Google chief: Only miscreants worry about net privacy If you're concerned about Google retaining your personal data, then you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing. At least that's the word from Google CEO 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," Schmidt tells CNBC, sparking howls of …
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place," said the peeping tom to the fifteen year old girl he'd secretly watched masturbating. [1]
Is Google the world's biggest cyberstalker?
[1] Before Schmidt decides to take legal action against me for this comment, let me state the following:-
This comment is not intended to defame, libel or slander Eric Schmidt. I am not in any way saying, or implying, that Eric Schmidt is the peeping tom mentioned at the start of this comment. The peeping tom character is entirely fictional. The purpose of having that fictional peeping tom use the same words as Schmidt is to indicate how such an argument sounds when it's heard from someone who's regarded as a gross violator of personal privacy. I'm attacking the argument, not Eric Schmidt himself.
If, despite this clarification, Eric Schmidt would still want to sue me: Google the "Streisand Effect" first, Eric.
has to be a reciprocal event. If Google and the government want to know everything about me, then I should know everything about them. The problem (for me) isn't about my privacy, it's about their closely guarded secrets.
Relationships are built on trust, an open and frank exchange of knowledge. Raw climate data, expenses, click ads, SEOs, national security, secrecy, torturing suspects, fostering a culture of fear and suspicion, etc.
What they (and we all know who 'they' are), want, is a one sided, them calling the shots, position of dominance.
That's why we (should) fight for our privacy. I'll be nakedly open with you when I trust you.
And Google, how many Chinese dissidents have you given up to their government when asked, and for what purported crimes?
Eric Schmidt, go fuck yourself.
Normally, I would not even post something like this; it is crass and unsophisticated. I would wait to let the anger subside. But I am not ashamed of myself for thinking it, nor for posting it. And now you can Google it.
Paris, crass and unsophisticated.
Schmidt can pull up your entire search history, yet you can't pull up his. It appears to me that the people who say this are always on the best side of information asymmetry.
You see it with politicians too, they have their car number plates hidden, their emails protected by law, their childrens details withheld from Choicepoint, and presume (mistakenly) that their conversations are protected from warrant less search. When someone starts listing their home details, or their husbands video rentals and they freak. Why did they not protect others privacy???
The Bernanke thing, he promises he'll tell congress how he's spent *their* bailout money, but then refuses to let them audit the Federal Reserve and starts talking like he's the elected president!... That's the power of information, how much is something worth? It depends on what Bernanke decides its worth, he talks that way, because that's the power that the information asymmetry gives him.
Then there's the odd police thing, snap some undercover cops in Switzerland and it's an international incident, yet they snap you all the time.
DNA won't be collected from Parliament, yet they statistically are more likely to match the unsolved crimes, than people who have been arrested and screened and found to be clean. As long as they believe the symmetry favours them,they are happy.
Only an idiot insults a powerful person's incompetence then expects them to be fair when you deal with them. Ever talked shit to your boss? Was he nice at review time? Of course not!
Yahoo doesn't want you to know what it charges the police to give them all your emails. You don't have secrets, but they don't want you to know they've kept all this info....
All cases of people defending the informational asymmetry that gives them the edge, asserting that you must have something to hide if you disagree with THEM knowing that information.
Me thinks they protest too much. BTW, what is Erics Schmidt's home address?
"It's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities"
He's right. And Google can't tell you if they get an invitation by FBI to do so.
Obama and Schmidt --- same powergrab.
...voted to extend the Patriot Act while in the Senate, and he supports its further extension now that he's in the White House -- not to mention trying to suppress lawsuits on behalf of Guantanamo detainees, or trying to suppress the further release of images of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib.
Y'know, I really wish GWBush would wipe that goddamn' burnt cork off his face.
So.
If hiding means something you're doing something illicit, how come Google isn't publishing open and clear how Adsense works ?
Why are their search protocols and algorithms burn-before-viewing secrets ?
Does Mr. Schmidt live in a glass house allowing anyone and everyone film him at any time ?
No ? Really not ? Seriously not ?
Then I call "Pot Kettle Black" on him.
If Google so believes that hiding is bad, maybe THEY should start being more transparent first.
To summarize: "I'm right and almost everybody else in the world is wrong. Anybody who disagrees with me is a subversive and a criminal."
Yes, Eric. That's nice. And if you could just put this jacket on. No that's the wrong way round. Yes, the sleeves are supposed to look like that. This is your room, the walls do look funny don't they. Now this is just a little injection and it won't hurt a bit...
One of the first signs of a market abusing monopoly is arrogance such as this (the whole nobody can touch us attitude and we know better than you). Ask Bill Gates how far that attitude will take you when you piss off (don't give enough campaign hush money) the wrong person. Schmidt probably just cost his company big time and better learn to keep his inflatable hockey rink affording ass shut.
You could reply with something like this:
Why don't you (Eric Schmidt) plumb your toilet into the middle of your front lawn. Or perhaps your marital bed. Or perhaps use only a speaker phone attached to a PA system on your house, on your car, and on the outside of the Google building where you work.
And what about your doctor doing a physical. It should also be done on in the front lawn...etc.
You don't need a counter argument. It's already a counter argument. The argument is Google don't own that data, they haven't told users they're collecting that data and they have no right to that data. It's Schidt's schtick that's the counter argument and it's a very, very weak on indeed. He hasn't even begun to explain how it's his right to collect that data. Patriotic duty? Fuck that mate. US citizens may fall for that patriot crap, but in the free world things are a little different.
If Google really believe Schidt's bull they would make it a clear opt in service. It isn't opt in, hell it isn't even easy to opt out. Let's be fair you can only opt out if you know what you're doing with cookies and the like. There is no official opt out. And people think Phorm were bastards?
The only conclusion I can draw is that Google know what they are doing is wrong. And that Schidt's words sound like the desperate excuses of a man who knows he's in the wrong.
As to the idea that shaping your search results will help you, that's crap. Google algorithms are already so heavily influenced by commerce that most of the time I find them no better than the post office clerk trying to sell me broadband and insurance when what I want is to post a parcel. You have to wade through lines, if not pages of partial matches before you find the page which contains an exact match for the phrase you types. Even if your phrase is the header of a particular page that doesn't stop Google sticking it on page three of your results because they *know* that isn't what you were really looking for. Guess what Google - that's what I typed so that's exactly what I was looking for. Shaping your results based on your browsing history will only give them another excuse to weight their results even more in favour of advertisers.
And if you're so sure that you believe in the "nothing" to hide argument, Kanhef, publish your unabridged surfing history for the last few years so we can all have a read.
"I have yet to see a good response to the 'if you want to hide it, you probably shouldn't do it' philosophical argument. Does anyone have a counter-argument?"
Here you are looking at it all wrong... It should be "If you are willing to let people look - you are probably not doing any thing illegal". The counter argument - "if you want to hide it, you probably shouldn't do it" - is nonsense. The reality is if you want to hide it - it might mean that you just want to be left alone.
The law of averages states that there is almost certainly a member of Al-Quaeda, the Russian Mafia or a peadophile working somewhere at Google. Do you want to give them free access to all your personal details, your daughter's emails, when your house will be empty etcetc?
Posted after your query, but the short form is that sufficient knowledge about you can be turned against you. My long post is below you, but I'll add one more wrinkle I didn't mention there: With sufficient knowledge about you I can frame you even if you are Caesar's wife. (Icon for planting evidence in your coat after finding out where you tend to leave it.)
I like to wank off into a sock whilst watching autopsies.
Did you want to know that? No? Perhaps I shouldn't have said it, after all, it's private.
It's also a lie, did I want you to know that? No, so why did I say it?
BECAUSE I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE.
<knock-knock> hmm, someone at the door, be right ba..
Sometimes people like to keep things hidden because they are embarrassing, or perhaps certain information in certain hands would be compromising as they would use it to disciminate against you. There is nothing illegal about wanting your privacy, so why insinuate that there is? Sounds like a straw-man argument to me.
Anything of any worth to you is worth protecting.
If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing of any worth.
Since most of us are not all powerful, we can not defend our possessions (or even our lives) against all and any people who might want to take it away from us.
So we hide it.
If you think you have nothing to hide you are stupid and will soon have much less to hide since somebody will steal what you have.
P.S.
The "nothing to hide" argument can be interpreted as racist, since it implies that any victim of persecution - such as the Jews during the Nazi regime - must per definition be guilty of something. Why else would they be hiding from the authorities?
For now we'll assume we live in the same wonderful USA where this Schmidt bell-end lives. Take a look at (not least) the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th and to an extent 9th amendment in the constitution this United States governement is sworn to uphold... or so we're told. America! (we love you) (with apologies to Slim)
In the UK, there's again no specific law, but a multitude: http://www.yourrights.org.uk/yourrights/privacy/index.html
There is also the problem that society at large often has a peculiar distaste for many things that aren't 'normal', particularly in the bedroom and particularly in America.
Given the persecution people get for things like homosexuality this sort of privacy is a necessary human right.
"I have yet to see a good response to the 'if you want to hide it, you probably shouldn't do it' philosophical argument. Does anyone have a counter-argument?"
I have to pay my bills and I don't want others to see what companies I'm using or how much. Economic transactions render this argument obsolete.
Schmidt isn't telling how much he's paid,either, so the argument is false even for himself (for anybody, everyone has something to hide).
You could force a new IP address onto each connection each night (like the Germans do, they drop the connection at about 2am and assign a new one from the pool). The ISP that does this keeps the IP logs for 3 months.
If you want to know who had what IP address at any time, you have to go file your demand in Germany in accordance with German law where the ISP is. Which makes sense since they're Germans and can vote for German laws, not US ones (like Patriot).
"If you're concerned about Google retaining your personal data, then you must be doing something you shouldn't be doing."
Yes, I am concerned about Google retaining my personal data.
Yes, I'm doing something I should not be doing.
I'm using services provided by Google. Which clearly I should not be doing. I should stop right away. You should, too.
Unfortunately everyone offering alternative services must be assumed to be equally evil, though at least they're not being self-righteous pricks about it while desperately pretending to absolutely not be evil.
I would like Mr Schmidt to tell me exactly how much he earns, and what he spends it on. And what his kids do with their money. And which position him and his wife prefer in bed.
No? Why? Nothing to hide? QED, thus.
Funny that it was only yesterday that I had so many people tell me I was paranoid about Google. Did it really take a senior pr*ck to pull a Ratners to open your eyes? Well, I'm glad it did at least happen in the end.
Just think before you make ANY, repeat, ANY information available to the Net, as that has no "undo" button.
The argument that Google has gone evil is just that the rules of capitalism are now set up so that every company is basically forced in that direction. Otherwise the shareholders get to sue you for insufficient greed.
The argument that Google has gone stupid is that it does NOT matter at all what you are doing. The point is that knowledge is power, and sufficient personal knowledge is power over the person. Even if you are purer than Caesar's wife, with enough personal knowledge you can be twisted or even flipped. Maybe you've never done anything wrong, but surely you have some weakness that could be tempted, if I only knew what it was. Heck, even if you have no weakness, with sufficient knowledge of your strengths I bet I could find some way to exploit at least one of your own strengths AGAINST you. No one is perfect, and anyone can be cracked. It's just a matter of resources--and especially the resource that is knowledge of the person. (No, I can't buy any claim of naivete in this case, even Google-sized naivete.)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
