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As I never tire of pointing out, he was actually pointing out how to protect your privacy from the federal government before many cared at all: > "People are t
by magicalist 11y ago
As I never tire of pointing out, he was actually pointing out how to protect your privacy from the federal government before many cared at all:
> "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?"
> "I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that information could be made available to the authorities."
But that never got play back then, so we get the incomplete quote everywhere. It took Edward Snowden to make the tech blogs finally change narrative.
- stephenr 11y agoThe government doesn't force Google to run their business the way they do, dependent as it is on such huge amounts of personal information, to provide "better" (for some peoples value for better) targeted ads. If Google don't track/store what I search for, what results I click through to, etc, it doesn't matter what the US government asks them for - they are technically unable to hand over data they don't have.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoI think, sadly, that's not true. The government can force them to change their business, and begin recording personal information that passes through their hands. Its very strange.
- anon1385 11y agoThere is a lot of tracking Google does that couldn't just be instantly turned on at the request of a government if Google wasn't already doing it. For example Google Analytics: if that product didn't exist the government couldn't just ask Google to install tracking scripts on half the websites in the world without anybody noticing. You could argue that the government could force Google to create and market Google Analytics. But that just re-enforces the idea that we shouldn't be using Google Analytics - we don't even know if it isn't entirely a program created at the request of the US government (I don't actually believe this, but it's where you end up if you start worrying about the government forcing Google to change their business).
- aiiane 11y agoBy that argument CDNs shouldn't exist, since the government could theoretically compel them to inject code into the sites they serve.
- stephenr 11y agoThe correct analogy would be "by that argument, everyone should think very carefully about the pros and cons of using a CDN to serve part/all of their website". Which.... is true anyway, regardless of the potential for government-enforced data collection.
- rsynnott 11y agoIf you have a site where this would be a significant worry for you, then yes, you absolutely shouldn't be using a CDN (or, at least, should only be using it in limited ways; images are probably safe); the CDN provider or anyone who can control it can do you a lot of damage.
- magicalist 11y agoI guess. It's a tradeoff, really. I find it very convenient to store all my photos with Google, for instance, and I make that decision with eyes wide open. Same with search history or even location history. I'm sympathetic to the argument that there are a lot of consumers making that decision without full knowledge (the help documents are actually pretty good[1], but you have to know they exist to read them). However, I'm not remotely sympathetic to the idea there's no possible reason one would make that tradeoff. [1] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]