Why Google is the Biggest Threat to Americans' Privacy

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Karl Auerbach [karl () cavebear com]
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2008 12:04 PM
To: scleland () precursor com
Cc: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] Why Google is the Biggest Threat to Americans' Privacy

> From: Scott Cleland [scleland () precursor com]
> Subject:  Why Google is the Biggest Threat to Americans' Privacy
>
> Why Google's the single biggest threat to Americans' privacy today.

It would be interesting to also compare Google to the concerns that were
expressed way, way back in the 1973 HEW report on Privacy (visible on
the net via
http://aspe.hhs.gov/DATACNCL/1973privacy/tocprefacemembers.htm ) and the
concerns that went into the rather toothless US Privacy Act of 1974 (the
Senate report is visible on my website at
http://www.cavebear.com/archive/nsf-dns/senate_report.htm )

Back then the world of information systems (at least those outside the
intelligence world) needed some kind of hard key to link records, hence
the fear of those reports of the use of the social security number as a
link.  Google has gone way past that and uses other ways to link data
which makes it all the more insidious. (I believe that other search
companies have even more technically interesting linkage techniques than
Google's, but those company's databases are small potatoes compared to
Google's system.)

I recently reviewed a bid by Google to provide email services to the
students, faculty, and staff of a large (very large) university.  It
appeared that few on the university side had noticed that Google would
be building or supplementing a dossier on every student.  The innocent
sins of childhood and experiments of adolescence would attach forever.
It will be a lot easier for today's university kids to remove a tattoo
in 30 years than it will be to erase a Google record of compromising
photo taken at a party and posted on Facebook.  (There were other issues
- for instace because email would be in the hands of a third party, the
university's un-perfected patent rights could become vulnerable and
ownership, or at least the right to copy, of creative works expressed in
email could come into question.)

The future we feared in 1973 is the reality of 2008.

                --karl--



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