4 ms·

I think this unduly conflates his displeasure at the automated scanning of emails to target advertising and the NSA etc. bulk access to data. The former doesn't

I think this unduly conflates his displeasure at the automated scanning of emails to target advertising and the NSA etc. bulk access to data. The former doesn't make the latter any more likely. All webmail services must hold their customers' emails, and they are therefore open to being read by a government or third party. Users could encrypt their emails, but it's very hard to do this while also making logging in and accessing anywhere fast easy for all users.

loup-vaillant 12y ago
There you go: webmails, while extremely usable, help government snooping by their very nature. If e-mail was decentralized like it was meant to be, spying would be that much harder. (Yes, everyone could host their mail at home. Yes, it can be plug&play useable. No, no one bothered to sell the damn stuff, probably because webmails were more profitable —or believed to be.) But when you think of it for like 2 seconds, automated scanning does help the NSA. Such software is easy to re-purpose. With the right subpoena, I give Google a week before it gives away a nice social graph of US dissidence to the NSA.
flavor8 12y ago
Yes, exactly. Any webmail service that stores email unencrypted on its servers is subject to subpoena / FISA requests, and there isn't much they can do about it. They could roll out client-side encryption -- but there's little business incentive for them to do so on free accounts. That said, as an option for paying apps users, it would be quite valuable. Automatic scanning of emails isn't ethically suspect in my opinion. My reasons for not working at google right now are: lack of desire to engage in big company politics, the apparent softening of the 20% time policy, regular-corporate/long hours, and the commute I'd have to take. Otherwise it'd be near top of my list should I go back into full time business.
- kumbasha 12y ago
  What about the fact that they colluded with Apple and other companies to keep their engineer salaries as low as possible?
  - flavor8 12y ago
    I'm by no means a fanboy. From what I understand the salary thing wasn't exactly a conspiracy, but it was an extremely poor policy. I don't think anybody has much to complain about in terms of the benefits package from google, though. In terms of "big companies", their sins are relatively innocuous, and if I wanted to work in big tech they'd be #1 on my list given the technology & resources that they make available. I'd certainly never work for Apple, Facebook, Oracle or Microsoft. I'd need a lot of convincing to work for Amazon.

loup-vaillant 12y ago

There you go: webmails, while extremely usable, help government snooping by their very nature. If e-mail was decentralized like it was meant to be, spying would be that much harder. (Yes, everyone could host their mail at home. Yes, it can be plug&play useable. No, no one bothered to sell the damn stuff, probably because webmails were more profitable —or believed to be.) But when you think of it for like 2 seconds, automated scanning does help the NSA. Such software is easy to re-purpose. With the right subpoena, I give Google a week before it gives away a nice social graph of US dissidence to the NSA.

flavor8 12y ago

Yes, exactly. Any webmail service that stores email unencrypted on its servers is subject to subpoena / FISA requests, and there isn't much they can do about it. They could roll out client-side encryption -- but there's little business incentive for them to do so on free accounts. That said, as an option for paying apps users, it would be quite valuable. Automatic scanning of emails isn't ethically suspect in my opinion. My reasons for not working at google right now are: lack of desire to engage in big company politics, the apparent softening of the 20% time policy, regular-corporate/long hours, and the commute I'd have to take. Otherwise it'd be near top of my list should I go back into full time business.

kumbasha 12y ago
What about the fact that they colluded with Apple and other companies to keep their engineer salaries as low as possible?
- flavor8 12y ago
  I'm by no means a fanboy. From what I understand the salary thing wasn't exactly a conspiracy, but it was an extremely poor policy. I don't think anybody has much to complain about in terms of the benefits package from google, though. In terms of "big companies", their sins are relatively innocuous, and if I wanted to work in big tech they'd be #1 on my list given the technology & resources that they make available. I'd certainly never work for Apple, Facebook, Oracle or Microsoft. I'd need a lot of convincing to work for Amazon.