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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."
Is this the same Obama administration that threatened Google with an anti-trust trial and breaking Google up if they landed a search deal with Yahoo, but said they'd allow Microsoft to buy-out Yahoo?
I wouldn't say the administration has been particularly pro-Google.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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
As clear as the rigged elections keeping the Mennonites out of representation in Congress, this Google/Government link is one very deep rabbit hole. In the 80s and 90s, a series of books and movies gave the Twinkie empire a bad wrap. Hostess, Lil' Debbie and a number of other producers put together a syndicate that now only has meetings behind closed doors once a year in a hotel in Germany. The top people all attend.
... but these were just a means to an end. Nothing bad can be said of Twinkies in e-mail nor could you text something bad about Twinkies.
... with a Twinkie obstructing my throat.
Sure, some less powerful people like Barack Obama and various world leaders attend but they're really just an audience for what is decided. Back when "Google" was getting its start, Larry and Sergey were actually installed by the Twinkie Syndicate to archive and modify all movies and books online to reflect Twinkies as a healthy, natural alternative to apples and other competing products. In doing so they restored order and the Twinkies once again began to flow.
This action, of course, was backed by the Corn Growers Association and the European based "Society for a Stupider, Fatter America" -- the same people responsible for the advent of Christianity in the Americas as well as cream.
Sure there were some unexpected side effects like GMail and Android
Don't be surprised if you hear news reports of my body found floating in the Potomac
My work here is dung.
From Wikipedia:
The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) is a right-leaning 501(c)(3) non-profit group that monitors and reports on the ethics of public officials, supporters of liberal causes, and labor unions in the United States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Legal_and_Policy_Center
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
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.
I can get behind that. Wikipedia really is shit for anything political or otherwise controversial. It's really only useful for shit no one cares about.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Are you saying that if the US president gets a company off the hook because, if the allegation is correct, they contributed money to him, it is ok as long as the previous president did the same thing? Plenty of people did call attention to Bush admin. dealings with Halliburton. These guys happen to be calling out Obama's dealings with Google.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
"Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts."
So lets count them
Google vs. Microsoft (in search) - I'm going to f***ing bury Google
Google vs. Apple (smartphones)
Google vs. Facebook (social networking/open-ness)
Google vs. MPAA (YouTube)
Google vs. ATT/Verizon (FCC Spectrum Auction)
Google vs. Oracle (Java)
Google vs. Patent Office (Patent Reform)
Google vs. Author's Guild (copyright on orphan works)
The shame of it all is most if not all of those fights are worth fighting and very few others are stepping up to the plate.
They are a front: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Legal_and_Policy_Center
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This is just one of the first few calls for investigations by the likes of Darrell Issa who recently asked that the House have "7 hearings a week times 40 weeks" investigating the executive branch. It's just like Clinton/Whitewater thing but with even less merit.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
"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
Democratic fundraiser at Google CEO Marissa Meyer's home
Eric Schmidt might be surprised to find that Google has a new CEO ;)
I know this is Slashdot, but could we get basic facts right in the summary? Marissa Mayer is a Google VP, not the CEO
I know, I must be new here...
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
On Slashdot, only right-wingers are evil puppetmasters. Left-wingers are enlightened, oppressed victims just trying to get the word out.
Just look at all the people who immediately rushed to Google's defense by attacking the NLPC while completely ignoring the points they raised in their letter about the timing of the FTC inquiry's dismissal, the inconsistent punishments handed out to companies other than Google, or the Google employees serving in the administration. To them, none of the accusations have any merit because of the NLPC's political leanings, even though they're refuting none of the accusations.
You cannot criticize Google on Slashdot. The posters have become fanatical about this company no matter how many privacy breaches there are or how many boneheaded statements Eric Schmidt makes. If it was any other company, people would be all over their asses. If Steve Jobs said only people who have something to hide care about privacy, it would be a months-long controversy.
No, you lie.
Media Matters received its first ever donation from Soros last month, after years of you Republicans lying, say he was financing it all along. Meanwhile, you Republicans have your fraud network financed by billionaires like the Koch brothers who also finance Republican campaigns, lately secretly through the Citizens United rules that dominated the election that just passed.
Of course it sounds "fair and balanced" to you, because it's an endless pile of Republican lies, just like the Fox "News" that uses that fraudulent slogan.
--
make install -not war
Yeah, but Republicans smoke cigars in dimly-lit conference rooms. That is classy as fuck.
The reason they didn't go after the Republicans is the same reason we didn't nuke Russia during the Cold War: mutually assured destruction. Start shining a flashlight into the dark corners of Washington politics and everyone is guilty. 2/3's of the administration would have ended up in jail, impeached, or at least publicly ridiculed over such an attempt. The Dems don't talk about or investigate Halliburton (except to regurgitate the talking heads' arguments ad nauseum) and the Republicans do not go after Democrats ties to labor unions (except as vague campaign promises that never lead to action).
There's similar quid pro quo deals all through Washington, unspoken but very real. The only thing that they can seem to agree on is the putting down of any upstart who won't play the game. Hence any real, honest politician is either corrupted into the system, or they cooperate to find/manufacture dirt about him and get him booted out of office. It's sickening.
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.