3 ms·

And who is going to build that illegal feature into Google's services? And how much are that person, and the other persons that know about it, going to be paid

by tinco 8y ago

And who is going to build that illegal feature into Google's services? And how much are that person, and the other persons that know about it, going to be paid for them to not be a liability? Maybe I'm naieve, but I feel building automated law breaking systems is not something corporations do. I have no doubt individuals within corporations break laws whenever they feel like they can get away with it, but leaving trails like checked-in source code, and operating services that other services depend on, that just sounds like too much of a liability to me..

badestrand 8y ago
> Maybe I'm naieve, but I feel building automated law breaking systems is not something corporations do Did you already forget the VW diesel scandal? That was exactly that - a huge corporation systematically breaking the law with lots of people even in the highest ranks aware of and supporting it.
- tinco 8y ago
  Well yeah, and it was ridiculously dumb, lots of people go to jail and big fines were levied. I suppose that you have a point and corporations might do it. At the same time I like to believe it's just not worth it for them.
  - contravariant 8y ago
    I can find a few small fines, but as far as I can tell nobody went to jail for that one.
    - consumer451 8y ago
      > A Volkswagen AG compliance executive who pleaded guilty in the U.S. for his role in the company’s $30 billion emissions cheating scandal was sentenced to 7 years in prison. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-executive-sentenced-to-7-years-in-prison-for-diesel-role https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-execut...
      - detaro 8y ago
        And Germany temporarily jailed a bunch of executives (including Audi's CEO, who is still in jail as far as I know) this year to stop them interfering with investigations, and results of those investigations might lead to more being sentenced once they're done.
    - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
      yes, VW was small fines. GDPR, especially for something like what is being suggested here, would be astronomical. Not saying nobody will do it, because humans are stupid. to quote vincent vega re: the keying of his car, it would be worth having them do it, just to catch them doing it.
      - carlmr 8y ago
        >VW was small fines https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/29/investing/volkswagen-diesel-cost-30-billion/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/29/investing/volkswagen-diesel... $30 billion is not small fines, add to that that it isn't over yet. It's already more than what BP paid for their oil spill, and the oil spill is thousand times worse in terms of its environmental effect. At least in this article it's the biggest fine for any corporate crime levied. https://www.alternet.org/economy/17-worst-corporate-crimes-2015 https://www.alternet.org/economy/17-worst-corporate-crimes-2... There are very few fines that have been higher. Hyundai only paid $100 million for their emission scandal one year before, with not much fanfare: http://time.com/3555696/hyundai-kia-fined-carbon-emissions/ http://time.com/3555696/hyundai-kia-fined-carbon-emissions/
  - benologist 8y ago
    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1999/09/top-100-corporate-criminals-1990s/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1999/09/top-100-corpora... Exxon, Royal Caribbean, Rockwell International, Warner- Lambert, Teledyne, and United Technologies each pled guilty to more than one crime during the 1990s. https://www.alternet.org/economy/17-worst-corporate-crimes-2015 https://www.alternet.org/economy/17-worst-corporate-crimes-2... Five banks (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS) had to pay a total of $2.5 billion to the Justice Department and $1.8 billion to the Federal Reserve in connection with charges that they conspired to manipulate foreign exchange markets. https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/4-of-the-biggest-crimes-committed-by-ceos.html/ https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/4-of-the-biggest-cri... In 2008 and 2009, a salmonella outbreak killed nine people across the U.S. and sickened hundreds more. The source of the contamination was traced back to the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), a Virginia company run out of its CEO’s garage. The salmonella outbreak turned out not to be a tragic accident, but rather the direct result of PCA’s and CEO Stewart Parnell’s decision to intentionally ship contaminated products. In 2014, Parnell was convicted for his role in the crime. The list just goes on and on and on and on.
- drewmol 8y ago
  Or Uber using Greyball to try and evade regulatory enforcement in specific locations?
throwaway6789 8y ago
I take great care to separate my browsing sessions. Still I find YouTube recommendations on my main account on topics that I watched on another machine in my home network. My typical setup involves: 1. Virtualbox VM restored to a snapshot after each usage (browser completely clean, never uses my main Google accounts here) 2. Firefox on main machine with clear all cookies set, ublock origin. Rarely logs into my main Google account, if I do, always in incognito. 3. pfsense with block lists for Google & Microsoft 4. Mobile with Disconnect tracking blocker (mobile wide) plus Firefox focus & Firefox set to clear all history on exit. Still Google manages to track me. Whenever I see those recommendations in YouTube, I feel like Google is mocking me - "ha ha do whatever you want, you can never hide from us".
- tinco 8y ago
  Maybe you ended in the "people that put too much effort in anti-tracking" bin, and you get recommendations for those kinds of people :p
  - fapjacks 8y ago
    You jest, but having worked in the ad tech industry, I can say this is actually a completely viable means of tracking people. This is why you don't load uBlock Origin into your Tor Browser or use a custom User-Agent string while using your VPN. Everything you do that is different than what everyone else does (i.e. the default) is a means of identifying you. And if I could do it at that startup, certainly Google can do it in a million more ways a million times more accurately.
    - ReverseCold 8y ago
      Changing your user agent is also probably a bad idea. There are other ways to detect browser, so you're pretty unique of you're using Firefox on MacOS with a Chrome for Windows user agent.
      - fapjacks 8y ago
        Yes, don't use any custom extensions in TB or any custom user-agent string or otherwise deviate from the default.
mtgx 8y ago
You're right. Google probably wouldn't build an outright illegal feature. However Google would and has built features that are at the very least in legal grey areas/haven't been explicitly regulated. Thing like the WiFi tracking feature, bypassing safari's cookie restrictions, tracking android users' location even when they opted out of that or had their GPS feature turned off, and so on. They did and will do that again because they know whenever they get caught they have to pay several million dollars at most after years of such violations and then they can be on their way to rinse and repeat with something else like that.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  Google was fined billions for outright illegal practices and is mostly concerned about power, not illegality. Furthermore, in hierarchical structures people only care what those above them think. "Illegality" of the feature is something for lawyers, not them. At best they rely on morals, but even that is screwed by perks, incentives, the environment they work in, peer pressure, management, corporate propaganda, etc. Generally in such structures you can make people do anything, even kill other people and be ready to get killed.
  - mtgx 8y ago
    I dont think Google was fined billions over privacy violations, just antitrust ones and only in the EU. In the US Eric Schmidt's constant lobbying to Obama got them off the hook for the antitrust investigation even though the FTC staff investigating their violations recommended antitrust action against Google.
Arainach 8y ago
Don't frame it as "build an illegal feature". Frame it as "build a feature" and hand it off to an enthusiastic junior dev eager to please their manager and get ahead. At a previous employer, I had a manager ask if, when implementing certain functionality, I could do it in such a way that it coincidentally broke third party tools attempting to interact with the component. They were very careful to phrase this in an offhand manner and never discuss it over legally discoverable mediums (only face to face). The entire matter seemed dubious and I certainly didn't want my name associated with such a move in the source control history, so I never implemented that request, it was never mentioned again, and nothing ever came of it - but a different dev might have jumped much faster at it.

by tinco 8y ago

badestrand 8y ago

> Maybe I'm naieve, but I feel building automated law breaking systems is not something corporations do Did you already forget the VW diesel scandal? That was exactly that - a huge corporation systematically breaking the law with lots of people even in the highest ranks aware of and supporting it.

tinco 8y ago
Well yeah, and it was ridiculously dumb, lots of people go to jail and big fines were levied. I suppose that you have a point and corporations might do it. At the same time I like to believe it's just not worth it for them.
- contravariant 8y ago
  I can find a few small fines, but as far as I can tell nobody went to jail for that one.
  - consumer451 8y ago
    > A Volkswagen AG compliance executive who pleaded guilty in the U.S. for his role in the company’s $30 billion emissions cheating scandal was sentenced to 7 years in prison. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-executive-sentenced-to-7-years-in-prison-for-diesel-role https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-execut...
    - detaro 8y ago
      And Germany temporarily jailed a bunch of executives (including Audi's CEO, who is still in jail as far as I know) this year to stop them interfering with investigations, and results of those investigations might lead to more being sentenced once they're done.
  - bryanrasmussen 8y ago
    yes, VW was small fines. GDPR, especially for something like what is being suggested here, would be astronomical. Not saying nobody will do it, because humans are stupid. to quote vincent vega re: the keying of his car, it would be worth having them do it, just to catch them doing it.
    - carlmr 8y ago
      >VW was small fines https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/29/investing/volkswagen-diesel-cost-30-billion/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/29/investing/volkswagen-diesel... $30 billion is not small fines, add to that that it isn't over yet. It's already more than what BP paid for their oil spill, and the oil spill is thousand times worse in terms of its environmental effect. At least in this article it's the biggest fine for any corporate crime levied. https://www.alternet.org/economy/17-worst-corporate-crimes-2015 https://www.alternet.org/economy/17-worst-corporate-crimes-2... There are very few fines that have been higher. Hyundai only paid $100 million for their emission scandal one year before, with not much fanfare: http://time.com/3555696/hyundai-kia-fined-carbon-emissions/ http://time.com/3555696/hyundai-kia-fined-carbon-emissions/
- benologist 8y ago
  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1999/09/top-100-corporate-criminals-1990s/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1999/09/top-100-corpora... Exxon, Royal Caribbean, Rockwell International, Warner- Lambert, Teledyne, and United Technologies each pled guilty to more than one crime during the 1990s. https://www.alternet.org/economy/17-worst-corporate-crimes-2015 https://www.alternet.org/economy/17-worst-corporate-crimes-2... Five banks (Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS) had to pay a total of $2.5 billion to the Justice Department and $1.8 billion to the Federal Reserve in connection with charges that they conspired to manipulate foreign exchange markets. https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/4-of-the-biggest-crimes-committed-by-ceos.html/ https://www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/4-of-the-biggest-cri... In 2008 and 2009, a salmonella outbreak killed nine people across the U.S. and sickened hundreds more. The source of the contamination was traced back to the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), a Virginia company run out of its CEO’s garage. The salmonella outbreak turned out not to be a tragic accident, but rather the direct result of PCA’s and CEO Stewart Parnell’s decision to intentionally ship contaminated products. In 2014, Parnell was convicted for his role in the crime. The list just goes on and on and on and on.
drewmol 8y ago
Or Uber using Greyball to try and evade regulatory enforcement in specific locations?

throwaway6789 8y ago

I take great care to separate my browsing sessions. Still I find YouTube recommendations on my main account on topics that I watched on another machine in my home network. My typical setup involves: 1. Virtualbox VM restored to a snapshot after each usage (browser completely clean, never uses my main Google accounts here) 2. Firefox on main machine with clear all cookies set, ublock origin. Rarely logs into my main Google account, if I do, always in incognito. 3. pfsense with block lists for Google & Microsoft 4. Mobile with Disconnect tracking blocker (mobile wide) plus Firefox focus & Firefox set to clear all history on exit. Still Google manages to track me. Whenever I see those recommendations in YouTube, I feel like Google is mocking me - "ha ha do whatever you want, you can never hide from us".

tinco 8y ago
Maybe you ended in the "people that put too much effort in anti-tracking" bin, and you get recommendations for those kinds of people :p
- fapjacks 8y ago
  You jest, but having worked in the ad tech industry, I can say this is actually a completely viable means of tracking people. This is why you don't load uBlock Origin into your Tor Browser or use a custom User-Agent string while using your VPN. Everything you do that is different than what everyone else does (i.e. the default) is a means of identifying you. And if I could do it at that startup, certainly Google can do it in a million more ways a million times more accurately.
  - ReverseCold 8y ago
    Changing your user agent is also probably a bad idea. There are other ways to detect browser, so you're pretty unique of you're using Firefox on MacOS with a Chrome for Windows user agent.
    - fapjacks 8y ago
      Yes, don't use any custom extensions in TB or any custom user-agent string or otherwise deviate from the default.

mtgx 8y ago

You're right. Google probably wouldn't build an outright illegal feature. However Google would and has built features that are at the very least in legal grey areas/haven't been explicitly regulated. Thing like the WiFi tracking feature, bypassing safari's cookie restrictions, tracking android users' location even when they opted out of that or had their GPS feature turned off, and so on. They did and will do that again because they know whenever they get caught they have to pay several million dollars at most after years of such violations and then they can be on their way to rinse and repeat with something else like that.

zzzcpan 8y ago
Google was fined billions for outright illegal practices and is mostly concerned about power, not illegality. Furthermore, in hierarchical structures people only care what those above them think. "Illegality" of the feature is something for lawyers, not them. At best they rely on morals, but even that is screwed by perks, incentives, the environment they work in, peer pressure, management, corporate propaganda, etc. Generally in such structures you can make people do anything, even kill other people and be ready to get killed.
- mtgx 8y ago
  I dont think Google was fined billions over privacy violations, just antitrust ones and only in the EU. In the US Eric Schmidt's constant lobbying to Obama got them off the hook for the antitrust investigation even though the FTC staff investigating their violations recommended antitrust action against Google.

Arainach 8y ago

Don't frame it as "build an illegal feature". Frame it as "build a feature" and hand it off to an enthusiastic junior dev eager to please their manager and get ahead. At a previous employer, I had a manager ask if, when implementing certain functionality, I could do it in such a way that it coincidentally broke third party tools attempting to interact with the component. They were very careful to phrase this in an offhand manner and never discuss it over legally discoverable mediums (only face to face). The entire matter seemed dubious and I certainly didn't want my name associated with such a move in the source control history, so I never implemented that request, it was never mentioned again, and nothing ever came of it - but a different dev might have jumped much faster at it.