The US government, and governments around the world, are increasingly using Google as a key surveillance tool. That's the implication of Google's latest Transparency Report, although it's not obvious how concerned individuals or businesses should be of official snooping.
According to Google, the trend is clear:
Government surveillance is on the rise... Government demands for user data have increased steadily since we first launched the Transparency Report. In the first half of 2012, there were 20,938 inquiries from government entities around the world. Those requests were for information about 34,614 accounts.
The number of inquiries has risen by around 37 percent since the first Transparency Report was issued, as recently as 2009.
If it's a global issue, the US government is at least in the forefront. Brazil, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom each generated more than 1,000 government-related requests for user data. India was more inquisitive, with 2,319 requests. The US issued almost as many requests as those countries put together: 7,969.
It also led the charge when it came to requesting the removal of content from Google, with a total of 273 removal requests, including court orders.
Before completely despairing of user privacy, it's worth putting these figures in context. Google claims to have more than 400 million Gmail users alone. If the total number of Google accounts is, say, half a billion, then your chances of being subject to a request for user data is still only 25,000 to one.
On the one hand, Google isn't entirely playing government stooge. It has complied with steadily fewer requests for removal of content, with the current rate running at around 50 percent. On the other hand, Google is rarely refusing requests for user data: 90 percent of requests issued by the US government were successful.
The dramatic backdrop to these dry statistics is, of course, the David Petraeus affair. The latest reports say that Petraeus and Paula Broadwell shared a Gmail account. Petraeus would write drafts of emails; Broadwell would log into the same account, read the drafts, and compose drafts in reply. They never needed to send emails to each other.
A smart ploy, on the face of it, but easily cracked once the FBI started to follow the trail of her IP addresses. What's more, the government has taken the position that draft emails do not count as in "electric storage" with a communication provider, and do not require a warrant to obtain. The ACLU has laid out, in some detail, the likely route by which the FBI tracked down Petraeus and Broadwell's phantom correspondence.
Of course, most of us lead lives of much less interest to government authorities. For enterprises, the concern should probably be less about spying, and more about negligence. If Google, Microsoft, or Amazon complies with an agency's request to hand over enterprise data, what becomes of it? Is it securely protected in the hands of law enforcement? Is it securely disposed of once the investigation is over? If it's obtained without a warrant, will you even know that your data is being examined?
These are just further questions for individuals and organizations to consider before committing sensitive and confidential information to what is, in effect, the cloud.
Now that's not to say they can't be guarded for 'long enough' however. The fact remains that once those thoughts are recorded, it's simply a matter of time before they're shared if they're not destroyed in short order.
With enough security, some thoughts might not be shared until long after sharing would change anything.
For the average person however, do not publish anything you don't want to be shared within your lifetime. That includes both traditional media, social networks, web pages, and email.
Guarding our thoughts is a really scary thought, however, like you point out, smkinoshita, it's time to stop thinking whatever is posted anywhere won't be available for others to see and pass on. The question is, can our recorded thoughts still be guarded? Is this still a real possibility, or has the horse left the barn?
There really is no privacy anymore, and although I shudder at who might learn my 'secrets' such as they are, I also have the feeling that the removal of privacy boundaries is probably a good thing all in all.
Consider:
If you knew that others knew everything about you, you wouldn't bother trying to lie to them because they would already know the truth
If you already knew everything about everyone else, they'd have no reason to lie to you either.
But there have been a plethora of fictional studies concerning loss of privacy. Perhaps the most prevalent reason for such a loss is the development of telepathic communication that cannot be blocked; most writers' scenarios in such circumstances have the characters becoming mad. We don't seem to be able to stand such a complete loss of privacy.
But I still think that a partial loss of privacy may not be without its compensations.
I've heard an IP lawyer describe the Internet as just a really great tool for copying and sharing content. We need to rethink our assumptions about copyright and privacy in the light of that fact, which isn't going to go away.
I'd like to point out that it doesn't matter if it's electronic or not. The moment someone shares anything -- be it on paper, a VHS cassette, CD, photograph or recording on an old LP -- it's not private and it can be transferred and then posted to the Internet for all to see.
The moment anything leaves one's brain onto another media, it can be posted to the Internet unless it is promptly destroyed afterwards.
That's just the way of things now. Since we can't stop sharing or recording our thoughts, we simply must be prepared to guard what we do not want to be made public and accept that most things will be made public eventually. There's no halfway measures.
Kim, recently a law, that limits an access to certain websites was passed by Russian Government, So today, the whole country couldn't get an access to Google. At all.
The officials explained that this was a mistake, though the last week, no one could get to Youtube. I understand, it's terrible when your government is googling you, but may be it's not as bad, as your gorvernment doesn't let you google.
Many commentators have said it one way or another - whatever you type electronically lives on. Once upon old fashioned paper was secure in that you only had to trust one person and you could even ask that person to destroy the "evidence." Those days are gone.
Anything you write using electronic media is never 100% in your control - end of story. Even if it secure - it is never 100% private - and it has not been since the days of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate tapes!
Case in point, in a job interview earlier this year somebody based their questions about CRM on articles and comments that I had made on Internet Evolution!
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The Memorial Day weekend begins with Geek Pride Day on Saturday. Kick off your holiday with nine news tidbits that are perfect for sharing at backyard BBQs and poolside get-togethers.
At the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit here in Nashville, I'm hearing many stories about how businesses have adapted their IT strategies in response to this rapidly changing, pressurized, data-driven commercial world.
Neal Stephenson is best known as the author of science fiction novels such as SnowCrash and Anathem. But he does other things as well. Among them: He's assembled a team of scientists and engineers to figure out how to build a 20-kilometer-tall tower to use as a platform for launching rockets into space.
While interstellar travel presents huge challenges, it's "almost inevitable," according to a speaker at the Starship Century symposium here in San Diego.
Google's problems in Korea and the leaked internal document on exploiting private data show that, if we want to avoid active regulation, we need more explicit disclosure of what companies do and don’t do with what they collect.
In the final episode of this series about the death of Internet anonymity, Saunders describes how the Internet of the future will start to attain a level of intelligence that requires no human intervention. Scary.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
The plan for unmanned police drones to patrol traffic and other city conditions in Seattle has sparked a new set of legal concerns about privacy. Law traditionally lags technology, but we can expect now to see a new round of activity in the courts as legal definitions begin to emerge on what "next-gen privacy" will look like.
Malware designed to infect Google Android smartphones has increased dramatically, and now the government is stepping in. The National Security Agency has developed SE Android, a system that tries to close up its security holes.
The quest for Webpage clicks and ad impressions is creating a market for sensational truths and lies in equal measure. How are we going to get to the bottom of any real issue online – like what's really going on with Carrier IQ, for example – if we can't separate hype from reality?
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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