GOOGLE IS NOT IN THE BUSINESS OF KEEPING YR SECRETS

[defrog]

ITEM: Google CEO Eric Schmidt tells Maria Bartiromo that if Google can find it, it’s not private, and if you don’t like it, stop doing private stuff.

I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.

To be fair, I think what Schmidt was trying to say is that if you want to keep certain aspects of yr life private, don’t put them online. Which is technically good advice. Especially from a guy who once blacklisted CNET for publishing info about him gathered from Google searches, including salary, neighborhood, hobbies and political donations.

But it’s worth taking his words at face value of only to reject the idea that “If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place,” which is a variation of the axiom that Bush and his fans used to deploy to justify massive surveillance programs in the name of catching terrorists: “If yr afraid of losing yr privacy, you must have something to hide.”

Which is a false statement because it assumes that purpose of privacy is to hide a wrongdoing. And the reason we’ve lost so much privacy in the age of Mass Surveillance is because so many people have bought into the idea that people who advocate privacy have something to hide, and that removing that privacy will keep them safe.

Bruce Schneier wrote a brilliant essay on why this is a problem – three years ago. I recommend it.

Private lessons,

This is dF

Comments

[thelastaerie.livejournal.com]

I think his statement makes very much sense if he changed it to "stop putting private stuff on insecure platforms" at the end.

Recently fiasco at our office: some poor guy's girlfriend ranting the guy's boss being unfair and rude and forgetting that they had met in social functions and the boss is on her facebook friend list.

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that might have been what he was trying to get at, and if he'd said it that way, he might not be getting flack from privacy advocates. But it's always good to take a chance to make clear that privacy isn't just about hiding stuff you might get in trouble for.

As for yr office fiasco guy, that's why I (1) have separate profiles for work and friends and (2) I don't add friends indiscriminately. If yr adding so many people that yr forgetting some of them employ you, yr doing it wrong.