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Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Austr

Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0], can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1]. I trust Murdoch less than the government, and much much less than Google. Remember when Murdoch institutions illegally wiretapped celebrities, politicians, royal family members and relatives of dead British soldiers [2]? 0: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/06/peter-dutton-confirms-australia-could-spy-on-its-own-citizens-under-cybersecurity-plan https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/06/peter... 1: https://www.wired.com/story/australia-encryption-law-global-impact/ https://www.wired.com/story/australia-encryption-law-global-... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...

berkes 6y ago
> I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, If you ignore who does it worst in pracice, the most important argument becomes apparent: The Austrialian government is a democratically assigned entity; one that has (or should have?) checks and balances in place; one that is closely monitored as your various references prove. Google, a foreign private entity has no such checks and balances in place. We don't vote in general elections for the new CEO of Google, we don't elect representatives into the board, and we cannot lean on transparancy laws to look into the kitchen at that private entity.
- eru 6y ago
  So you are saying democracy is magic?
  - berkes 6y ago
    No. I'm pointing out some differences between a private entity and a goverment, which the parent commenter either ignored, or forgot to mention when comparing said governement with said private entity.
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  So what? Democracy isn’t a sacrament, it doesn’t sanctify the government. Hitler was democratically elected. Democracy does not have moral valence as such.
  - fauigerzigerk 6y ago
    Hitler got 33% of the vote in the last free and fair elections. But I agree that democratic government doesn't automatically justify everything. Minority and fundamental individual rights are a problem. There are a lot of tricky issues with self referentiality if you think about independence movements for instance.
    - Tainnor 6y ago
      Yep, Hitler being elected Chancellor was well within the legal framework of the Weimar constitution (even if it was kind of a shady backdoor deal). Him rigging the 1933 election and later grabbing all the power through the Enabling Act wasn't.
  - kiplkipl 6y ago
    I find the elected fascist to be an interesting thought experiment. If someone was fairly elected on a platform of genocide, would you comply? If someone doesn't, does that mean democracy is second to morality? And, if they don't, do they think that person should be allowed to stand on that plaform?
    - eru 6y ago
      Duh, obviously democracy ranks way lower than morality. Whether someone should be allowed to campaign for genocide depends on the laws of the country. In modern Germany platforms like that are explicitly forbidden. But the laws of the Weimar Republic were more value agnostic.
  - josefx 6y ago
    Hitler wasn't elected, in fact the Weimar Republic was mostly incapable of forming a working government during the time it existed. Like many before him Hitler was assigned his position in the hope that his failure to uphold his promises would also cripple his support in the population. His biggest grab for power was underlined by armed SA troops in the Reichstag, a lot of imprisoned or outright missing politicians and Göring fudging the attendance count to meet the minimum requirements for a legitimate vote.
- mcv 6y ago
  True, and I absolutely support regulation where necessary. I strongly support regulation that require companies to handle user data in a confidential manner, for example. But that doesn't make all regulation automatically good; I strongly oppose regulation that requires companies to share sensitive user data with anyone who asks for it, for example. And forcing a company to do business it does not want to do, seems unreasonably oppressive. In this particular case, if Google barely makes any money on linking to news sites, and the law says they need to pay a lot of money to link to those sites, then the obvious business decision is not to link to those sites at all, which will likely hurt news sites, because they get less visitors. There are levels of regulation that will hurt the market, rather than help it, and this sounds like it might be one of those. I recognise the right and need of democratic governments to regulate markets, but I also recognise that this can turn the government into an authoritarian seat of power, that serves power, rather than the people. This democratic accountability needs to work, needs to be used, needs to be obeyed by the government. So that makes it good that Google shares with the Australian public what's going on.
  - berkes 6y ago
    I'm not saying this specific law is any good (I think it is not). But I am saying that when we compare who is to allow or deny us access to news and knowledge, and who should be able to track our every move, a democratic elected goverment is better suited to do so, than a private entity.
    - mcv 6y ago
      That sounds completely contrary to the concept of a free press. If the government gets to decide access to news, then independent checks on the government can become impossible. It would be the end of a free press. This is absolutely a big problem with democracy: on the one hand, it requires a free press to inform voters about the state of the country and the government, but on the other hand, there's no way to guarantee that the press will provide the necessary information; the press needs to be funded, but if the government funds it, the government controls it. If the people pay for it in a free market, then the press will publish what the people want to pay for, rather than what is necessary for them to know about their government.
- fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  On the other hand, the government is a true monopoly (for good reason) so you can't just stop being their "customer" whenever you like. You may end up spending your entire life oppressed by your fellow citizens who may be indifferent towards your needs. So I think there is a good reason for not having the government directly run everything. It wouldn't even mean democratic control over everything. It would mean bureaucratic control, very indirectly influenced by a democratic choice between a handful of parties once every 4 or 5 years. Both government and voluntary agreements between individuals and companies have their place. What governments should do is make sure that our interaction with Google and other tech giants is indeed voluntary and transparent.
  - maigret 6y ago
    Turns out it's surprisingly hard to stop being a Google customer, if not impossible. I advise you to check the series by Kashmir Hill if you haven't yet: https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-life-it-was-hel-1831304194 https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-l...
    - vageli 6y ago
      From the article, it doesn't sound _too_ hard to not be a customer of any of the companies (and I was Google-free for a long while until I had to use an Android for work purposes); what is difficult is not interacting with any customers of these companies in addition to not interacting with the companies themselves. This person didn't use Signal, for instance, because it is hosted on AWS. That's like saying you'll stop visiting shops that have Verizon Business internet or similar, which to me seems very different from just trying to cut Verizon out of your life.
  - eru 6y ago
    > It wouldn't even mean democratic control over everything. It would mean bureaucratic control, very indirectly influenced by a democratic choice between a handful of parties once every 4 or 5 years. Even direct democratic control would be a nightmare. In practice the bureaucratic layer probably tempers the worst excesses.
BLKNSLVR 6y ago
In regards to parent commenters [0] link, this is the story that got a journalist's home raided by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) because she received leaked information (that turned out to be 100% correct) that the Department for Home Affairs was planning to allow the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to spy on Australian citizens. Directly quoting from the linked article: ASD powers have been a source of controversy for the government, after the AFP raided News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst’s home in June 2019 over a news report suggesting the home affairs department was seeking power for ASD to spy on Australians. Dutton had claimed the story was nonsense despite publicly confirming its substance. The straight-up lying by one of Australia's highest ranked politicians bodes poorly, and goes hand-in-hand with Federal Police raiding a journalists home. Yet this seems to be the Government that the Australian people want.
- ehnto 6y ago
  What the Australian government does well is control information and controversy. The government is a quiet achiever in that regard. Australians have been comfortable for a while, and are generally disengaged from politics. Most Australians I know are more aware of American politics than their own.
  - BLKNSLVR 6y ago
    American politics that they're happy to mock, whilst the broth they're wallowing in is rapidly coming to the same temperature.
    - squiggleblaz 6y ago
      Yes but it's much harder to find out about Australian politics because we all spend our time as a minority on an American web and our media just aren't doing (can't do?) a great job.
      - nickcox 6y ago
        And also because journalists could go to prison for reporting on it.
ignoramous 6y ago
(rant) > they behave much better... https://medium.com/@rossformaine/i-was-googles-head-of-international-relations-here-s-why-i-left-49313d23065 https://medium.com/@rossformaine/i-was-googles-head-of-inter... > decent custodians of their users data They cannot protect that data from law and enforcement no matter what. De-anonymized, aggregated, ephemeral... no matter which way you look at it, data they collect is a ticking time-bomb. And because they amass so much, others that have similar business models are forced to follow suit, so much so that it has heralded us into an era where companies like Facebook [0], FourSquare [1] build and promote spyware without remorse or regret. Smartphones have only added to the problem. It is madness to claim anyone in big-tech is "well behaved". I'd wager that they're well-behaved only when it is convenient [2]. > I trust Murdoch less than the government, much much less than Google Peak Silicon Valley? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16363694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16363694 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19341079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19341079 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17581988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17581988
- geofft 6y ago
  The claim you're replying to is very specific, and starts off by acknowledging that Google does not live up to "Don't be evil" in general, so I don't think the Medium post (which indeed describes some pretty evil behavior) refutes it. The claim is that Google does a much better job of protecting and securing your private information and not turning it against you than the Australian government - not that they do good things in general. Yes, they monetize the browsing behavior they collect from you. Yes, they are able to use that to price products at $0 so others can't compete without also finding ways to monetize data. Yes, senior management will gladly take Xi Jinping's money. Yes, senior management will gladly sleep with subordinates. Even so, they are better custodians of user data than the Australian government or the Australian media. And yes, they cannot protect their data from law enforcement - hence writing this letter telling the Australian voting public that if they don't want Australian law enforcement to compel Google to share certain data, they'd better stop this law. Let me put this another way - if the Australian government ran a free email service, would you advise every Gmail user in Australia to switch?
kqvamxurcagg 6y ago
I trust Google way less. They want to take content from publishers and monetise it while giving very little back resulting in an unsustainable media model. Google does the equivalent of wiretapping every day then sells data to advertisers, far more lucrative than anything News Corp has ever done. I don't especially like News Corp but their media properties are key to providing an alternative view to liberal news coverage across English speaking countries. In any case the solution to all of this is breaking Google up into its component parts and making them pay tax.
neiman 6y ago
> Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. They've been decent custodians to data they force users to give. It's like complimenting whoever stole my bike last year for taking good care of it.
- corty 6y ago
  And they lost all their data to foreign secret services (the NSA) once. Google never loosing data and taking "good care" of it is a myth that needs to die. The only right way forward is to be parsimonius with data. Never pass it along, never collect it (if possible).
  - neiman 6y ago
    I just want to have a place where I can tick, "Google, please never ever collect any of my data". But I don't have such a thing, not because it's impossible to create one.
    - sukilot 6y ago
      Have you tried incognito mode?
      - neiman 6y ago
        https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/06/03/google-privacy-lawsuit-incognito-mode.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/06/03/google-p...
    - vntok 6y ago
      > I just want to have a place where I can tick, "Google, please never ever collect any of my data". You are asking for a paradox.
- amf12 6y ago
  They've been decent custodians to data they force users to give. Fair enough. It's like complimenting whoever stole my bike last year for taking good care of it. I don't necessarily buy this argument. They collect a lot of data, and we could argue whether they need to collect so much data, but that is not necessarily 'stealing' your data.
einpoklum 6y ago
> but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0], can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1]. But Google has exactly this. First, it collects and saves all its users' data, and can build very detailed profiles of probably each of us. Second, and perhaps more importantly, all the information going through their systems is also piped to the NSA, i.e. spying by the US government. This is what Edward Snowden revealed. Murdoch may have illegally wiretapped celebrities, but Google legally "wiretaps", well, everyone - on their "wires".
- suizi 6y ago
  Murdoch's investigators illegally wiretapped anyone they could to get a scoop, including a murdered child. The process of doing so made it look like she was reading the messages and still alive.
  - retsibsi 6y ago
    > The process of doing so made it look like she was reading the messages and still alive. My understanding is that this turned out to be untrue. Wikipedia isn't super clear on this point, but I think it backs me up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal#Milly_Dowler's_voicemail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...
    - suizi 6y ago
      Wikipedia says the very opposite of what you're claiming.
gadders 6y ago
It wasn't just News Group that hacked phones. Mirror Group Newspapers did as well: https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/its-time-to-break-the-silence-about-mirror-phone-hacking https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2020/mar/...
drevil-v2 6y ago
Talk about misdirection by a shill. You are conflating two completely different issues. Google is getting away with corporate murder. That is the crux of the matter at hand. - Google does not pay taxes. And - They don't pay for content You are attempting to distract from Google's shortcomings by attacking Aus Govt, Murdoch news orgs. So f*ing disingenuous.
throwaway9d0291 6y ago
> can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1] No, no it can't. I don't know how the media managed to get this so wrong and how so many people just accepted it without questioning it. The law explicitly limits, and limited from the start, the effect that a government request could have [0]: a request cannot introduce a "systemic weakness". Some relevant quotes of what a systemic weakness can entail: - "one or more actions that would render systemic methods of authentication or encryption less effective" - [when targeting a particular person] "any act or thing that will, or is likely to, jeopardise the security of any information held by any other person." Note that this is a restriction on the "effect" that a notice can have. It's not just the the government can't ask for this, it's that the government can't ask for anything that would result in this. So no, there are no backdoors. What there is, is a a requirement to assist when it can be done in a way that doesn't have any of these effects. For example if the government wanted to intercept WhatsApp messages, it could require that WhatsApp introduce a hard-coded identifier into the app and if a user matches that identifier, then copies of every message would be sent to the Australian government. This doesn't introduce any systemic weakness and doesn't compromise anybody else's data, so should be permitted. And I don't see how the above could be considered a "backdoor", as it requires that the app be pushed through the app store, a capability that WhatsApp already has. [0]: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997214/s317zg.html http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997...
- peterkelly 6y ago
  Any property of a system that makes it possible to intercept the communication of specific users is, in and of itself, a systemic weakness.
  - throwaway9d0291 6y ago
    I agree and were a company to not already have that capability and the government were to request it, such a request would be legally worthless per the aforementioned law. However pretty much every closed-source communication tool already has this systemic weakness, so the government doesn't have to ask for it to be introduced. WhatsApp, Facebook, Google etc. can all, today, as we speak, choose to push out an app update with code to send plaintext copies of a specific person's messages to Australian law enforcement/intelligence. There's nothing new here. Open-source tools though do not have this vulnerability. Signal for example has reproducible builds and the Australian government cannot require it to remove them so that it can covertly intercept individuals' messages. My point here is that contrary to reporting in the tech media, the law doesn't and cannot require that any backdoors be introduced. It can only require that existing ones be used.
dkersten 6y ago
> they have been decent custodians of their users data. I very strongly disagree. I will explain below, but first want to comment on: > but they behave much better than the Australian government Yes, sure, I agree. But this is a function of impact, to me. A government has much greater ability to negatively impact me than a corporation does, in that a government can outright decide to murder or imprison me, while it would take much greater effort for a corporation to do so. So, yes, of course I trust Google more than I do any government. But, with that said, as far as companies having my data go, Google is exactly the company I don't want to have my data. Here's why: Why do we care if any company has our data? I think (at least for me, personally), two reasons immediately spring to mind: the data could leak to criminals who will use it to try and defraud or blackmail me, and the company might sell my data. But why do I care if companies sell my data? If its just those two reasons, then it really just boils down to increasing the risk of hacks/leaks, but that doesn't sound like the complete picture to me. No, I also care about a company itself directly misusing my data, not just selling it to someone else (why would they want it?). So we need to define what we mean by "misusing". For me, it means using the data against me, which, in the case of companies, typically means using it to psychologically trick me into giving them money. This is exactly the business Google is in. Their bread and butter is in figuring out ways of making me click on adverts in order to spend money on something I wouldn't otherwise have (or would have bought elsewhere). Google's entire business is built around the very reason I don't want companies to have or sell my data! Of course Google tries to put a positive spin on it, like they are only trying to show me the most relevant things based on my interests, in order to tell me about things I didn't know about but want to know about. I don't buy it for a minute. As long as Google show me adverts for (or even have them on their platform) outright scams[1], malware or exploitative garbage like Raid Shadow Legends, I cannot believe their motives are anything but to do whatever makes consumers pay their clients money (so that they in turn keep spending money on Google). If that happens to match up with something that benefits the consumer, great, but if it also happens to be detrimental to consumers, Google doesn't care. The very fact that they willfully keep serving adverts (and don't have a way to report them, certainly don't act on reports) for actual blatant SCAMS and fraud, malware and exploitative content is proof of this. So, no, Google have not been decent custodians of their users data, they are the very company we want to protect our data from in the first place. The fact that there are worse actors does not change that. [1] Recent HN post about this very subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24175924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24175924
justaguyhere 6y ago
Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data Maybe, but can you guarantee they will be good custodians tomorrow, even if they are good custodians today? Privacy is a unique problem, in the sense that it only takes one incident (intentional or not) to ruin reputations/lives etc. The best course of action is not to look for good custodians, it is not collect even one piece of data that is not absolutely necessary.
justinjoshuak 6y ago
> who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0] The linked article is about planned changes that haven't yet been legislated - "Details of the new powers – which will require legislation – are not contained in the strategy"
- JoeSmithson 6y ago
  I also don't understand why it's necessarily bad...? Countries face internal security threats. For example, in the UK, the 7/7 bombers were British, ditto the Manchester and London Bridge attacks. In fact most terrorists who attack Britain are British. Are MI5 not meant to spy on Brits?
sukilot 6y ago
> can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software Google is a company.
deepstack 6y ago
>I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens It is really about if you trust Australian gov or the US gov.

berkes 6y ago

> I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, If you ignore who does it worst in pracice, the most important argument becomes apparent: The Austrialian government is a democratically assigned entity; one that has (or should have?) checks and balances in place; one that is closely monitored as your various references prove. Google, a foreign private entity has no such checks and balances in place. We don't vote in general elections for the new CEO of Google, we don't elect representatives into the board, and we cannot lean on transparancy laws to look into the kitchen at that private entity.

eru 6y ago
So you are saying democracy is magic?
- berkes 6y ago
  No. I'm pointing out some differences between a private entity and a goverment, which the parent commenter either ignored, or forgot to mention when comparing said governement with said private entity.
barry-cotter 6y ago
So what? Democracy isn’t a sacrament, it doesn’t sanctify the government. Hitler was democratically elected. Democracy does not have moral valence as such.
- fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  Hitler got 33% of the vote in the last free and fair elections. But I agree that democratic government doesn't automatically justify everything. Minority and fundamental individual rights are a problem. There are a lot of tricky issues with self referentiality if you think about independence movements for instance.
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    Yep, Hitler being elected Chancellor was well within the legal framework of the Weimar constitution (even if it was kind of a shady backdoor deal). Him rigging the 1933 election and later grabbing all the power through the Enabling Act wasn't.
- kiplkipl 6y ago
  I find the elected fascist to be an interesting thought experiment. If someone was fairly elected on a platform of genocide, would you comply? If someone doesn't, does that mean democracy is second to morality? And, if they don't, do they think that person should be allowed to stand on that plaform?
  - eru 6y ago
    Duh, obviously democracy ranks way lower than morality. Whether someone should be allowed to campaign for genocide depends on the laws of the country. In modern Germany platforms like that are explicitly forbidden. But the laws of the Weimar Republic were more value agnostic.
- josefx 6y ago
  Hitler wasn't elected, in fact the Weimar Republic was mostly incapable of forming a working government during the time it existed. Like many before him Hitler was assigned his position in the hope that his failure to uphold his promises would also cripple his support in the population. His biggest grab for power was underlined by armed SA troops in the Reichstag, a lot of imprisoned or outright missing politicians and Göring fudging the attendance count to meet the minimum requirements for a legitimate vote.
mcv 6y ago
True, and I absolutely support regulation where necessary. I strongly support regulation that require companies to handle user data in a confidential manner, for example. But that doesn't make all regulation automatically good; I strongly oppose regulation that requires companies to share sensitive user data with anyone who asks for it, for example. And forcing a company to do business it does not want to do, seems unreasonably oppressive. In this particular case, if Google barely makes any money on linking to news sites, and the law says they need to pay a lot of money to link to those sites, then the obvious business decision is not to link to those sites at all, which will likely hurt news sites, because they get less visitors. There are levels of regulation that will hurt the market, rather than help it, and this sounds like it might be one of those. I recognise the right and need of democratic governments to regulate markets, but I also recognise that this can turn the government into an authoritarian seat of power, that serves power, rather than the people. This democratic accountability needs to work, needs to be used, needs to be obeyed by the government. So that makes it good that Google shares with the Australian public what's going on.
- berkes 6y ago
  I'm not saying this specific law is any good (I think it is not). But I am saying that when we compare who is to allow or deny us access to news and knowledge, and who should be able to track our every move, a democratic elected goverment is better suited to do so, than a private entity.
  - mcv 6y ago
    That sounds completely contrary to the concept of a free press. If the government gets to decide access to news, then independent checks on the government can become impossible. It would be the end of a free press. This is absolutely a big problem with democracy: on the one hand, it requires a free press to inform voters about the state of the country and the government, but on the other hand, there's no way to guarantee that the press will provide the necessary information; the press needs to be funded, but if the government funds it, the government controls it. If the people pay for it in a free market, then the press will publish what the people want to pay for, rather than what is necessary for them to know about their government.
fauigerzigerk 6y ago
On the other hand, the government is a true monopoly (for good reason) so you can't just stop being their "customer" whenever you like. You may end up spending your entire life oppressed by your fellow citizens who may be indifferent towards your needs. So I think there is a good reason for not having the government directly run everything. It wouldn't even mean democratic control over everything. It would mean bureaucratic control, very indirectly influenced by a democratic choice between a handful of parties once every 4 or 5 years. Both government and voluntary agreements between individuals and companies have their place. What governments should do is make sure that our interaction with Google and other tech giants is indeed voluntary and transparent.
- maigret 6y ago
  Turns out it's surprisingly hard to stop being a Google customer, if not impossible. I advise you to check the series by Kashmir Hill if you haven't yet: https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-life-it-was-hel-1831304194 https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-l...
  - vageli 6y ago
    From the article, it doesn't sound _too_ hard to not be a customer of any of the companies (and I was Google-free for a long while until I had to use an Android for work purposes); what is difficult is not interacting with any customers of these companies in addition to not interacting with the companies themselves. This person didn't use Signal, for instance, because it is hosted on AWS. That's like saying you'll stop visiting shops that have Verizon Business internet or similar, which to me seems very different from just trying to cut Verizon out of your life.
- eru 6y ago
  > It wouldn't even mean democratic control over everything. It would mean bureaucratic control, very indirectly influenced by a democratic choice between a handful of parties once every 4 or 5 years. Even direct democratic control would be a nightmare. In practice the bureaucratic layer probably tempers the worst excesses.

BLKNSLVR 6y ago

In regards to parent commenters [0] link, this is the story that got a journalist's home raided by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) because she received leaked information (that turned out to be 100% correct) that the Department for Home Affairs was planning to allow the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to spy on Australian citizens. Directly quoting from the linked article: ASD powers have been a source of controversy for the government, after the AFP raided News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst’s home in June 2019 over a news report suggesting the home affairs department was seeking power for ASD to spy on Australians. Dutton had claimed the story was nonsense despite publicly confirming its substance. The straight-up lying by one of Australia's highest ranked politicians bodes poorly, and goes hand-in-hand with Federal Police raiding a journalists home. Yet this seems to be the Government that the Australian people want.

ehnto 6y ago
What the Australian government does well is control information and controversy. The government is a quiet achiever in that regard. Australians have been comfortable for a while, and are generally disengaged from politics. Most Australians I know are more aware of American politics than their own.
- BLKNSLVR 6y ago
  American politics that they're happy to mock, whilst the broth they're wallowing in is rapidly coming to the same temperature.
  - squiggleblaz 6y ago
    Yes but it's much harder to find out about Australian politics because we all spend our time as a minority on an American web and our media just aren't doing (can't do?) a great job.
    - nickcox 6y ago
      And also because journalists could go to prison for reporting on it.

ignoramous 6y ago

(rant) > they behave much better... https://medium.com/@rossformaine/i-was-googles-head-of-international-relations-here-s-why-i-left-49313d23065 https://medium.com/@rossformaine/i-was-googles-head-of-inter... > decent custodians of their users data They cannot protect that data from law and enforcement no matter what. De-anonymized, aggregated, ephemeral... no matter which way you look at it, data they collect is a ticking time-bomb. And because they amass so much, others that have similar business models are forced to follow suit, so much so that it has heralded us into an era where companies like Facebook [0], FourSquare [1] build and promote spyware without remorse or regret. Smartphones have only added to the problem. It is madness to claim anyone in big-tech is "well behaved". I'd wager that they're well-behaved only when it is convenient [2]. > I trust Murdoch less than the government, much much less than Google Peak Silicon Valley? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16363694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16363694 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19341079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19341079 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17581988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17581988

geofft 6y ago
The claim you're replying to is very specific, and starts off by acknowledging that Google does not live up to "Don't be evil" in general, so I don't think the Medium post (which indeed describes some pretty evil behavior) refutes it. The claim is that Google does a much better job of protecting and securing your private information and not turning it against you than the Australian government - not that they do good things in general. Yes, they monetize the browsing behavior they collect from you. Yes, they are able to use that to price products at $0 so others can't compete without also finding ways to monetize data. Yes, senior management will gladly take Xi Jinping's money. Yes, senior management will gladly sleep with subordinates. Even so, they are better custodians of user data than the Australian government or the Australian media. And yes, they cannot protect their data from law enforcement - hence writing this letter telling the Australian voting public that if they don't want Australian law enforcement to compel Google to share certain data, they'd better stop this law. Let me put this another way - if the Australian government ran a free email service, would you advise every Gmail user in Australia to switch?

kqvamxurcagg 6y ago

I trust Google way less. They want to take content from publishers and monetise it while giving very little back resulting in an unsustainable media model. Google does the equivalent of wiretapping every day then sells data to advertisers, far more lucrative than anything News Corp has ever done. I don't especially like News Corp but their media properties are key to providing an alternative view to liberal news coverage across English speaking countries. In any case the solution to all of this is breaking Google up into its component parts and making them pay tax.

neiman 6y ago

> Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. They've been decent custodians to data they force users to give. It's like complimenting whoever stole my bike last year for taking good care of it.

corty 6y ago
And they lost all their data to foreign secret services (the NSA) once. Google never loosing data and taking "good care" of it is a myth that needs to die. The only right way forward is to be parsimonius with data. Never pass it along, never collect it (if possible).
- neiman 6y ago
  I just want to have a place where I can tick, "Google, please never ever collect any of my data". But I don't have such a thing, not because it's impossible to create one.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    Have you tried incognito mode?
    - neiman 6y ago
      https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/06/03/google-privacy-lawsuit-incognito-mode.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/06/03/google-p...
  - vntok 6y ago
    > I just want to have a place where I can tick, "Google, please never ever collect any of my data". You are asking for a paradox.
amf12 6y ago
They've been decent custodians to data they force users to give. Fair enough. It's like complimenting whoever stole my bike last year for taking good care of it. I don't necessarily buy this argument. They collect a lot of data, and we could argue whether they need to collect so much data, but that is not necessarily 'stealing' your data.

einpoklum 6y ago

> but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0], can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1]. But Google has exactly this. First, it collects and saves all its users' data, and can build very detailed profiles of probably each of us. Second, and perhaps more importantly, all the information going through their systems is also piped to the NSA, i.e. spying by the US government. This is what Edward Snowden revealed. Murdoch may have illegally wiretapped celebrities, but Google legally "wiretaps", well, everyone - on their "wires".

suizi 6y ago
Murdoch's investigators illegally wiretapped anyone they could to get a scoop, including a murdered child. The process of doing so made it look like she was reading the messages and still alive.
- retsibsi 6y ago
  > The process of doing so made it look like she was reading the messages and still alive. My understanding is that this turned out to be untrue. Wikipedia isn't super clear on this point, but I think it backs me up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal#Milly_Dowler's_voicemail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacki...
  - suizi 6y ago
    Wikipedia says the very opposite of what you're claiming.

gadders 6y ago

It wasn't just News Group that hacked phones. Mirror Group Newspapers did as well: https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/its-time-to-break-the-silence-about-mirror-phone-hacking https://www.theguardian.com/business/commentisfree/2020/mar/...

drevil-v2 6y ago

Talk about misdirection by a shill. You are conflating two completely different issues. Google is getting away with corporate murder. That is the crux of the matter at hand. - Google does not pay taxes. And - They don't pay for content You are attempting to distract from Google's shortcomings by attacking Aus Govt, Murdoch news orgs. So f*ing disingenuous.

throwaway9d0291 6y ago

> can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1] No, no it can't. I don't know how the media managed to get this so wrong and how so many people just accepted it without questioning it. The law explicitly limits, and limited from the start, the effect that a government request could have [0]: a request cannot introduce a "systemic weakness". Some relevant quotes of what a systemic weakness can entail: - "one or more actions that would render systemic methods of authentication or encryption less effective" - [when targeting a particular person] "any act or thing that will, or is likely to, jeopardise the security of any information held by any other person." Note that this is a restriction on the "effect" that a notice can have. It's not just the the government can't ask for this, it's that the government can't ask for anything that would result in this. So no, there are no backdoors. What there is, is a a requirement to assist when it can be done in a way that doesn't have any of these effects. For example if the government wanted to intercept WhatsApp messages, it could require that WhatsApp introduce a hard-coded identifier into the app and if a user matches that identifier, then copies of every message would be sent to the Australian government. This doesn't introduce any systemic weakness and doesn't compromise anybody else's data, so should be permitted. And I don't see how the above could be considered a "backdoor", as it requires that the app be pushed through the app store, a capability that WhatsApp already has. [0]: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997214/s317zg.html http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ta1997...

peterkelly 6y ago
Any property of a system that makes it possible to intercept the communication of specific users is, in and of itself, a systemic weakness.
- throwaway9d0291 6y ago
  I agree and were a company to not already have that capability and the government were to request it, such a request would be legally worthless per the aforementioned law. However pretty much every closed-source communication tool already has this systemic weakness, so the government doesn't have to ask for it to be introduced. WhatsApp, Facebook, Google etc. can all, today, as we speak, choose to push out an app update with code to send plaintext copies of a specific person's messages to Australian law enforcement/intelligence. There's nothing new here. Open-source tools though do not have this vulnerability. Signal for example has reproducible builds and the Australian government cannot require it to remove them so that it can covertly intercept individuals' messages. My point here is that contrary to reporting in the tech media, the law doesn't and cannot require that any backdoors be introduced. It can only require that existing ones be used.

dkersten 6y ago

> they have been decent custodians of their users data. I very strongly disagree. I will explain below, but first want to comment on: > but they behave much better than the Australian government Yes, sure, I agree. But this is a function of impact, to me. A government has much greater ability to negatively impact me than a corporation does, in that a government can outright decide to murder or imprison me, while it would take much greater effort for a corporation to do so. So, yes, of course I trust Google more than I do any government. But, with that said, as far as companies having my data go, Google is exactly the company I don't want to have my data. Here's why: Why do we care if any company has our data? I think (at least for me, personally), two reasons immediately spring to mind: the data could leak to criminals who will use it to try and defraud or blackmail me, and the company might sell my data. But why do I care if companies sell my data? If its just those two reasons, then it really just boils down to increasing the risk of hacks/leaks, but that doesn't sound like the complete picture to me. No, I also care about a company itself directly misusing my data, not just selling it to someone else (why would they want it?). So we need to define what we mean by "misusing". For me, it means using the data against me, which, in the case of companies, typically means using it to psychologically trick me into giving them money. This is exactly the business Google is in. Their bread and butter is in figuring out ways of making me click on adverts in order to spend money on something I wouldn't otherwise have (or would have bought elsewhere). Google's entire business is built around the very reason I don't want companies to have or sell my data! Of course Google tries to put a positive spin on it, like they are only trying to show me the most relevant things based on my interests, in order to tell me about things I didn't know about but want to know about. I don't buy it for a minute. As long as Google show me adverts for (or even have them on their platform) outright scams[1], malware or exploitative garbage like Raid Shadow Legends, I cannot believe their motives are anything but to do whatever makes consumers pay their clients money (so that they in turn keep spending money on Google). If that happens to match up with something that benefits the consumer, great, but if it also happens to be detrimental to consumers, Google doesn't care. The very fact that they willfully keep serving adverts (and don't have a way to report them, certainly don't act on reports) for actual blatant SCAMS and fraud, malware and exploitative content is proof of this. So, no, Google have not been decent custodians of their users data, they are the very company we want to protect our data from in the first place. The fact that there are worse actors does not change that. [1] Recent HN post about this very subject: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24175924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24175924

justaguyhere 6y ago

Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data Maybe, but can you guarantee they will be good custodians tomorrow, even if they are good custodians today? Privacy is a unique problem, in the sense that it only takes one incident (intentional or not) to ruin reputations/lives etc. The best course of action is not to look for good custodians, it is not collect even one piece of data that is not absolutely necessary.

justinjoshuak 6y ago

> who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0] The linked article is about planned changes that haven't yet been legislated - "Details of the new powers – which will require legislation – are not contained in the strategy"

JoeSmithson 6y ago
I also don't understand why it's necessarily bad...? Countries face internal security threats. For example, in the UK, the 7/7 bombers were British, ditto the Manchester and London Bridge attacks. In fact most terrorists who attack Britain are British. Are MI5 not meant to spy on Brits?

sukilot 6y ago

> can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software Google is a company.

deepstack 6y ago

>I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens It is really about if you trust Australian gov or the US gov.