4 ms·

Here’s what non-evil thing to do with this information is: don’t collect it. If you collect, don’t store it. If you store it, try to de-identify it.

• nuker 6y ago
  > Here’s what non-evil thing to do with this information You do remember that Google is an Ad company, and information is the product, right?
• cromwellian 6y ago
  And when the government finds out that they can't conduct investigations, they'll just pass regulations that require collection of data. Take private owner gun sales. You have to collect the information of the person you're selling it to. You can't not collect it, and if you take the attitude that you won't, you yourself can be held criminally liable. If we had cryptoanarchy -- unbreakable encryption, with everything on device, anonymous, and any server services using some future form of fully homomorphic encryption, and with financial transactions done with pseudo-anonymous cryptocoin, you'd find this to be a very unstable situation, and most world governments, even European governments, would quickly pass laws to require the ability to track identity, de-anonymize, and subpoena logs. There is no way any of the Western democracies are going to move to a system where all records of activity are ephemeral and un-subpoenable.
  • sjy 6y ago
    You’re right – but at least when the government passes regulations that require collection of data, there is a public debate and a public record of precisely what must be collected and why.
• tbodt 6y ago
  They zeroed out the last octet of the IP addresses, which is technically de-identification.