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>> "Behind the scenes, Google doesn't only have public data," says Suchanek. It can also pull in information from Gmail, Google+ and Youtube."You and I are stor

by dm2 12y ago

>> "Behind the scenes, Google doesn't only have public data," says Suchanek. It can also pull in information from Gmail, Google+ and Youtube."You and I are stored in the Knowledge Vault in the same way as Elvis Presley," Suchanek says. I really hope Google does not use Gmail data for projects other than ads. They really needs to ask users to opt-in to this kind of data sharing. I'm ok with gmail being read for ads, but almost anything else is unethical, especially some experimental knowledge base.

jacquesm 12y ago
Why should google care what you are ok with after they already have all your data? If you don't want them to be able to engage in activities like this then don't give them your data in the first place.
- andrewljohnson 12y ago
  I should be able to use services from companies based on some terms and expect those terms to be respected. You're basically saying I shouldn't expect any sort of fair treatment or rights from any service provider on the Internet. I don't want to play on your Internet.
  - gress 12y ago
    Jacques is describing the Internet as it currently is. If you don't want to play on it, you need to do something about it or stop playing.
  - dreamdu5t 12y ago
    Google does respect its terms. Their terms of service let them do whatever they want with your information, and they can update their terms at any time.
    - dreamdu5t 12y ago
      Instead of downvoting... maybe someone could point out where and how exactly Google violated their own terms?
      - dredmorbius 12y ago
        Google can (and does) change its terms without notice. It's modestly better about this than many other SaaS / PaaS providers, but not by much. I'm having a conversation at this moment with the chief architect of G+ over the G+/YouTube Anschluss in which the two services were integrated. I had separate accounts on each prior to this, repeatedly refused to combine accounts, and yet found them combined as of last November. Worse: individual users have little or no recourse against such actions. As for Gmail, as has been pointed out, parties not using Google directly have their private correspondence entered into Google's systems. And not just when emailing Gmail addresses, but many domains for which email is handled via Gmail. Similar arguments could be made for many other online service providers as well. I don't consider Google to be significantly different from many of these, either for better or worse. But they're certainly a massive and major part of the problem, particularly for their size and scope. Bruce Schneier and Eben Moglen have made this point quite well, particularly in their December, 2013 Columbia Law School talk, and Schneier's April, 2014, Stanford Law School lecture. Maciej Cegłowski, "The Internet with a Human Face", makes the case far better yet. http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm
- nhaehnle 12y ago
  It's still my data. Post office employees are not allowed to read my letters, even though I have given them into their care. There are very good reasons why we, as a society, have agreed to disallow many activities that are physically possible. There's a good case to be made that such a rule should be explicitly added where organizations are entrusted with private data.
  - icehawk219 12y ago
    It most certainly is not your data. It's on their servers, in their apps, and running through their network. They decide what they do it with, how long they keep it, and whether or not you even have access to it. Comparing them to the post office doesn't really make sense either considering that's a public service, and one a depressingly large number of people want to get rid of. Google is a for profit company and their data is how they make money. If you don't like that reality then don't use their service. It really is that simple.
    - jahewson 12y ago
      I'm unconvinced: what about UPS? They're not a public service and are a for-profit company.
      - Someone 12y ago
        You can phrase that even stronger. In many countries, the post office is privatized. Examples: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Post http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Post http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KPN http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KPN
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        magicalist 12y ago
        No it doesn't. That privacy policy is pretty clear that they won't share personal information without my consent, and I'm quite certain a court would agree.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
sudont 12y ago
Reminds me of Doctorow's Scroogled. http://craphound.com/scroogled.html http://craphound.com/scroogled.html The funny thing is Doctorow makes references to "just metadata" years before it became a public issue, however this goes beyond metadata, and will eventually contain facts about people, not just tangential stuff. "This isn't P.I.I."—Personally Identifying Information, the toxic smog of the information age—"It's just metadata. So it's only slightly evil."
- roc 12y ago
  One quibble: Metadata is facts about people. Logging meta-data isn't a slippery-slope toward also catching facts. It's a problem from the jump. "Joe goes to the gym three times a week" is a fact. "Joe's network activity originates from a gym on the following schedule" is not only at least an equivalent fact, in practice it's far superior to the simple case. It can give you subtleties [1], it's less susceptible to subterfuge [2], it gives you actionable evidence of specific occurrences, etc. Consider the CIA doesn't use meta-data to target hellfire missiles because it's less identifying than actual data. They use it because it's far better. [1] Joe never goes to the gym on Saturday. Joe goes to the gym more during the spring than the winter. Joe almost never misses a day when Sally is at the gym. Joe and Sally nearly always leave at the same time. [2] It's trivial for someone to say they go to the gym on a schedule they don't. It's not even too difficult to get a second or third party to fudge, embellish or outright lie on their behalf. It's much more difficult to get a second or third party to help you make your device convincingly take the claimed routine, without you creating any conflicting meta-data that gives up the ruse.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    This is important and should be a top-level post. I think many people miss this in discussions about privacy, and this is the reason I believe the privacy is dead. Everything you do is metadata about everything else you do, about everything else people around you do. You can infer any piece of "data" you want given enough (meta)data sources and computing power. Thus the only way we can keep privacy would be to roll back the last 50 years of technological progress, and that's why I'm starting to entertain a thought that we (as a society) should drop the concept entirely and tackle the change head-on, instead of being dragged there by force by the ongoing progress of technology.
magicalist 12y ago
It doesn't make any sense to do that, for exactly the reasons you mention. You'd gain little value and basically ruin all public trust in you. Luckily the guy who said that is from Télécom ParisTech, i.e. he was completely speculating. Public posts from google+ and youtube are fine, though.
yid 12y ago
> I really hope Google does not use Gmail data for projects other than ads. It's already used by the Google Now cards on Android, and it's a fantastic feature. If I book a flight, I automatically get a card that reminds me to leave for the airport at the correct time (taking traffic into account), without any interaction on my part.
- cdr 12y ago
  If any flight itinerary hits gmail at all, in fact, it ends up in Now - as I've found out from itineraries forwarded by family and friends. Has been borderline annoying on occasion, since I don't generally care much if someone else's flight has been delayed.
  - deeringc 12y ago
    Last week I searched google for more information about a specific compiler error code. Later that day google now showed me flight info for some flight that happened to have the same code.
  - abraham 12y ago
    I find that fantastically useful when I'm traveling to meet family somewhere or when family is traveling to meet me. You can handily swipe them away if they are not useful though.
    - davidy123 12y ago
      You really shouldn't treat your family that way.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
The actual corpus that is worth using is the book corpus. While Google can't provide public access to all of the books it has scanned there is no restriction on them using the data in the books to feed this project. Given the amount of information they have scanned from libraries and elsewhere that is a much better source.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Is anyone doing the same for the books scanned by Archive.org?
dredmorbius 12y ago
Maciej Cegłowski: The Internet with a Human Face http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm One of the best discussions bar none of this issue I've seen.

by dm2 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

Why should google care what you are ok with after they already have all your data? If you don't want them to be able to engage in activities like this then don't give them your data in the first place.

andrewljohnson 12y ago
I should be able to use services from companies based on some terms and expect those terms to be respected. You're basically saying I shouldn't expect any sort of fair treatment or rights from any service provider on the Internet. I don't want to play on your Internet.
- gress 12y ago
  Jacques is describing the Internet as it currently is. If you don't want to play on it, you need to do something about it or stop playing.
- dreamdu5t 12y ago
  Google does respect its terms. Their terms of service let them do whatever they want with your information, and they can update their terms at any time.
  - dreamdu5t 12y ago
    Instead of downvoting... maybe someone could point out where and how exactly Google violated their own terms?
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      Google can (and does) change its terms without notice. It's modestly better about this than many other SaaS / PaaS providers, but not by much. I'm having a conversation at this moment with the chief architect of G+ over the G+/YouTube Anschluss in which the two services were integrated. I had separate accounts on each prior to this, repeatedly refused to combine accounts, and yet found them combined as of last November. Worse: individual users have little or no recourse against such actions. As for Gmail, as has been pointed out, parties not using Google directly have their private correspondence entered into Google's systems. And not just when emailing Gmail addresses, but many domains for which email is handled via Gmail. Similar arguments could be made for many other online service providers as well. I don't consider Google to be significantly different from many of these, either for better or worse. But they're certainly a massive and major part of the problem, particularly for their size and scope. Bruce Schneier and Eben Moglen have made this point quite well, particularly in their December, 2013 Columbia Law School talk, and Schneier's April, 2014, Stanford Law School lecture. Maciej Cegłowski, "The Internet with a Human Face", makes the case far better yet. http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm
nhaehnle 12y ago
It's still my data. Post office employees are not allowed to read my letters, even though I have given them into their care. There are very good reasons why we, as a society, have agreed to disallow many activities that are physically possible. There's a good case to be made that such a rule should be explicitly added where organizations are entrusted with private data.
- icehawk219 12y ago
  It most certainly is not your data. It's on their servers, in their apps, and running through their network. They decide what they do it with, how long they keep it, and whether or not you even have access to it. Comparing them to the post office doesn't really make sense either considering that's a public service, and one a depressingly large number of people want to get rid of. Google is a for profit company and their data is how they make money. If you don't like that reality then don't use their service. It really is that simple.
  - jahewson 12y ago
    I'm unconvinced: what about UPS? They're not a public service and are a for-profit company.
    - Someone 12y ago
      You can phrase that even stronger. In many countries, the post office is privatized. Examples: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Post http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Post http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KPN http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KPN
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
      - magicalist 12y ago
        No it doesn't. That privacy policy is pretty clear that they won't share personal information without my consent, and I'm quite certain a court would agree.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

sudont 12y ago

Reminds me of Doctorow's Scroogled. http://craphound.com/scroogled.html http://craphound.com/scroogled.html The funny thing is Doctorow makes references to "just metadata" years before it became a public issue, however this goes beyond metadata, and will eventually contain facts about people, not just tangential stuff. "This isn't P.I.I."—Personally Identifying Information, the toxic smog of the information age—"It's just metadata. So it's only slightly evil."

roc 12y ago
One quibble: Metadata is facts about people. Logging meta-data isn't a slippery-slope toward also catching facts. It's a problem from the jump. "Joe goes to the gym three times a week" is a fact. "Joe's network activity originates from a gym on the following schedule" is not only at least an equivalent fact, in practice it's far superior to the simple case. It can give you subtleties [1], it's less susceptible to subterfuge [2], it gives you actionable evidence of specific occurrences, etc. Consider the CIA doesn't use meta-data to target hellfire missiles because it's less identifying than actual data. They use it because it's far better. [1] Joe never goes to the gym on Saturday. Joe goes to the gym more during the spring than the winter. Joe almost never misses a day when Sally is at the gym. Joe and Sally nearly always leave at the same time. [2] It's trivial for someone to say they go to the gym on a schedule they don't. It's not even too difficult to get a second or third party to fudge, embellish or outright lie on their behalf. It's much more difficult to get a second or third party to help you make your device convincingly take the claimed routine, without you creating any conflicting meta-data that gives up the ruse.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  This is important and should be a top-level post. I think many people miss this in discussions about privacy, and this is the reason I believe the privacy is dead. Everything you do is metadata about everything else you do, about everything else people around you do. You can infer any piece of "data" you want given enough (meta)data sources and computing power. Thus the only way we can keep privacy would be to roll back the last 50 years of technological progress, and that's why I'm starting to entertain a thought that we (as a society) should drop the concept entirely and tackle the change head-on, instead of being dragged there by force by the ongoing progress of technology.

magicalist 12y ago

It doesn't make any sense to do that, for exactly the reasons you mention. You'd gain little value and basically ruin all public trust in you. Luckily the guy who said that is from Télécom ParisTech, i.e. he was completely speculating. Public posts from google+ and youtube are fine, though.

yid 12y ago

> I really hope Google does not use Gmail data for projects other than ads. It's already used by the Google Now cards on Android, and it's a fantastic feature. If I book a flight, I automatically get a card that reminds me to leave for the airport at the correct time (taking traffic into account), without any interaction on my part.

cdr 12y ago
If any flight itinerary hits gmail at all, in fact, it ends up in Now - as I've found out from itineraries forwarded by family and friends. Has been borderline annoying on occasion, since I don't generally care much if someone else's flight has been delayed.
- deeringc 12y ago
  Last week I searched google for more information about a specific compiler error code. Later that day google now showed me flight info for some flight that happened to have the same code.
- abraham 12y ago
  I find that fantastically useful when I'm traveling to meet family somewhere or when family is traveling to meet me. You can handily swipe them away if they are not useful though.
  - davidy123 12y ago
    You really shouldn't treat your family that way.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

The actual corpus that is worth using is the book corpus. While Google can't provide public access to all of the books it has scanned there is no restriction on them using the data in the books to feed this project. Given the amount of information they have scanned from libraries and elsewhere that is a much better source.

walterbell 12y ago
Is anyone doing the same for the books scanned by Archive.org?

dredmorbius 12y ago

Maciej Cegłowski: The Internet with a Human Face http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm One of the best discussions bar none of this issue I've seen.