@dannysullivanlets listen to anything from someone with a capital G in there pic and respond as if your views are "fair and balanced".. a shill is a shill
Okay, I'm mentally ready for the digg down..."All hail the mighty Google. Death to the infidels and blasphemers who dare denounce ye! Long live fanboism!"But seriously, if you ever think that a corporation has your best interest in mind you've lost your mind. Companies don't 'do no evil', they 'make next quarter's numbers'. Period. EOL.Google may be the best or the worst with your information, but if selling it or giving it away means a better profit and company outlook, they will do it.
Keep in mind Google's track record with the government.... CIA involvement, and CIA employees on staff at google R+D..... Their track record in China is also dismal.... Imagine what google can do with something like the Patriot Act and tons of money....Scary stuff.
The "Search Engine Land" article was a whitewash. Google is way too intrusive. If you use them for a search, they'll connect to port 80 on your machine and use their search bot to download as much as they can grab. A lot of blogs use Google's blogger.com, and the same cookie accesses all the different blogs. Everything you write is aggregated. Google analytics keeps all your http referrals. It all gets fed into the U.S. government total information awareness data mining activity.
You said:@triad203, @draxenato, others, I'm well aware some will want to view the article as a fanboy work, which I addressed in the article itself. But it isn't, and if you really honestly care about privacy, then read on as I explain a bit more perspective.Alrighty then...You said:Sure, it's important to understand what happens with them. But I'm more concerned about what happens to that logged in data -- and if you do delete it, is it really deleted? I'm the only one to my knowledge that's actually gotten Google to confirm that even if you delete account data, there's still backup tapes out there with the information on it. That should go, as well -- right?Google, and pretty much any company that holds or uses personal data is subject to a shedload of mostly nonsensical laws and restrictions, ask anyone who's had to enforce SOX compliance. Almost all of those restrictions and laws will require the company to backup *all* data for X number of years, I think it's 7 years in the EU. So yeah, it's a point, Google are stuck between a rock and a hard place, as they utilise users data they're required to back it up and ensure it's recoverable for however many years.You said:And this brings me to the PI report. I actually agree with some of PIs general concerns (which if you actually read my article, I'm clear about this). But I'm annoyed that they put out a report that purports to quantify things yet when you read it, it is a mishmash of subjective and incomplete comparisons. That does harm to PI's reputation as wel as the overall goal, to protect privacy for all of us.Yeah I saw you agreeing with them on some points, but I must admit I didn't see anything from them where they purported to present empircal evidence. The best I saw was along the lines of "informed opinion" which is probably one of the reasons they aren't shy about letting folks know who sits on their board and advises them. Something which you were a bit snippy about which kinda got my goat. You've gotta realise that an awful lot of us have to draw fine but rigid borders between our professional and private lives. The PI people are (TTBOMK) speaking entirely from their own personal ethical viewpoints. There is a distinction.You said:What I wanted was someone -- anyone -- to give us a checklist of what things companies should maintain, what they should delete, how procedures should work so we had across the board protection. This came out of having to watch the annual "let's target Google over privacy" thing that we're seeing again.I don't think that checklist is a realistic target. Internet companies operate across international borders, so which laws apply ? Unless we have some sort of Balkanisation of the internet, which I think could actually be a good thing in the short term, I don't think we'll ever see realistic regulation of internet services.This annual "lets target Google over privacy thing" isn't an annual thing with PI and it seem like you were lobbing more than a few brickbats in their direction.On your last point though, "we deserve better from both Google and PI", yeah I'm with you on that one.I've been making a living out of the internet since 1994, and when Al Gore coined the phrase "information superhighway" I thought we're gonna need something like a Highway Code then. Airlines operate internationally to an agreed set of standards, the internet doesn't mainly because of the u.s. government which wants to maintain as much control and oversight as possible, so until then we have a kind of cyberspace bandit country where no one is sure exactly which laws apply. I really think that erecting national or regional firewalls, enforcing regulations within them and only *then* seeking internationally ratified standards is the way forward.
byronmJun 11, 2007
@dannysullivanlets listen to anything from someone with a capital G in there pic and respond as if your views are "fair and balanced".. a shill is a shill
quuxJun 11, 2007
Okay, I'm mentally ready for the digg down..."All hail the mighty Google. Death to the infidels and blasphemers who dare denounce ye! Long live fanboism!"But seriously, if you ever think that a corporation has your best interest in mind you've lost your mind. Companies don't 'do no evil', they 'make next quarter's numbers'. Period. EOL.Google may be the best or the worst with your information, but if selling it or giving it away means a better profit and company outlook, they will do it.
jahdeeJun 11, 2007
Keep in mind Google's track record with the government.... CIA involvement, and CIA employees on staff at google R+D..... Their track record in China is also dismal.... Imagine what google can do with something like the Patriot Act and tons of money....Scary stuff.
Closed AccountJun 11, 2007
"Google Bad On Privacy? Maybe It's Privacy International's Report That Sucks"How about an objective article about the referenced report: <a class="user" href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/11/google_privacy_international/print.html">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/11/google_privacy_international/print.html</a>It sounds like the submitter needs to stop drinking the Google Kool-Aid. Google is great and all, but just because Google claims their guiding principle is "Don't Be Evil" doesn't mean you have to be blinded by the light. They are a publicly traded, and FOR PROFIT company, which means they are looking out for their shareholders, not you. That's what they should do. And we should not trust them just because they''re Google. Any company with BILLIONS of dollars in assets (~$36B) is going to be motivated by growing and maintaining that capital. That's what corporations do. It doesn't make them evil, but it sure means I don't trust them with any more of my information than I have must.<a class="user" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#Privacy">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#Privacy</a>
grouserJun 11, 2007
The "Search Engine Land" article was a whitewash. Google is way too intrusive. If you use them for a search, they'll connect to port 80 on your machine and use their search bot to download as much as they can grab. A lot of blogs use Google's blogger.com, and the same cookie accesses all the different blogs. Everything you write is aggregated. Google analytics keeps all your http referrals. It all gets fed into the U.S. government total information awareness data mining activity.
draxenatoJun 11, 2007
You said:@triad203, @draxenato, others, I'm well aware some will want to view the article as a fanboy work, which I addressed in the article itself. But it isn't, and if you really honestly care about privacy, then read on as I explain a bit more perspective.Alrighty then...You said:Sure, it's important to understand what happens with them. But I'm more concerned about what happens to that logged in data -- and if you do delete it, is it really deleted? I'm the only one to my knowledge that's actually gotten Google to confirm that even if you delete account data, there's still backup tapes out there with the information on it. That should go, as well -- right?Google, and pretty much any company that holds or uses personal data is subject to a shedload of mostly nonsensical laws and restrictions, ask anyone who's had to enforce SOX compliance. Almost all of those restrictions and laws will require the company to backup *all* data for X number of years, I think it's 7 years in the EU. So yeah, it's a point, Google are stuck between a rock and a hard place, as they utilise users data they're required to back it up and ensure it's recoverable for however many years.You said:And this brings me to the PI report. I actually agree with some of PIs general concerns (which if you actually read my article, I'm clear about this). But I'm annoyed that they put out a report that purports to quantify things yet when you read it, it is a mishmash of subjective and incomplete comparisons. That does harm to PI's reputation as wel as the overall goal, to protect privacy for all of us.Yeah I saw you agreeing with them on some points, but I must admit I didn't see anything from them where they purported to present empircal evidence. The best I saw was along the lines of "informed opinion" which is probably one of the reasons they aren't shy about letting folks know who sits on their board and advises them. Something which you were a bit snippy about which kinda got my goat. You've gotta realise that an awful lot of us have to draw fine but rigid borders between our professional and private lives. The PI people are (TTBOMK) speaking entirely from their own personal ethical viewpoints. There is a distinction.You said:What I wanted was someone -- anyone -- to give us a checklist of what things companies should maintain, what they should delete, how procedures should work so we had across the board protection. This came out of having to watch the annual "let's target Google over privacy" thing that we're seeing again.I don't think that checklist is a realistic target. Internet companies operate across international borders, so which laws apply ? Unless we have some sort of Balkanisation of the internet, which I think could actually be a good thing in the short term, I don't think we'll ever see realistic regulation of internet services.This annual "lets target Google over privacy thing" isn't an annual thing with PI and it seem like you were lobbing more than a few brickbats in their direction.On your last point though, "we deserve better from both Google and PI", yeah I'm with you on that one.I've been making a living out of the internet since 1994, and when Al Gore coined the phrase "information superhighway" I thought we're gonna need something like a Highway Code then. Airlines operate internationally to an agreed set of standards, the internet doesn't mainly because of the u.s. government which wants to maintain as much control and oversight as possible, so until then we have a kind of cyberspace bandit country where no one is sure exactly which laws apply. I really think that erecting national or regional firewalls, enforcing regulations within them and only *then* seeking internationally ratified standards is the way forward.
jugger74Jun 14, 2007
@dannysullivanEducate yourself before speaking in a public forum pleeeease.