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Google Attempts to Allay US Privacy Fears
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Mar 27, 2008 09:04 AM
from the hard-to-do-when-you're-everywhere dept.
from the hard-to-do-when-you're-everywhere dept.
Ian Lamont writes "Google is in the midst of a full-court privacy effort in Washington that involves pushing consumer privacy legislation in U.S. Congress, reaching out to privacy advocates in an effort to allay concerns about its acquisition of DoubleClick, and working with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to 'fine-tune online advertising principles' that the agency proposed last year. Google has been under fire in Washington in recent years — the FTC investigated the Google/DoubleClick deal and the EFF has issued warnings over Google services in the past. Is Google being sincere about these issues, or is this effort mostly paying lip service to its 'do no evil' policy and an attempt to head off future clashes with policy makers?"
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Google helps ... (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words... google is going to 'do no evil'
Re:Google helps ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Google helps ... (Score:5, Insightful)
China, France and Germany, on the other hand, have required Google to actively censor their sites. Google's expressed some regret over paying the price for China, but it's not clear cut either way. If you fight the Chinese government on Chinese soil, you lose unless you're very good at hiding yourself. Do you honestly think that Google's going to be able to avoid the Chinese agents that come to shut them down and arrest their employees? Do you think China would be better off if Google had never gone there in the first place?
Parent
Re:Google helps ... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Google helps ... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but it is their place to decide WHERE they do business. Saudi Arabia may have a law that says a woman must be imprisoned for having pre-marital sex and that companies have to cooperate in any prosecution of such a case (by providing her emails and phone records, etc.). But I'm damn sure never going to follow that law because I'm damn sure never going to do business in Saudi Arabia as long as they have those kind of evil bullshit laws.
Google hides behind that lame "we're just following the law" excuse just because they don't want to give up the money they stand to make from the Chinese market. The only logical response to "we're just following the law" is "If their law requires you to do evil things if you're doing business in their country, then why are you doing business in their country in the first place?"
Parent
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If their law requires you to do evil things if you're doing business in their country, then why are you doing business in their country in the first place?
Who does it hurt for Google to not do business in China or Saudi Arabia? It hurts Google. It hurts the citizens, because they have fewer/no alternatives. It doesn't hurt China or Saudi Arabia, they'd probably prefer to have a homegrown solution which can more easily be bent to their will; Google would follow the letter of the law after they're compelled, a local company would follow the spirit of the law.
Even if the local company is defiant, they'll start doing whatever the government wants after a ser
Re:Google helps ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And please don't say the USA or UK I already know I don't agree with some of their laws
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And Google, in this case, would different how from the throngs of patriotic, God-fearing Americans shopping the aisles of Walmart? Or Slashdotters boasting about the price they paid for a piece of electronics similarly made in China?
Look, each and every one of us participates or plays some role in both good and evil every day. Your participation
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patriotic, God-fearing Americans shopping the aisles of Walmart?
Those have never walked the earth since Sam Walton died, taking all the US goods with him. Now, they spend money antagonizing anyone who questions their presence. Should a product be defective, they'll pass you to someone more corrupt than Enron.
Or Slashdotters boasting about the price they paid for piece of electronics similarly made in China?
You misspelled junk.
The difference with Google is their background having no shred of humility - merely Stanford snobbery. Try again when they have only one class of shares and someone forces their hand out of China.
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What use would it be to get blocked?
They arent doing evil, thats the Chinese government.
No they arent supporting the government, they are supporting the people.
I'd imagine that they are quite annoyed by the Chinese but there is nothing they can do about it.
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I bet a lot of gun-runners, drug-dealers, pimps, and others who indirectly profit off evil tell themselves the same thing every night. "Hey, I'm not doing evil, THEY'RE the ones doing it. So what if I make some money helping them? If I didn't do it, someone else would."
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
"Just a bit silly", perhaps, but it's in response to Google's own self-promotion.
People don't say to GM or IBM or McDonald's, "I can't believe you're selling in China." Everyone expects GM to be about money, money, money.
But if Google sells itself as a new economy, uber-green (being good for humanity, much less the planet) company, they'd better expect a lot of heat when their privacy behavior is gray, or when they help keep the internet from being the instrument for change that some hope it will be.
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Is Google not a collection of people? Don't individuals have the responsiblity to help defend the rights of others? Don't individuals have the responsiblity to stand up to unjust laws? Our founders believed that an unjust law was not a law the moment it was passed, you can see that in what happens when a law is deemed unconsitutional.
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No, fighting the government is neither evil nor good without motivation; what motivation do they have to fight the government? They've fought it before, and I haven't heard of them caving since.
Well, since the government likes to hand out National Security Letters (aka No Such Letter) with relative abandon, none of us are likely to hear about it.
My worry isn't with Google abusing its database, it's with the government co-opting the database for The War on Drugs/Terror/Prostitution/etc. If you can't imagine that such a thing would happen, I'd suggest that is very naive.
Strict privacy laws protecting consumers would have prevented things like voluntary TelCo cooperation with the NSA. I can't imagin
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Think about the help they've given to china in the great firewall,
You have your facts confused. China had deals with MSN and Yahoo! that were outright and undeniably evil (Yahoo! having gotten some bad press over turning over records on dissidents who were then jailed).
Google WAS UNAVAILABLE IN CHINA. In order to be available, they had to provide a site that was filtered. They did so. Having done so, they didn't improve or harm the state of the Great Firewall, nor could they have in any way. They had exactly two options: appear alongside their competition in China in a g
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Which is better for the Chinese people: having Google provide a slightly censored set of search results for people in China, or having Google be blocked completely for the Chinese and them being forced to use a China-run search engine? There's no other option here. If Google doesn't censor results, the Chinese government would be more than happy to just block them completely. An extremely evil, but Chinese-run, com
Sincere? I don't think so. (Score:3, Insightful)
The latter. This is pure damage-control on Google's part...they can see their "do no evil" veneer is starting to wear a bit thin, and are busily applying a few more layers of polish to keep things looking pretty. If they were actually sincere, they might address some of the root problems, such as the glaring privacy issues inherent in Gmail and Google Desktop.
Their Power (Score:5, Interesting)
While I believe that they are really trying to stick to the 'Do No Evil' ideal, I do believe that the groundwork they are laying down now is rife with the ability to be exploited in the future when, perhaps, they are run by people less concerned with idealism and more concerned about profits.
What they really need to dop is develop a variety of ways that they can, as much as they can, prevent themselves from abusing the power they have. Third party inspectors, not collecting some of the data in the first place, written and signed contracts concerning ethics and whatnot.
Will they all eventually fail? Most likely. But they can do a lot to slow the spread of the inevitable corruption.
At this point I think they are too idealistic to see it that way, though.
Is Google becoming the new Evil? (Score:2)
Re:Their Power (Score:5, Insightful)
And with that statement, Google proves that their massive PR campaign has worked.
Google is evil and does do evil quite regularly. They are, in fact, at least as evil as any other typical publicly traded company.
I'm not sure now if they ever actually cleaved to the "don't be evil" philosophy, or just started it as a PR campaign and went about their business, cheerfully ignoring it internally.
Google is idealistic? Not even remotely--they're aggressive, mercenary, and willing to sell their grandmother's sexual secrets for a profit. In other words they're just another company. The only thing that makes them unique is their amazing ability to keep blinders on most of the otherwise internet-savy public.
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opt-in (Score:2, Interesting)
Contrast to Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)
Stalking (Score:2)
Anthropomorphization (Score:5, Insightful)
A corporation is a thing, not a person. It has no more consciousness than a hammer does, and therefore the concept of morality does not apply. A hammer is neither moral not immoral. It is amoral, and a corporation should be handled similarly.
This unconscious anthropomorphizing and the atmosphere of anonymization it creates has tempted more than a few people to try to pull some pretty underhanded stunts, particularly in the last ten years, then turn around and point at the sign out on the front lawn and claim that it was the "corporation" that actually did the foul deed. Then the hue and cry goes out to punish the instrument instead of the instigators. As if the cubicle worker and the office janitor had the faintest idea.
What rubbish.
In a hit-and-run, it isn't the car that is prosecuted. Similarly, the question should not what "Google" is doing, but what the CEO, Dr. Eric Schmidt is doing. Or, at most, what the members of the Board of Directors are doing. People make the decisions; not the hammer.
Now; how about we this try again, and this time plug the names of people in, instead of an anonymous, faceless corporation's?
'Nuff said.
.
Re:Anthropomorphization (Score:5, Insightful)
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So then you have some operations-level people - the folks actually charged with implementing how things are done - making decisions. Who are they? Well, as far as the public is concerned, nobody. Utterly faceless, no reputation and no known iden
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Google is still a business (Score:3, Insightful)
The motto isn't "do no evil"! (Score:2)
If you're going to create a straw man, try to at least get the little facts straight before you put on the tinfoil...
-B
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How do you know?
What comes to mind (Score:2)
Ever heard the phrase "agitate for change"...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Speaking of finesse, I personally appreciate a more graceful and elegant solution to achieving goals. In fact, I'm curious to know if the _goals_ of Google are more subtle themselves than people tend to realize.
In counterpoint, I offer the current U.S. Administration which: 1) demonstrates little finesse, and 2) far less productivity than the costs merit.
So *that's* why I find quarters in the washer (Score:2)
On the finesse side, there *is* a lot about Google that is potentially subversive in a good way.
But I can't help but notice this story about Google promising Washington they'll be good (so please don't regulate us) on the same page as one about Comcast suddenly promising to be good when threatened by net-neutrality regulation.
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- both companies are very different in character and past behavior
- Google is being proactive in the matter rather than responding to threats from D.C.
I'm still willing to bet that Google is working from more idealistic principles than most and, as such, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt way more than I'd give to Comcast or most other compa
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Google is a bit like an Obama. Lots of falutin' rhetoric promising new horizons, but not on the scene long enough to be trusted to not "Be Evil" in the way that the bottom line ultimately demands. You want to hope, and hey that China thing, that DoubleClick thing, everybod
Do I lean left, right, or neither? (Score:2)
Google's and Obama's appeal to me is that they are willing to pursue the idealism when others are not. For me, that is an invaluable attribute for a leader. After years of cynicism, I've tempered my fears a bit to be hopeful again and I believe I can trust, not only in the possibilities that these two entities offer, but also in the consequences if they fail. As another player in these dramas, our societies have proven to have serious bite when people make mistakes.
Again, citing the e
Protection racket (Score:3, Insightful)
They realize, just as Microsoft eventually did, that if you're a large profitable corporation that you better be sending your protection money to Washington D.C. Otherwise, armies of government lawyers and bureaucrats will be working to make life hell for you.
i seem to remember (Score:2)
As evil as they are/will be (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, Google doesn't want competition!
Parent
Limits to succeed in other ways (Score:2, Insightful)
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Their PR people are touting "No Evil" as the company aggressively expands their monopoly. Don't pee down my back and tell me its raining!
Re:I have a question (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Also I don't see how your political rhetoric (which may or may not be true)is actually connected to the story, or to Google (outside of an unsupported allegation). I'm getting sick of people inserting their politics into every medium