanced product.
Freedom: You let people do what they want. Don't like what's on my TV show? Change the channel. Don't like my parties? Don't come to them. Don't like my books? Don't buy them. Don't like my bar? Don't work or patronize it. But oh wait! Smoking is bad, umm'kay? Let's petition the government to stop consenting adults from doing what they want! Insert financial and health justification here.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
The problem with this path is that it could easily lead to abuses, unfair profiling and be used for more than just "a terrible, evil crime". Still, if the people must be exposed to "true transparency" then perhaps it is only fair that governments and corporations be subjected to exactly the same thing. That's about as likely to happen as humans landing on the sun. http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2010/08/11/google-ceo-predicts-and-embraces-end-to-online-internet-anonymity.html
This idea is forcing transparency to the government which is selectively enforcing its laws. This is very bad and will greatly increase crime. I'm already thinking about doing identity thief so the government will not be tracking me.
If we want to make our information transparent to the whole world that is a different story. Full transparency will be protection and not a liability after the people understand human nature again.
A huge amount of us "steal" software of the internet.
A huge amount of us download porn all the time.
The idea of transparency shouldn't stop there. How is our money spent? Where is all our extra resources going? Who is getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for stuff you don't approve of but is from your tax dollars. Where does all that church money go to?