6 ms·

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Eric Schmidt, 2009

by baxtr 8y ago

fredley 8y ago
Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. (edit, I'm posting this in support of the parent comment, as it has overtones of this famously chilling phrase)
- snazz 8y ago
  My favorite Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument
benschulz 8y ago
This attitude makes me so off the charts angry, I struggle to put it into words. I think Jews in Germany in the 1920s didn't think they were doing anything wrong, or feel a need to actively hide it.
- tossaccount123 8y ago
  It's fascinating how obviously smart people can rationalize their actions. Schmidt and Google claim to be "progressive" but that kind of rationale of "nothing to hide" would mean that every progressive movement would have been shut down in its early stages had this kind of tech and surveillance been available at the time because it went against what was currently judged as right by the people in power
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    What was the point of you pointing out Eric's claim to a particular political ideology after a statement of his intelligence? Are you somehow implying one is more virtuous / intelligent than another? If we changed that to conservatism does that your meaning or what you were trying to convey?
    - tossaccount123 8y ago
      I was more pointing out how either side can hypocritically rationalize things that run counter to their supposed beliefs because they make money off being hypocrites. Nobody thinks they're evil, people can rationalize all sorts of crazy behavior.
      - pdkl95 8y ago
        > Nobody thinks they're evil, I do, because evil is banal. Rationalizing crazy behavior is what evil usually looks like. Larger evils occur when "trivial" problems are ignored, allowing the deviant behavior to be normalized. Intentions are not relevant, because it's easy to rationalize away the craziest of behaviors. "No one involved in an extralegal activity thinks of themselves as nefarious. I'm a businessman, okay?" - Quark, DS9 S6E25
    - zepto 8y ago
      Seems pretty clear that the comment was meant to show a conflict between Schmidt’s statement and his political leanings. I don’t see how this implies anything about a particular political ideology being more virtuous. Why would you even think that?
    - _underfl0w_ 8y ago
      I sense some projecting happening here. You may want to re-read the parent, but without assuming that their tone is one of condescension.
  - balls187 8y ago
    > It's fascinating how obviously smart people can rationalize their actions. It's the classic dilemma: "People ask 'Can we do this?' and rarely ask 'Should we do this?'"
- itronitron 8y ago
  Schmidt's attitude shows just how much Google thinks it owns the internet. There is so much data out there that people can live in relative anonymity online (95% of bloggers) however Google crawls and indexes so much that many things become quite easy to find. All the tracking and linking and indexing that is done without a person's informed consent makes that person's intentional behavior a warped spotlight back on them.
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    > All the tracking and linking and indexing that is done without a person's informed consent makes that person's intentional behavior a warped spotlight back on them. Sure, but only in the minds of people who don't even know themselves, and can't make a coherent argument to save their lifes. They confuse the "data" they have on things with the things themselves, not to mention people -- same noobs doing the same shit, different day.
  - mda 8y ago
    I think he was merely pointing out that All US companies are bound by US laws and when government asks them to dance they would eventually, reluctantly, dance.
- ionised 8y ago
  Eric Schmidt is a horrible human being. Nothing surprises me coming from him.
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
- Raphmedia 8y ago
  These kinds of practices are still going on right now. See the Anti-gay purges in Chechnya that happened in 2017. "The Chechen police and military have conducted entrapment schemes, in which a victim is lured on a date, beaten and humiliated". According to some sources, those entrapment schemes where using online dating apps. Eric Schmidt's concept of privacy is so focused on the sort term where we live in free countries. Who knows what the future holds in store? Imagine if in 50-100 years the political situation gets really bad in the US and they decide to pass such a law. That hypothetical future government could simply get all the data from companies like Google and pinpoint their targets with scary accuracy. Imagine being jailed for web searches that you have done decades prior. As a trans person, that's the kind of things that keep me up at night. Especially since the ads that Google are presenting to me recently shifted and my shadow profile is clearly tagged as "trans" now.
  - sneakernets 8y ago
    Same here, I noticed an odd shift to weird adverts when it started sending me random things that were shots in the dark, from makeup to house paint.
tossaccount123 8y ago
https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ A good read on Google and Eric Schmidt's relationship with the State Department and federal government in general "There was nothing politically hapless about Eric Schmidt. I had been too eager to see a politically unambitious Silicon Valley engineer, a relic of the good old days of computer science graduate culture on the West Coast"
- colde 8y ago
  I am not sure that is really a trustworthy source at this point. Particularly since it seems to focus a lot on involving Hillary.
  - tossaccount123 8y ago
    basically every claim is sourced as far as I can tell. Schmidt is pretty entrenched with Clinton considering he started a company dedicated to using tech to get her elected, Groundworks https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/ https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-workin...
  - arminiusreturns 8y ago
    That's a ridiculous assertion against a news org that has a better track record than just about any other news org in existence, and it's sad to see people falling for this line of thinking.
  - creaghpatr 8y ago
    That is a poor reason for casting doubt...that the facts are inconvenient to your politics.
  - bduerst 8y ago
    Agreed. Wikileaks may have been reputable at some point in the past but they're not trustworthy now. It's not so much the 'focus on Hillary' but their focus on being pro-Russian state. [1] The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has his own show on RT [2], which mean's he's essentially being paid by Russia's state propaganda media [3]. That, along with attacking the Panama papers leak for "going after Putin", and a string of other pro-Russia activity, means Wikileaks is not to be trusted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Allegations_of_Russian_influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Allegations_of_Russi... [2] https://www.rt.com/tags/the-julian-assange-show/ https://www.rt.com/tags/the-julian-assange-show/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Propaganda_claims_and_related_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Propaganda_cla...
bluGill 8y ago
You first: give me the passwords to your bank account.
burkaman 8y ago
Also Eric Schmidt: https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/ https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Quote: Google Inc. has blacklisted all CNET reporters for a year, after the popular technology news website published personal information of one of Google's founders in a story about growing privacy concerns for the Internet search engine, according to a CNET statement. CNET on Friday reported "Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story." That story, by reporter Elinor Mills ran under the headline "Google balances privacy, reach." Google spokesman David Krane told CNN the company declined comment.
  - burkaman 8y ago
    Personal information obtained from Google: > To underscore its point about how much personal information is available, the CNET report published some personal information about Google's CEO Eric Schmidt -- his salary; his neighborhood, some of his hobbies and political donations -- all obtained through Google searches.
maxxxxx 8y ago
Let’s open source all their code and data in that spirit. I am sure they have nothing to hide.
itronitron 8y ago
Interesting that I remember this differently than how it is commonly quoted now. I thought (right or wrong) that he said "..., maybe you shouldn't be posting it online in the first place." which is easier to agree with than 'you shouldn't be doing it'
nabla9 8y ago
Eric Schmidt has old person concept of privacy. >To the older generation, privacy is about secrecy. And, as the Supreme Court said, once something is no longer secret, it's no longer private. But that's not how privacy works, and it's not how the younger generation thinks about it. Privacy is about control. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/04/privacy_and_con.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/04/privacy_and_c...
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Hadn't seen that before. I'm about the same age as Bruce, and I often respect what he's written. Not this time. In fact I'd bluntly claim he's wrong. Let's not conflate privacy and secrecy and blame the old. Secrecy is not revealing the private conversations with a friend of the opposite sex is actually the surface of an affair. It would embarrass (or worse) if revealed. Privacy is not telling because there's no need, that's their business, but happy to tell SO if it came up for some reason. For the older generation privacy is about control and agency too. Who gets to know mum or dad is ill, what they earn, who can see or use their information or their photo, even who their friends or habits are. The expectation is all of that goes to those who need it or others at the sole discretion of the individual or couple. Volunteered at their discretion unless a job or mortgage depends upon it. They just share a lot less than the kid's generation, but not for reasons of secrecy.
apocalypstyx 8y ago
Beyond the obvious implications of this statement, it makes me consider Fredric Jameson's argument that the separation between modernism and postmodernism is that postmodernism replaces temporarily with spatiality. How this connects to Schmidt's statement is that it, too, denies the temporal dimension, in that an individual might have something they don't care is known, but that when is of prime importance, whether that be in in regards to what might be called more intense circumstances, or simply that, say, and author typically does not want the first draft of a book out there.
enginaar 8y ago
"Fascism is not about silencing one, it's about compelling one to say." Roland Barthes
- FabHK 8y ago
  BTW (I'm not a huge friend of Barthes :-) an excellent (and frightening) and short (!) book on this topic is Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Highly recommended. Outlines the steps the Nazis (and other fascists) took to silence the opposition, get everyone slowly into line, undermine the "public sphere" and rational discourse, replace truth by obedience to power, etc. and then gives some hints what each of us can concretely do to stop these processes.
dwighttk 8y ago
"Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line..." -Eric Schmidt
aboutruby 8y ago
Also, I think Eric Schmidt was not close to other Googlers ideologically, especially the founders.
reaperducer 8y ago
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Eric Schmidt, 2009 Where did he post his e-mail address and password so we can all have a look? After all, if he's not doing anything wrong, he has nothing to hide.

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Eric Schmidt, 2009

by baxtr 8y ago

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Eric Schmidt, 2009

fredley 8y ago

Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. (edit, I'm posting this in support of the parent comment, as it has overtones of this famously chilling phrase)

snazz 8y ago
My favorite Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument

benschulz 8y ago

This attitude makes me so off the charts angry, I struggle to put it into words. I think Jews in Germany in the 1920s didn't think they were doing anything wrong, or feel a need to actively hide it.

tossaccount123 8y ago
It's fascinating how obviously smart people can rationalize their actions. Schmidt and Google claim to be "progressive" but that kind of rationale of "nothing to hide" would mean that every progressive movement would have been shut down in its early stages had this kind of tech and surveillance been available at the time because it went against what was currently judged as right by the people in power
- jimmy1 8y ago
  What was the point of you pointing out Eric's claim to a particular political ideology after a statement of his intelligence? Are you somehow implying one is more virtuous / intelligent than another? If we changed that to conservatism does that your meaning or what you were trying to convey?
  - tossaccount123 8y ago
    I was more pointing out how either side can hypocritically rationalize things that run counter to their supposed beliefs because they make money off being hypocrites. Nobody thinks they're evil, people can rationalize all sorts of crazy behavior.
    - pdkl95 8y ago
      > Nobody thinks they're evil, I do, because evil is banal. Rationalizing crazy behavior is what evil usually looks like. Larger evils occur when "trivial" problems are ignored, allowing the deviant behavior to be normalized. Intentions are not relevant, because it's easy to rationalize away the craziest of behaviors. "No one involved in an extralegal activity thinks of themselves as nefarious. I'm a businessman, okay?" - Quark, DS9 S6E25
  - zepto 8y ago
    Seems pretty clear that the comment was meant to show a conflict between Schmidt’s statement and his political leanings. I don’t see how this implies anything about a particular political ideology being more virtuous. Why would you even think that?
  - _underfl0w_ 8y ago
    I sense some projecting happening here. You may want to re-read the parent, but without assuming that their tone is one of condescension.
- balls187 8y ago
  > It's fascinating how obviously smart people can rationalize their actions. It's the classic dilemma: "People ask 'Can we do this?' and rarely ask 'Should we do this?'"
itronitron 8y ago
Schmidt's attitude shows just how much Google thinks it owns the internet. There is so much data out there that people can live in relative anonymity online (95% of bloggers) however Google crawls and indexes so much that many things become quite easy to find. All the tracking and linking and indexing that is done without a person's informed consent makes that person's intentional behavior a warped spotlight back on them.
- PavlovsCat 8y ago
  > All the tracking and linking and indexing that is done without a person's informed consent makes that person's intentional behavior a warped spotlight back on them. Sure, but only in the minds of people who don't even know themselves, and can't make a coherent argument to save their lifes. They confuse the "data" they have on things with the things themselves, not to mention people -- same noobs doing the same shit, different day.
- mda 8y ago
  I think he was merely pointing out that All US companies are bound by US laws and when government asks them to dance they would eventually, reluctantly, dance.
ionised 8y ago
Eric Schmidt is a horrible human being. Nothing surprises me coming from him.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
Raphmedia 8y ago
These kinds of practices are still going on right now. See the Anti-gay purges in Chechnya that happened in 2017. "The Chechen police and military have conducted entrapment schemes, in which a victim is lured on a date, beaten and humiliated". According to some sources, those entrapment schemes where using online dating apps. Eric Schmidt's concept of privacy is so focused on the sort term where we live in free countries. Who knows what the future holds in store? Imagine if in 50-100 years the political situation gets really bad in the US and they decide to pass such a law. That hypothetical future government could simply get all the data from companies like Google and pinpoint their targets with scary accuracy. Imagine being jailed for web searches that you have done decades prior. As a trans person, that's the kind of things that keep me up at night. Especially since the ads that Google are presenting to me recently shifted and my shadow profile is clearly tagged as "trans" now.
- sneakernets 8y ago
  Same here, I noticed an odd shift to weird adverts when it started sending me random things that were shots in the dark, from makeup to house paint.

tossaccount123 8y ago

https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/ A good read on Google and Eric Schmidt's relationship with the State Department and federal government in general "There was nothing politically hapless about Eric Schmidt. I had been too eager to see a politically unambitious Silicon Valley engineer, a relic of the good old days of computer science graduate culture on the West Coast"

colde 8y ago
I am not sure that is really a trustworthy source at this point. Particularly since it seems to focus a lot on involving Hillary.
- tossaccount123 8y ago
  basically every claim is sourced as far as I can tell. Schmidt is pretty entrenched with Clinton considering he started a company dedicated to using tech to get her elected, Groundworks https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-working-for-hillary-clinton-campaign/ https://qz.com/520652/groundwork-eric-schmidt-startup-workin...
- arminiusreturns 8y ago
  That's a ridiculous assertion against a news org that has a better track record than just about any other news org in existence, and it's sad to see people falling for this line of thinking.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  That is a poor reason for casting doubt...that the facts are inconvenient to your politics.
- bduerst 8y ago
  Agreed. Wikileaks may have been reputable at some point in the past but they're not trustworthy now. It's not so much the 'focus on Hillary' but their focus on being pro-Russian state. [1] The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has his own show on RT [2], which mean's he's essentially being paid by Russia's state propaganda media [3]. That, along with attacking the Panama papers leak for "going after Putin", and a string of other pro-Russia activity, means Wikileaks is not to be trusted. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Allegations_of_Russian_influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Allegations_of_Russi... [2] https://www.rt.com/tags/the-julian-assange-show/ https://www.rt.com/tags/the-julian-assange-show/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Propaganda_claims_and_related_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Propaganda_cla...

bluGill 8y ago

You first: give me the passwords to your bank account.

burkaman 8y ago

Also Eric Schmidt: https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/ https://money.cnn.com/2005/08/05/technology/google_cnet/

dredmorbius 8y ago
Quote: Google Inc. has blacklisted all CNET reporters for a year, after the popular technology news website published personal information of one of Google's founders in a story about growing privacy concerns for the Internet search engine, according to a CNET statement. CNET on Friday reported "Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story." That story, by reporter Elinor Mills ran under the headline "Google balances privacy, reach." Google spokesman David Krane told CNN the company declined comment.
- burkaman 8y ago
  Personal information obtained from Google: > To underscore its point about how much personal information is available, the CNET report published some personal information about Google's CEO Eric Schmidt -- his salary; his neighborhood, some of his hobbies and political donations -- all obtained through Google searches.

maxxxxx 8y ago

Let’s open source all their code and data in that spirit. I am sure they have nothing to hide.

itronitron 8y ago

Interesting that I remember this differently than how it is commonly quoted now. I thought (right or wrong) that he said "..., maybe you shouldn't be posting it online in the first place." which is easier to agree with than 'you shouldn't be doing it'

nabla9 8y ago

Eric Schmidt has old person concept of privacy. >To the older generation, privacy is about secrecy. And, as the Supreme Court said, once something is no longer secret, it's no longer private. But that's not how privacy works, and it's not how the younger generation thinks about it. Privacy is about control. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/04/privacy_and_con.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/04/privacy_and_c...

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Hadn't seen that before. I'm about the same age as Bruce, and I often respect what he's written. Not this time. In fact I'd bluntly claim he's wrong. Let's not conflate privacy and secrecy and blame the old. Secrecy is not revealing the private conversations with a friend of the opposite sex is actually the surface of an affair. It would embarrass (or worse) if revealed. Privacy is not telling because there's no need, that's their business, but happy to tell SO if it came up for some reason. For the older generation privacy is about control and agency too. Who gets to know mum or dad is ill, what they earn, who can see or use their information or their photo, even who their friends or habits are. The expectation is all of that goes to those who need it or others at the sole discretion of the individual or couple. Volunteered at their discretion unless a job or mortgage depends upon it. They just share a lot less than the kid's generation, but not for reasons of secrecy.

apocalypstyx 8y ago

Beyond the obvious implications of this statement, it makes me consider Fredric Jameson's argument that the separation between modernism and postmodernism is that postmodernism replaces temporarily with spatiality. How this connects to Schmidt's statement is that it, too, denies the temporal dimension, in that an individual might have something they don't care is known, but that when is of prime importance, whether that be in in regards to what might be called more intense circumstances, or simply that, say, and author typically does not want the first draft of a book out there.

enginaar 8y ago

"Fascism is not about silencing one, it's about compelling one to say." Roland Barthes

FabHK 8y ago
BTW (I'm not a huge friend of Barthes :-) an excellent (and frightening) and short (!) book on this topic is Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Highly recommended. Outlines the steps the Nazis (and other fascists) took to silence the opposition, get everyone slowly into line, undermine the "public sphere" and rational discourse, replace truth by obedience to power, etc. and then gives some hints what each of us can concretely do to stop these processes.

dwighttk 8y ago

"Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line..." -Eric Schmidt

aboutruby 8y ago

Also, I think Eric Schmidt was not close to other Googlers ideologically, especially the founders.

reaperducer 8y ago

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Eric Schmidt, 2009 Where did he post his e-mail address and password so we can all have a look? After all, if he's not doing anything wrong, he has nothing to hide.