Privacy Is Dead: Google, AT&T
Recently Google was accused by some group as being very disrespectful of privacy. I’m rather hooked on Google, as I use Gmail, iGoogle, Google Reader, Google Analytics, and Google Adsense. Still, I feel rather uncomfortable with any one company having too much control over my online life. I don’t surf with Google history on and am one of those folks who has their cookies deleted on every exit of the browser. Yes, it forces me to re-enter passwords repeatedly, but I’m willing to tolerate that inconvenience.
So I was actually surprised to hear that Google plans on reducing the amount of time they store their search logs to 18 — 24 months. What? That sounds about 17.9999 months too high, to me. But I don’t really understand what they do with all that data.
When Google Street View debuted a few weeks ago, I naively assumed they had removed all the photographs of people because, well, that would bother me if I saw myself on Google Maps, and seriously, does some guy picking his nose in Google Street View help you get from point A to point B? But no, the people are still in there and I’m actually pretty surprised there hasn’t been more uproar — just some lady in Oakland concerned about her cat. Now the cat is on the Internet via the New York Times, and I guess that’s okay. It’s just knowing explicitly where the cat lives that’s creepy.
Of course you can ask Google to take down an image. But that opt out scenario is a very YouTube strategy — put everything online and leave up to the offended to take the content down. Now the girl in the thong knows how Viacom feels.
There’s that old saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely. What checks and balances do we have on Google? Just Yahoo! and Microsoft? Not exactly comforting stuff.
To find out what a less honorable corporation does with absolute power, check out AT&T which just decided help the RIAA when it comes to piracy on its networks. Once again, I’m on AT&T DSL and the more I think about it, I have no good reason to stay with them. Maybe it’s time to shop around.
But then I think a bit more and realize that if I wanted to get an iPhone, I might have to do business with Cingular which is one and the same with AT&T. Crap. I wish we could quit these guys… but it’s sooooo hard.
In either case I don’t have anything to hide; it’s just the principle of the thing. More and more it seems we’re moving towards a surveillance society where all this data on what we do is being stored for commercial purposes. There are excuses all over the place why this should be so, but mostly it’s just to sell us more crap we don’t need. And what’s annoying is even if the corporation itself doesn’t do anything crass with the data, all it takes is one security slip-up, disgruntled employee, or hacker and all that data is suddenly made public. Despite assurances that this won’t happen, I’d bet good money it does before that cookie expires in 2087.
The problem comes in that eventually, someone must evaluate that data and decide if something sneaky is going on. And that someone is inevitably going to be working for a corporation or the government — and do you trust either of them to do the right thing these days?
Check outthis huge list of close to 400 Google Street View privacy invasions:
http://streetviewgallery.corank.com
>But then I think a bit more and realize that if I wanted to get an iPhone,
>I might have to do business with Cingular which is one and the same
>with AT&T. Crap.
Nothing like have millions of trapped customers eh
somehow I don’t think that having a subsidize iPhone is worth condoning these new practices underway by AT&T
It’s like George Orwell wrote about in his book.
If a hacker wanted to know my every move, they could. All they need to do is monitor my debit card! Between my debit card and cell phone, they’d have a clear picture of my day.
It’s just creepy…
I added here the most amazing Street View.
A long time ago, Foucault wrote about The Panopticon as the perfect prison — basically surveillance of our complete lives that allows those in power to have control over us. The ownership of our online identities by a few private companies is scarily close to that theory.
Given the risks, I was underwhelmed by Eric Schmidt’s keynote at the recent Personal democracy Forum get together that I wrote about. The information that Google collects on us is the product they sell their clients — but there is very little transparency or oversight.
Supermom, I believe all the credit card companies share data, right? So they can piece together your credit risk? Yet another reason to carry cash.
It just depends on how paranoid one wants to get. I don’t think it’s practical (at least for me) to drop out because my entire livelihood is online. I just hope that the data being kept on some other fellow is way more interesting than mine.
SpraugeD it’s like the prisoner again… I gotta get back to posting about the series!
Cash, it’s hard for me to keep cash with my tribe. When one asks for a dollar, it adds up to $7.00 –gone!
I’m in the same predicament. My entire livelihood is online, from paid blogging-to affiliate marketing. I also have gmail, use youtube and depend on google page rank for my blogging ventures. Adsense contributes to my income too.
Google is a huge part of my life, for better or worse.
Yep. It’s a real connundrum for us as well. I really like the ability to have all our financial stuff online so I can track purchases and keep up to date on a daily basis. The flip side is this whole surveillance thing. I wonder if I should look into some other options though. It never hurts to shop around, and ultimately the power of the consumer is voting through our dollars.
Ah, of course SpraugeD spurred me to look up the Panopticon which led me to this interesting webpage discussing a “surveillance singularity” — good thoughts regarding technology used by law enforcement.
Understandable concerns, undoubtedly. These ideas are elaborated a bit in this CBS clip, which really made me think twice about Google’s new technology: http://thenewsroom.com/categories/Science%2Band%2BTechnology?c_id=wom-bc-je. While I’m having a hard time getting the stars out of my eyes because I’m so impressed with Street View and the technology/effort that went into it, I can definitely sympathize with those who feel even a little threatened by it. It’s a definite possibility that our culture is becoming too computerized.
- Jennifer from The Science Desk at TheNewsRoom.com