Google Seeks 'Do-No-Discoverable-Evil' Patent 109
theodp writes "E-mails and other communications between employees,' explains Google in a newly-published patent application for its Policy Violation Checker invention, 'can implicate potential violations of company policy or local, state or federal law that can go unchecked by attorneys or other legal personnel.' So how can you avoid those embarrassing Goldman Sachs and Enron e-mail gaffes? Use Google's 'methods and systems for identifying problematic phrases in an electronic document'! From the patent application: 'Documents may be used as evidence in court, administrative, or other proceedings. It is in a company's best interest to minimize or eliminate policy violations and/or situations that could give rise to legal liability. It is also often in a company's best interest to be able to Pack [?] these situations. Problematic phrases include, but are not limited to, phrases that present policy violations, have legal implications, or are otherwise troublesome to a company, business, or individual.' So, if you can't Do-No-Evil, at least you can Do-No-Discoverable-Evil!"
Re:Clippy:Do you want to really say that and be su (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not really sure that this is even something they can patent? Isn't their prior art?
I seem to recall that the various companies (like banks) have programs in place that do stuff like automatically redact and prohibit things like emailing a document that contains a social security number. Using the above example of SSNs, I seem to recall that it would redact SSNs by changing 000-00-0000 to ***-**-**** or the likes?
I didn't read the patent application but examining emails and other documents for risky content that increase liability seems to have been long-since done and fairly run-of-the-mill considering that it is already in use and has been for some time.
give me 6 lines written by the most honest man... (Score:2, Interesting)
and I will find something in them to have him hanged.
The problem with constant surveillance and logging is that it doesn't matter what you say. It just takes coming to the attention of someone in power to get yourself fired, bankrupted, imprisoned or worse.
And that is why anonymity is the only defense against power. As long as the powerful people think they need to maintain a facade of "legitimacy" then they can't punish people at random. And that is why powerful interests are working so hard to remove the ability of individuals to remain anonymous.
The only way that true freedom will exist in the future is if there is a global communication network that isn't under the control of any government or corporation.
google needs to have people believe in safe email (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Clippy:Do you want to really say that and be su (Score:2, Interesting)
I work in a company that sells user-configurable deep inspection appliances. One of the first things shown on introductory course to the products was writing a fingerprint that searched for keywords on email traffic, and which was used to terminate a connection before such keywords would have reached the recipient. Although network intrusion prevention systems are mostly designed to detect computer security threats, every even minimally flexible system has this feature, and it has been demonstrated like this a million times. The patent system is patently rotten if Google is granted this patent, and they actually succeed in using it to limit competition.
Prevents innocent mistakes and costly cleanup (Score:5, Interesting)
Equally, it can be used to not do it; how it is used depends on the users intent, it isn't inherent in the patented method. (Although "violations of company policy", called out in the patent as well as violations of the law, are most interesting for users who are trying to control what is done to align with policy and less useful -- actively harmful to the company, in fact -- if individual email users use it for concealment.)
Certainly, I know in many jobs I've had there would have been less cleanup for other people to do if staff that were innocently ignorant of details of company policy and/or controlling law had something reading their email that caught potential problems and pointed them in the right direction before they sent out emails to customers, contractors, etc.
Detecting context (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the key new thing that most people are missing is the first phrase after "comprising" in claim 1: "detecting a context of the electronic document", and the fact that pretty much everything in the patent (including the identification of whether particular phrases are problematic) depends on the detected context. Its not simple blind phrase checking.
The patent system is patently rotten independently of that, but most of the arguments being used to dismiss the novelty of this invention in this thread appear to be missing the key point in the method.