Google Privacy Quickies

Several notes about Google and privacy. First, Lucas123 informs us that Google's global privacy counsel blogged about an improvement in Google's data-retention policies: the company plans to anonymize data it stores about users after 18 months — a slight improvement on the "18 to 24 months" of the previous policy. This move may have come as a response to pressure from European regulators. Next, Spamicles sends in word that an EFF attorney has been photographed by Google's Street View. The funny thing is, this isn't the first time it's happened. Finally, word from reader tamar that if you choose to share a video from Google Video to another social network like MySpace, your username and password get sent over http in plaintext, rather than the more secure https.

plain text

I call BS regarding the google video thing, we all know it was ROT13'd twice.

Photographed in public? Oh well!

When will people learn that they shouldn't do things in public that they don't want people to see? It's PUBLIC. If you have something you want to hide, then by god don't do it in plain view of everyone!

Re:Photographed in public? Oh well!

This is true of most of the western world, too. It's actually not just true outside, either, but anyplace to which the public has access. For example, in a hotel in which you do not have to pass a guard to gain access to the rooms, it is completely legal to videotape or photograph people in the hallways... This is true at the very least in the US and Canada.

Re:Photographed in public? Oh well!

Zoom the image out and pan a little to the left (above the first parking meter). He's walking in front of a security camera.

Not pertinent, but thought it was interesting.

Re:Photographed in public? Oh well!

The problem is when what you are doing is captured permanently 'forever' on a platform that is regularly viewed globally by millions.

This is very different then being caught on someone's anonymous home video or even a news report which are generally at hot-spots and people are well aware they are being surveilled...

google's application, although technically cool, seems a bit extreme, for the tired excuse of 'public surveillance', especially sponsored by a for-profit corp.

a slippery slope, where the for-profit corps should get _none_ of the 'benefit of the doubt'.

Is it posted?

Is the privacy policy posted? So anyone who uses Google has the ability to find out how their information will be retained? And they use it anyway? What's the problem? Google doesn't provide an essential service. If you don't like the policy, don't use it. If enough people stop using it, they'll change their policy. Google isn't the government. Once you provide them with information, they have every right to retain it. Personally, I don't think their privacy policy is bad, so I use Google. However, there are other options out there.

Re:Is it posted?

Now that Google acquired DoubleClick, Google has far more information than just what users "knowingly" provide it. Google has the ability now to collate your perfectly identifiable personal information (GMail, Checkout) and can match that with info gathered from its ad service when you think you may not be using Google. You no longer know how much Google knows about you. That may be clear to the geeks at Slashdot, but not so for most public out there. If Google wants to claim that they "do no evil", they need to disclose what info they collect.

Myself included, most people don't care if the data is simply used for anonymous stats and for user profiling for internal use to improve their search performance. As censorship threats grow, we need better laws of disclosure when consumer information businesses grow beyond a certain point. We know ISP logs have been reviewed by the govt. I doubt if similar move has not been made with Google.

Now for conspiracy theories - Imagine a cabal that collects online records of all citizens for future use so that they may be discredited by their past harmless private behaviors when they develop public lives in time.

http vs https

One of the services which Google Video connects to, MySpace, doesn't ever use https..

This is the login page:
http://www.myspace.com/ [myspace.com]

Google PR

Think the timing of these announcements is at all related to the Google's (false) claim that Privacy International is run by a bunch of Microsoft shills yesterday being exposed? They got some bad pr there so this is part of Google's PR damage control. Kind of like Exxon or BP donating a few million bucks to some enviromentally friendly cause, its nice of them but doesnt change whats really going on.

Mattt Cutts (Google) responds

His take on Google's privacy (and eventual disagreement with Priv. Intl. UK) can be found at his blog [mattcutts.com]

Obligatory skit

Mr. Ken Andrews, of Leighton Road, Slough has concealed himself extremely well. He could be almost anywhere. He could be behind the wall, inside the water barrel, beneath a pile of leaves, up in the tree, squatting down behind the car, concealed in a hollow, or crouched behind any one of a hundred bushes. However, we happen to know he's in the water barrel.

[BOOM!]

This demonstrates the value of not being seen.

Skewed Odds

I guess if you take up smoking, you will have much better odds being photographed/video'd for these things. First smokers get the 20 minute break every hour to stand around in the nice out doors, now they get featured on google maps as a result. It's just not fair.

Makes me wonder...

...how much of their data retention is because of any pressure from the Bush administration, especially with things like the Patriot Act. It will be interesting to see how Google will act when being pressured by the US to do one thing and by Europe to do the other....

New Thinkgeek Product Idea

Robots.txt T-Shirt!

Greater Threat

I think the greater threat to liberty are the people who want to outlaw taking photographs in public.

As an amateur photographer, it scares me to think I will eventually need to be licensed to carry my Nikon if these "privacy" nazis get their way.

stop whining and do something

Data retention without an IP is worthless

http://www.mysecureisp.com/ [mysecureisp.com]

also.. http://www.blackboxsearch.com/ [blackboxsearch.com]

Anonymize _how_?

Anonymize? How do they plan to do that? AOL released "anonymized" search data - they replaced each unique user with a random numeric ID. And people were tracked down. Consider this New York Times [nytimes.com] article:

A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749

The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher's anonymity, but it was not much of a shield. No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period...

And search by search, click by click, the identity of AOL user No. 4417749 became easier to discern. There are queries for "landscapers in Lilburn, Ga," several people with the last name Arnold and "homes sold in shadow lake subdivision gwinnett county georgia."

It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma Arnold...

aggregation and availability are the problems

People are pointing out that it's perfectly legal for someone to go down a public street and photograph anybody's front door and window, and are using that as a justification for some of Google's problematic privacy policies.

As a recent victim of a burglary in San Francisco, I've come to a different point of view. Sure, it's understandable that an individual should be able to walk down my street and photograph all the property there, especially if it's for some personal project, but when a corporation comes around and systematically photographs every house of a huge portion of San Francisco, and then organizes it into a easily accessable database, and all for profit, then that becomes a issue of a different nature.

In the pre-Google world if a burglar wanted to case a street he or she would have to physically go to that street and take photographs and notes. There is a tangible cost to getting that information that balances out its public availability. Now, all that person has to do is go to Google's street views and get exposed to some ads in order to case out the most vulnerable homes on practically every street in San Francisco. Google's aggregation and packaging of that public information vastly increases the potential for the abuse of privacy, even if the source of that information is public to begin with.

I predict the Next Big Meme...

...will be going around areas that haven't been Street Viewed with t-shirts, signs, costumes and/or other silliness on the chance that they'll be "immortalized" by Google. HI MOM!

Privacy Dashboard

Now Google's mooting the idea of a privacy dashboard [zdnet.co.uk]. Sounds... interesting...

Quickies?

Quickies? That is either a subtle hint in the title or a freudian slip. But the title seems fitting in that it suggests Google gave privacy a quick shag. :)

Privavy and Obscurity

All this bitching about google's harm to privacy is really ridiculous.

For starters it is just a mistake to say that google is causing a loss of privacy. Privacy is what you lose when someone peers in your window while your having sex. You haven't lost any privacy, merely obscurity, if someone takes your picture while you are having sex in the public park. Google tells you upfront what information it's collecting and what it's doing with it so you can hardly claim you thought it was totally private and heck it even lets you control alot of the info they have (delete things from search history). Moreover, it isn't like google is somehow invasively tracking information that other companies don't capture, you are just worried they will keep it longer.

Moreover, the real harm would be if people weren't aware that their activities and clickstreams online were probably being monitored. Either you have to admit that google poses no particular privacy risk or you think that without google people would feel that their online activities were anonymous and not being tracked, the net result of which being that people wouldn't even realize that if they wanted to keep their activities a total secret they better use something like Tor.

Why don't they filter them out?

See my small cartoon: http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2007/06 /the_sophisticat.html [typepad.com] Bye, Oliver