[ELECTRON] it's a google world ....

Tue Mar 2 21:39:39 UTC 2010

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February 2010 Newsletter
Google special edition

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Contents:

* Google: creepy and evil
* How to protect your privacy online

Google: creepy and evil
-----------------------------

Google's motto of "don't be evil" has been key to the company's success.
In the year 2000, Google was the only search engine that did not
privilege search results from advertisers, a significant factor in
Google's rapid rise. Maybe Google's new motto should be "don't be
creepy". Recently, CEO Eric Schmidt said Google is "trying not to cross
what we call the creepy line" when it comes to gathering personal data [1].

However, Eric Schmidt wasted no time in crossing the creepy line when in
December, he told an interviewer that "If you have something that you
don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first
place." In effect, the head of the corporation with the most
surveillance data in the world has just announced that if you are
innocent you should have nothing to hide. As many people have noted,
Schmidt's statement is hypocritical and disturbing [2][3]. His logic is
nearly identical to the totalitarian assertion that if you want free
speech, maybe you shouldn't be saying anything controversial.

Eric Schmidt's comments are particularly troublesome in light of
Google's recent changes in policy. In March of 2009, Google reversed its
long held policy against behavioral surveillance [4]. Now, Google tracks
the behavior of internet users in order to serve people more precisely
targeted advertising. In February of 2010, the Washington Post revealed
that Google again reversed existing policy by forging an information
sharing partnership with the NSA (the super secretive electronic spying
arm of the US government) in order to combat "cyberattacks" [5].

In both cases, we are told not to worry because Google will only be
sharing data that has been anonymized (i.e. personally identifying
information is removed). But there is plenty of cause for alarm. Recent
research has shown how social media sites leak large amounts of personal
information to their advertising partners [6] and how exceptionally
difficult it is to create a dataset that cannot be de-anonymized [7][8][9].

In fact, the US defense department has a new initiative based exactly on
this principle [10]. Called 'Digital DNA', the goal is to develop a
digital fingerprint database much like the databases of DNA stored by
many national governments. The goal is precisely to identify particular
individuals from data commonly thought to be anonymous--the tiny traces
of digital footprints we leave behind whenever we use a computer.

Despite all this, Google continues to assure its users that there is
nothing to worry about. After all, if you have a lot of time on your
hands, you can use the Google dashboard to adjust a complex array of
privacy "self-care" settings. The problem is, the dashboard only applies
to data directly tied to a Google account and it ignores all the many
ways Google retains indirect and easily de-anonymized data on you. For
example, it does not let you remove the location data Google keeps on
you every time you send an email to a gmail user.

Google wants our trust. We are asked to put faith in the wizard behind
the curtain who controls the largest assemblage of data the world has
ever known. Google's new motto is clear: "don't be so evil that people
start to notice." We are starting to notice.

How to protect your privacy online
----------------------------------------------------

Working on this issue is really a social problem, not an individual
problem. Asking individuals to spend a lot of time practicing 'privacy
hygiene' is both impractical and politically dubious. Creating privacy
online, in our opinion, should be done communally by supporting
alternatives.

However, there are some things which we recommend that are mostly
'install and forget' measures, and don't require ongoing or tedious
maintenance.

If you use Firefox, a web browser we recommend
(http://help.riseup.net/mail/#use_firefox), you can install various
extensions to use when browsing. Firefox is free software, and community
members have written software to add new features, and anybody can
download these extensions (see https://addons.mozilla.org/ for more
information about Firefox extensions.)

Here are some Firefox extensions that we recommend:

* GoogleSharing (https://we.riseup.net/help/googlesharing)
* Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO) (http://taco.dubfire.net/)
* Adblock Plus (http://adblockplus.org/en/)

You can also do web searches at https://ssl.scroogle.org/ - add this
to your search engine menu by adding
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12506

----------------------------------------------------
[1] "Google trying not to cross 'the creepy line'"
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10392435-265.html

[2] "Google CEO Eric Schmidt Dismisses the Importance of Privacy"
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/Google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy

[3] "My Reaction to Eric Schmidt"
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/12/my_reaction_to.html

[4] "Privacy Groups Rip Google's Targeted Advertising Plan"
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/161086/privacy_groups_rip_googles_targeted_advertising_plan.html

[5] "Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/03/AR2010020304057.html

[6] "Social networks make it easy for 3rd parties to identify you"
http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/09/which-user-clicked-on-viagra-ads-ask-myspace-and-facebook.ars

[7] Mielikäinen, Taneli. 2004 "Privacy Problems with Anonymized
Transaction Databases".
http://www.springerlink.com/content/rukljup9muhtrpcu/

[8] Shmatikov, Vitaly and Arvind Narayanan. 2008. "Robust
De-anonymization of Large Sparse Datasets (How To Break Anonymity of the
Netflix Prize Dataset)".
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak08netflix.pdf

[9] Shmatikov, Vitaly and Arvind Narayanan. 2009. "De-Anonymizing Social
Networks". http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/shmat_oak09.pdf

[10]"Pentagon Searches for ‘Digital DNA’ to Identify Hackers"
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/pentagon-searches-for-digital-dna-to-identify-hackers/

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