5 ms·

> Seriously, though; how is my life negatively impacted (in actuality, not hypothetically), in a way that I can notice the difference, by letting Google track m

• cortesoft 10y ago
  Right, again, I am not saying that there aren't cases of people being harmed; however, none of those cases resonate with me because it is hard to imagine a situation where I would be harmed. Of course, I can imagine some crazy set of coincidences that lead to be being falsely accused of a crime I didn't commit, and then by more coincidences having my random search history make me look more guilty. I am sure that will probably happen to somebody, and it will totally suck and be unfair. The chances of it happening to me, however, seem very low; much lower, for example, than dying in a car crash when I drive to the store. I know there is a non-zero risk of dying in a car crash when I drive to the store, but it is low enough that I take the risk every week in return for the trade-off of getting groceries. The risk of a random search of mine coinciding with a false crime I am accused of seems low enough that it won't change my behavior with how I use google.
  • deadbunny 10y ago
    So, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear?
    • cortesoft 10y ago
      I wasn't trying to say that at all. I am all for limiting the government's ability to subpoena or access data collected by companies about us. If we allow the government to use wide nets to try to catch criminals, they are going to catch innocent people, and that is bad. What I am saying is that on an individual level, the risk seems low that my using google is going to end up in a bad situation for me. It is all about which options I am choosing between. When you ask me "Is it better to allow the government to collect information about everyone, and then use that to target suspicious individuals they find in that information, or is it better to limit that data collection and risk possibly missing some criminals?", then my answer is it is better to risk missing some criminals versus most likely harassing and possibly arresting innocent people because of false positives in the massive data collected. However, if you ask me "Is it better for you, as an individual, to use google services and let them collect data about your, or is it better to avoid google completely", then the answer to me is to use google. The direct risk to me is low enough for me to make the trade off.
      • zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
        > I wasn't trying to say that at all. I am all for limiting the government's ability to subpoena or access data collected by companies about us. If we allow the government to use wide nets to try to catch criminals, they are going to catch innocent people, and that is bad. I think your trust in laws is naive. A law doesn't self-enforce. The mere existence of a law does not limit de-facto power. You can not limit an entity's power by telling it that it is required to limit its own power. That might make exercising the power illegal, but it does not take away the actual power. And you don't have to look particularly far back into history to see how governments don't care about enforcing laws against themselves when that would limit their power. A lot of the things the NSA has been doing was illegal--did that stop them from doing it? No. As a matter of fact, they could eavesdrop on google's fibers, so they did, whether legal or not. If you really want to limit the power, you have to use technical measures that actually remove the power.
• eh78ssxv2f 10y ago
  This seems like a misleading example. It's like saying that users should not borrow books from library because if they borrow "How to murder 101", and then they murder somebody, they would be caught.