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Critics Call For Probe Into Google Government Ties
bonch writes "The National Legal and Policy Center has written to the House Oversight Committee to investigate alleged ties between Google and the Obama administration, specifically with regards to the closure of an FTC probe into Google's Wi-Fi privacy breach, when the company admitted to having collected users' unencrypted information over the course of three years. The NLPC compares Google's relationship with the administration to that of Halliburton and cites the timing of a $30,000-a-head Democratic fundraiser at Google CEO Marissa Meyer's home less than a week before the FTC ended its inquiry, where Obama made a personal appearance, as well as the fact that US deputy chief technology officer Andrew McLaughlin is a former Google employee. The NLPC further alleges that the FTC is tougher on other companies, issuing fines to Twitter and Sears for their privacy violations while letting Google off the hook after the company promised to improve its privacy practices."
Exactly how many unnecessary and costly (both in terms of money and lives) wars has Google profited off thus far?
So it's big news if Google has ties with the administration but it's just fine for an army of ex-RIAA critters to be nominated to high posts?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Google only logged publicly accessible information. How is that a privacy violation? They didn't attempt to crack any encrypted sessions. It seems rather unfair to hold them accountable because of someone else's lax security. Consider the amount of information that other, older data mining companies have on us, what Google did was nothing to be bothered by.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
"Here's politics in America: 'I think the puppet on the right shares my belief.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Wait a minute...there's one guy holding both puppets!'" -Bill Hicks
Republican, Democrat, Third Party...they all serve the same corporate masters. The only difference exists in we the people's minds.
Living With a Nerd
Good points. I'd also counter with a request for a probe into the former administration's ties to Microsoft. Why exactly did the DoJ find that Microsoft had illegally exploited their monopoly position and then let them go with nothing more than an admonition?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The wi-fi situation wasn't a case of Google "getting caught" - it was a case of them noticing the data being collected had more than they had wanted and being up front and open about its disclosure. And in the latter case, it's basically never a good idea to prosecute as it shows good faith, and attacking people for good faith effort only encourages bad faith. Nobody in their right mind wants that!
We provide technology solutions. Despite all our care and attention otherwise, mistakes get made. And when they do, it's our policy just to say what happened, how we fixed it, and whether or not we think it violates TOS. This simple act creates trust and goodwill because by casually acknowledging that your pants were down in the first place, everybody realizes that they're just happy you pulled them back up and quickly lose interest.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
You know what bothers me about the Democratic party?
They could have spent the last two years dragging everyone and anyone who was involved with the Bush administration's more questionable policies (wiretapping, suspending habeus corpus, extraordinary rendition, Halliburton, bogus intelligence and so forth) and probably had a PR field day tearing the ethics of their predecessors apart. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld alone would have been pure gold, and we'd all have been better for having the spotlights turned on the dark, dusty corners of that era.
But oh no. Either they were idiots and thought that, after eight years of dirty pool, the Republican party's powerbrokers would respond well to bipartisanship (you'd think they'd notice how that was going after six months?), or they were hoping to pull some of the same stuff, in which case they pissed away the moral high ground which would have served them pretty well a few days ago.
I swear, the Democrats have, certainly since Clinton and possibly since Kennedy, been completely spineless and cripplingly un-unified in the face of a much more disciplined Republican machine. How they managed to piss away the single biggest political advantage of all time in two years is astounding. How they've silenced their conscience (and anyone else on the Left who has one) is even more shameful
They really are past their sell-by date, and the few who have principles (Kucinich comes to mind) need to put some respectful distance between the rest of the chumps, endorse Nader (or someone like him) and start work on a progressive, thinking version of the Tea Party.
--srj/mmv
An article I found says
Google's relationship with the Obama administration is nothing like Cheney and Halliburton. I mean, has Biden or Obama held large amounts of Google stock like Cheney and Bush held stock in Halliburton?
I don't remember anybody calling for an investigantion into Cheney and Halliburton during the Bush administration.
This is more like the Bush ties to Microsoft; the Bush Justice Department pretty much let MS off the hook after Clinton had them by the balls. I didn't see any investigantions into that, either.
This smells to me like nothing more than dirty politics; kind of like Clinton's forty million dollar blow job.
Free Martian Whores!
I don't lie, I might be wrong but if so I am honestly wrong. First of all, technically I am right because he just donated $1 million to them so they ARE financed by him. Secondly, you are being pretty naive if you think that overt donation directly from his pocket is the only kind there is. For example, Soros laughably claims that the donations made by his Open Society Institute are not actually made by him and it's a totally separate thing. OSI has spend over $5 billion over the years on liberal causes, including a lot of goups which in turn create or fund things like media matters. Without having time to research the matter, here is one example: OSI donates $1 million to The Tides Foundation in 2005. The Tides Foundation donates $1 million to Media Matters in 2005. Nothing to do with Soros, right?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Maybe it's because none of the above are unbiased, but all except Fox do nothing more than spew talking points constantly and have every Republican candidates on the payroll as hosts and advisers. How many Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates from the 2008 election are employed by Fox? (Here's a hint: nearly every single one) Now how many Democratic candidates are employed by all of the rest of the stations you listed combined? (Here's another hint: none)
Just for reference, I have no problems with me being genetically superior to you because I can look at facts and use my brain in a manner not consistent with party doctrine, but I'm not going to be the one to say it. I'll leave that up to you. Or, rather, you already said it.
Uhm, I hope you realize that the second largest shareholder (not donor, actual owner of the company) of Fox News is a Saudi Arabian prince who, according to Fox News, may have ties with terrorists?
Look, just because people give money to causes they approve of doesn't automatically make those causes suspect. You should also critically examine the material they put out, not just who funds them.
They could have spent the last two years dragging everyone and anyone who was involved with the Bush administration's more questionable policies (wiretapping, suspending habeus corpus, extraordinary rendition, Halliburton, bogus intelligence and so forth) and probably had a PR field day tearing the ethics of their predecessors apart.
First, a correction, the Democrats gained both houses in 2006, not 2008, so they could have started then... and as a member of the right, I WISH THEY WOULD HAVE. Not because the open partisanship would have cost them votes, because I don't think it would have given how reviled the right had become by 2006, but because we need an open an honest government. However, neither party wants that, they both want a closed, powerful government even if it means they take turns owning the keys.
Obama continued the Bush wiretaps, even "accidentally" extending them to domestic only calls and wants to extend it to the internet. Obama hasn't closed Gitmo, he's still practicing extraordinary rendition (which didn't started under GWB), Halliburton is still getting contracts (because they're one of only a handful of companies that does what they do), we still have problems with bad intelligence, etc.
I don't say that out of partisanship, I say it because Obama and Bush are relatively interchangeable in their practice of foreign policy (oh, sure, there are minor differences, but all the major policies are identical).
But oh no. Either they were idiots and thought that, after eight years of dirty pool, the Republican party's powerbrokers would respond well to bipartisanship (you'd think they'd notice how that was going after six months?), or they were hoping to pull some of the same stuff, in which case they pissed away the moral high ground which would have served them pretty well a few days ago.
Again, noting the above, there is one additional reason why they didn't... They were acting like Mark McGwire. Career batting average of .263, but you knew every time he got up to the plate, he was swinging for the fences, looking for that home run, or even better, grand slam. What do I mean?
Democrats have long been in love with socialized medicine... for the political leadership, it's the one thing they're missing in their dependency pie. Again, what do I mean? Every time a Democrat runs for office and is seriously challenged, what do they run on? "My opponent wants to starve your kids, kick your parents out of the nursing home, take away your childcare, etc." A HUGE portion of the Democrat bases votes Democrat on the fear that their precious entitlements would be taken away. By finally getting socialized medicine in place, it would have forced the working stiffs in the middle that traditionally vote Republican to vote for the party that would keep the handouts going.
So, they spent most of the first two years swinging for that grand slam. The bases were loaded - people already hated the Republicans, the Democrats occupied the White House and, most importantly, had large majorities in both houses of Congress. They came up to the plate, pointed to left field, swung and missed. The liberal Republicans weren't going to go along. They came up to the plate again and missed. This time the conservative Democrats weren't going to go along either. Then Ball 1, the Senate passed a bill in the middle of the night before Christmas break. Ball 2, the House would work on passing the Senate bill if they could get some fixes. Ball 3, they promise some meaningless stuff on abortion and to fix the bill's most glaring problems down the road, all while giving the crowd the finger. Democrats are standing at a full count. Finally, a homer down the left line! But wait! Now th
Stop Koolaid Politics
Bullshit. This false equivalence between the parties is fueled by conservative media outlets, and it's designed to frustrate voters so they skip the polls entirely, allowing the vote be dominated by the right-wing base.
If you want to see the difference between the parties, just compare the Bush keys to the legislation that was passed by the House over the past two years. A lot of that didn't make it into law, but that's because of Republicans filibustering in the Senate, not Democratic malfeasance.
It really takes a special kind of stupidity to think "they're all the same" after 2000-2008. The Democrats aren't perfect, but by god, at least they don't yearn for a return to serfdom.