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FTC Releases Google Privacy Audit, Blacks Out the Details
chicksdaddy writes "Google could tell you about its privacy practices except, well....they're private. That's the conclusion privacy advocates are drawing after the Federal Trade Commission took a black marker to an independent audit of the company's privacy practices before releasing it to the group EPIC in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Security Ledger is reporting that the FTC released a copy of a Price Waterhouse Coopers audit of Google that was mandated as part of a settlement with the FTC over complaints following a 2010 complaint by EPIC over privacy violations in Google Buzz, a now-defunct social networking experiment. However, the agency acceded to Google requests to redact descriptions of the search giant's internal procedures and the design of its privacy program."
Don't be XXXX.
We must assume the worse.. that Google's 'privacy practices' are hogwash. You have no privacy with Google. Let them prove otherwise.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What we don't know won't hurt us.
Nice try. National security and corporate policy are slightly different things.
So, sir, back at ya...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm sure they'll get a free pass from a good chunk of the community here.
#DeleteChrome
If you're an advertiser, privacy is evil. And since google doesn't wish to be evil, they have to black out all the privacy stuff. It makes total sense.
CIA FBI NSA DHS {your govt spy agency} [some 3 letter variations of words and agencies you dont know about ] all are part of the loop .....enjoy !!!! if you got nothing to hide there is nothing to redact.
and how easily these all get access and the abuses that arise....oh joy and BING anfd YAHOO and others are all no better.
SOON as it gets into a corporations hands its game over.
The FTC calls them "Goggle" in the first line of the report!
Sigh... I've seen pink vomit. (._.)
Interesting, the report specifies that user data is 1 of 3 types,
- Log data (user activity)
- Account data (Users emails, settings, etc)
- Third type is redacted.. Wonder what it is
Google cares so much about privacy that even a text's privacy must be protected. I have no doubts people can enjoy just as good privacy.
One is a huge, evil organization that is spying on you with massive server farms, and the other doesn't have nuclear weapons.
Not so much these days.
My money's on the fact that they're building a massive biometric voice-print database on every single one of us every time we use Google's voice-to-text feature on an android device. Apple's not likely doing the same every time you use Siri. "Somebody"'s going to be very interested in accessing that information some day.
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
...We can safely assume the blacked-out information would hurt both the government and Google to varying degrees. So now what to do about it?
IMHO, the most effective personal strategy is to simply avoid using Google search and associated services. There ARE other services out there.
https://www.ixquick.com/
For one example of a free service that emphasizes privacy and anonymity.
Deprive both Google and the government of the very data they are collecting that gives them more power. Well, at least until they make it illegal to not reveal data.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Not sure if you noticed (try browsing with adblockplus and click "Open Blockable Items"), but Google is almost everywhere on the web in one way or another.
Whether it be via doubleclick, google analytics, or AJAX hosting, Google likely tracks about 90% of the sites you visit, and that's not counting your email to friends on gmail or the phone calls you unknowingly make to or receive from Google Voice subscribers. That's also not counting some of the services (like Chrome without privacy tweaks) that send almost 100% of the pages you visit in order to check for fraud or whatever.
To even attempt to avoid them, you can try using firefox with adblockplus with the EasyPrivacy+EasyList settings, but you still have to tweak it a little (like blocking google analytics and unchecking "Allow some non-intrusive advertising").
And how we an "independent audit" be trusted if it can't be vetted. It often occurs that government types enter the carousel of working for private industry after initially learning the ropes of regulation; it also often occurs that "independent audit" companies often create reports that are of benefit to the companies being audited in order to curry favor and receive payment for other services down the road. Isn't that what happened with all of the falsely-rated "AAA" mortgage-backed securities?
_
So I'll say it again, how can you trust the independence and validity of an audit process if it cannot be separately vetted?
...is that the government cares more about Google's privacy than our own.
failure in the first sentence.
Why would we assume the worst? I don't even understand how that is supposed to be a compelling argument.
You have no privacy with anything - why should that be specific to google?
Oh right, please use the privacy-friendly search engine that uses bing instead, right? /facepalm
Because according to Google's Eric Schmidt "if you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Google doesn't want us to know about it, so maybe be they shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
[REDACTED]
.. what they have to hide ..
Do evil. Google.
Insert
also known as "that pepto bismol was a little too late"
Unchecked authority/power/influence (or even the illusion of impunity) will always be abused. That's a proven fact. It's only natural. You can confirm it with any experiment you want. Or you can check the results of the ones that have already been performed. So, we need to put a price on it. The only way to keep it honest is to enclose it in glass. Make every detail public. And it will serve to keep the riff-raff out of desiring any such position. If somebody wants authority, they should be stripped naked (metaphorically, if you insist). The tired old meme of 'if you have nothing to hide' definitely does apply for this, and it should be.
This article is about Google and the protection it receives from the public due to a corrupt government, but, of course it can be applied to anything we allow to get too big to control, government/corporation, doesn't matter.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
This is pretty interesting - as of the time that I'm posting this, there are 41 comments and almost no moderation on this story. I regularly see stories posted at 10PM pacific and wake up the next morning to see 200+ posts, but not in this case.
I suppose that we could say that this is just not really a story of interest. Perhaps, although before you make that argument, do you think that the comment count and moderation would be a little different if the headline had been:
FTC Releases Apple Privacy Audit, Blacks Out the Details
+(Positive Infty) Insightful
Daiquiris and other various drinks can make for pink vomit... really, anything red.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Sorry to say, you miss the real difference here. "One is a huge, evil organization that is spying on you with massive server farms", the other has faceless, toothless Quangos to do your bidding.
This sounds exactly like the typical "Would you rather have Romney do that..." that we keep reading every time someone has a valid criticism against Obama.
You first claim that he doesn't have an argument to assume the worst and later say that there's no privacy anywhere (assuming the worst everywhere?).
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
It's good that someone got the details out, but what does the color of their skin have to do with anything?
..access data, for keeping logs on who's tapped that persons private information and for why (fbi, cia..).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
If we shouldn't assume the worst why did they lobby to get all the important information redacted? Stop being a fucking fanboi.
Not necessarily in any way that indicates something nefarious. Google likely has something at stake in the realm of business trade secrets which are frequently contained in information gathered in regulatory audits and are specifically exempted from FOIA requests.
The government has an interest, too, in business cooperating with regulatory audits, and them becoming an indirect tool of corporate espionage contradicts that interest, so the government is unlikely to casually ignore the trade secret exemption from the FOIA.
Other services which have had an external audit, based on the same criteria as the FTC-commissioned audit of Google, of their privacy practices which has been publicly released with no redactions? And, if not, how are they relevant to the immediate story?