Speaking of data – Cory Doctorow (of BoingBoing) has a neat piece of dystopian fiction up at Radar magazine – called “Scroogled”. The subtitle:
Google controls your e-mail, your videos, your calendar, your searches… What if it controlled your life?
A few quotes:
“It started in China,” she went on, finally. “Once we moved our servers onto the mainland, they went under Chinese jurisdiction.”
Greg sighed. He knew Google’s reach all too well: Every time you visited a page with Google ads on it, or used Google maps or Google mail – even if you sent mail to a Gmail account – the company diligently collected your info. Recently, the site’s search-optimization software had begun using the data to tailor Web searches to individual users. It proved to be a revolutionary tool for advertisers. An authoritarian government would have other purposes in mind.
“They were using us to build profiles of people,” she went on. “When they had someone they wanted to arrest, they’d come to us and find a reason to bust them. There’s hardly anything you can do on the Net that isn’t illegal in China.”
Greg shook his head. “Why did they have to put the servers in China?”
and
“We’re drafting a team for Building 49…”
“There is no Building 49,” Greg said automatically.
“Of course,” the guy said, flashing a tight smile. “There’s no Building 49. But we’re putting together a team to revamp the Googlecleaner. Maya’s code wasn’t very efficient, you know. It’s full of bugs. We need an upgrade. You’d be the right guy, and it wouldn’t matter what you knew if you were back inside.”
“Unbelievable,” Greg said, laughing. “If you think I’m going to help you smear political candidates in exchange for favors, you’re crazier than I thought.”
“Greg,” the man said, “we’re not smearing anyone. We’re just going to clean things up a bit. For some select people. You know what I mean? Everyone’s Google profile is a little scary under close inspection. Close inspection is the order of the day in politics. Standing for office is like a public colonoscopy.” He loaded the cafetière and depressed the plunger, his face screwed up in solemn concentration. Greg retrieved two coffee cups—Google mugs, of course – and passed them over.
“We’re going to do for our friends what Maya did for you. Just a little cleanup. All we want to do is preserve their privacy. That’s all.”
Greg sipped his coffee. “What happens to the candidates you don’t clean?”
Read the whole thing, as they say. It’s about more than the specific topic of social graph data – but it’ll get you thinking a bit.
I’ve spent the day in the discussion forums on the social graph/network (the hot issue of the day is what to call it) and while I see the word ‘privacy’ a lot, I haven’t yet found the nugget explaining how privacy is going to work in an era of social graph as exportable, universally mineable data. I’ll keep looking, and as always, welcome pointers to what I may be missing.
Google knows far more about you than the Federal Government does. The left gets its panties in a bunch when the feds want to tap known terrorists phone calls into the US, but they seem perfectly ok with Google’s data collection techniques (how long till some rabid lefty within Google starts leaking search info on candidates they oppose?)
I for one stopped using Google for anything non-work related simply because I don’t trust them.
Your credit card company knows more about you than the federal government, as well. So what?
The difference between what the “left gets its panties in a bunch” over (what? really now. real men think the gestapo is cool?) and what Google or your credit card company can compile about you has something to do with the difference between volunteering information that can be assembled and used (read the fine print) and spying in violation of this weird little liberal document known as the Constitution of the United States of America (it’s an interesting read. check it out sometime).
Also, I do not think Google or Bank of America is going to disappear citizens to the Gitmo or secret torture centers in European countries.
Where the danger lies is Google or Bank of America entering into deals with the government to sell or otherwise transfer the information they have pertaining to individuals. Such should be prevented.
No avedis, the US government is not going to “disappear” people into the Gulag. That only happens in Left-idolized nations like Fidel’s Cuba or Ahmadinejad’s Iran or Hugo’s Venezuela. All of which are sites of Leftist pilgrimages by Sean Penn, Danny Glover, and Ted Turner.
The danger of the Private Sector far exceeds that of the Government. The Private sector has far more resources, and far less safeguards. Every day Credit Card companies leak, disclose, or are hacked and compromise identities to identity thieves or computer criminals who loot accounts. However, because their politics are correct (particularly in the case of anti-American Google) Lefties give them a pass or cheerlead their efforts.
Meanwhile there has been zilch leaks or compromises of personal data or information to identity thieves by the NSA.
Lefties are not stupid. They perfectly understand that only dangerous threats to the US are observed and countered by the NSA, with massive safeguards. This is their problem. Lefties fundamentally hate and fear ordinary people who by upward mobility present a threat to them. This is why ANY measure that increases their security is in and of itself a threat to the new nobility of the Left. The Left WANTS terrorist attacks that kill lots of ordinary Americans and disrupts the economy because their ideal state of affairs is Castro’s Cuba: lots of impoverished masses and a few nomenklatura running things for the big chief.
Meanwhile, Google and other private companies offer an unregulated way to punish people with un-Lefty views, see leaking Bork’s video rental habits. The ability to punish and control people through Google and other private companies is just too tempting for Lefties. Lefties saw how Google gave China information on Democracy activists and fell in love all over again.
So much surfing on the net, it seems we are finally reaching Goolag Archipelago.
Banks, Credit car companies, or even insurance ones have a lot of information about you, but partial unless they combine all their data. I think Google has a global, better point of view about you.
I think it is a danger, but in the other hand I feel happy that globalization has made the world so complex that segmentation of buyers is increasingly difficult, and offers might need to be taylored for each one of us.
Wow, Jim, you really have been off your meds for a while haven’t you?
“…..The Left WANTS terrorist attacks that kill lots of ordinary Americans and disrupts the economy because their ideal state of affairs is Castro’s Cuba…” Classic. Jim, Roquefort at his best.
“Every day Credit Card companies leak, disclose, or are hacked and compromise identities to identity thieves or computer criminals who loot accounts. However, because their politics are correct (particularly in the case of anti-American Google) Lefties give them a pass or cheerlead their efforts……….”
Again, I am almost rendered speachless by the staggering insanity of the diatribe, but Jim, Bank of America as a leftist institution? Such a financial firm is in step with communist ideals?
Amazing! Apparently nothing short of Blackwater USA even approaches good old fashion American ideals in your very special world.
It got me thinking that Doctorow has a weak at best grip on reality. Google’s doing all that stuff, yet people still use it and no word leaks out? No one writes blog posts about it that go viral? And if that does happen and nobody cares, the lack of privacy controls in social graph technology is the least of of worries. And that’s not to mention that every bad thing is directly caused by the government and isn’t much more than previous totalitarian governments have managed.
It was far too silly to take seriously. I’m disappointed that you used such fluff to illustrate a serious point. I would recommend “The Transparent Society” for a treatment that actually makes you think about the subject.
Lefties give google a pass because the company is one of their darlings and generally has a corporate identity that sides with the left.
If it was Haliburton running the Google portal, or even doing anything close to the kind of information gathering done by Google, the ACLU, Moveon, DKos, Huffpo, etc would be shitting themselves 24/7 in fits of outrage.
Gabriel, I must admit that, to some extent, you do have a point.
If it was Haliburton or Blackwater doing these things left leaning media would be going ballistic. I agree. And I suppose that it is an interesting observation that there isn’t more noise being generated by “the left” (whatever that is) over Google’s activities in this regard.
It may be that Google is not known to have ties with the US government whereas Haliburton is.
Personally, I absolutely don’t like what Google is doing (Google associates, are you reading this? Good. Knock it off or go to hell fascist bastards) and I wish that more about it would be put right out front by major media and I will not patronize Google if this situation develops further – and I believe that you and the usual suspects here consider me to be a leftist (despite my claims to the contrary). So what does this do to your social psychology theory?
There’s one advantage of having commercial entities considering this stuff (data mining, etc., etc.) – they are profit motivated, and if it doesn’t make money, they will dump it. Since offended users and consumers boycotting services and products is part of that equation, everyone gets a vote. Of course, the more zealous privacy advocates may find to their dismay that not everyone cares as much as they do. Also one is never more a ‘person of interest’ to a commercial enterprise than your spending potential will warrant.
A government has no profit motive, and may continue an intrusive practice ad infinitum so long as it (in the person of elected or bureaucratic official) finds it useful for some purpose. ‘Opt out’ is a little more difficult when there is a legalized monopoly and/or threat of coercion. Lacking profit motive, the governmental entity can focus its attention on individuals or groups as whim. Getting even the elected offenders out of office can be problematic, given that many issues are confounded together in any election.
Just something to consider.