More on Google and Privacy from the Electronic Freedom Foundation

Here is a story on the Electronic Freedom Foundation’s blog, Google Copies Your Hard Drive - Government Smiles in Anticipation. They raise some very important thoughts. Before I get into some of these, I do not want to be bashing Google for this. It is my understanding that Google is resisting efforts to make their data available for the wrong reasons. I also want to state that I used Google to find the online version (and thus the link for this post) of this article when I was sent the content without a link from a friend, Allan Denchfield of Carrier & Ives Move & Relocation Management..

There were many other mentions of this title in the Google search as a lot of others have written on it or taken the title from what I believe is the original one to use this title. While Google is certainly not to use the data it gets to make money, it is my understanding that they use it to target their ads and offer it in an anonymous and aggregated way to others to for marketing research. But all this increased transparency can be used for not so nice purposes. I asked before in Google’s Expansion into Wifi: The Empire Reaches Out. Of course, I used my Google site search on my blog to find this post from the over 1,000 ones that exist. Thanks to you readers, I am even making a some money on my Google Adsense.

In this latest case, the Electronic Freedom Foundation writes, “If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password.”

This is enough to convince me not to use it but then I am not a tools guy anyway. On the other hand, Google stores a lot of other things on its servers simply to do the services it provides to us. The web is very powerful but I also assume that anything that is exposed to it is discoverable whether in a personal email, a Google search, or a blog. I do not have any deep dark secrets but I consider my hard drive as more protected. The current laws seem to feel the same way as the EFF article says that you have more privacy rights to what is on your hard drive than to what you send through an email. The article concludes that the privacy laws need to be updated to reflect the growing transparency of web 2.0 (they do not use these exact words not I am interpreting what they say). I agree.

Comments

[Lumpy]

I agree that this should concern us. "The search across computers" is something I am, personally afraid to use. I am also not a user of Google Desktop. (I simply use the search bar in FireFox.)

I do not mind Google using the data they collect for profit purposes. After all, that is why the search is free and that is how they pay all those Phds to develope better software for us to use to search with.

However, I think it is only fair to mention that Google was the ONLY entity to fight handing over search history to the US government. The others simply complied.

[Bill Ives]

Thanks for your comments and I agree with what you said. Google continues to be very smart in its business model and I admire them for this. They generally do things that promote openess and innovation by others such as their use of open APIs in Google Maps, etc. It is also smart business for them. I also have no problem with their anonymous use of aggregated data. I use Google a lot myself on my blog and on the web and appreciate it being free. They are are gaining more and more control over the information on the web. So far, this is largely for good reasons or at least for reasons that simply make money for them and do not hurt others. I admire their resistance to handing over this information to the government. Hwoever, I do think that all this accumulated power does require discussion so it stays in the common good.