Google 'reveals user' over Gmail child abuse images

[Beet]

Sure, they did the right thing, but the amount of power Google has over the populace is disturbing. Even 40 or 50 years ago, if you had said that there would be one company with the power to peer into every piece of mail sent in the country, albeit a private company, people would still find it extremely upsetting.

[Beet]

40% of all webmail is still a freakishly large amount of information, especially when you consider that the amount of "mail" today is exponentially higher than it was 30 or 40 years ago. Back then, people either talked to one another on the phone or waited to meet in person. Besides, when you combine that with the fact that Google controls 90% of the search market, YouTube, the Chrome browser, and the android operating system (which could allow it to see all text messages, for instance) you get a system every bit as good as the one in George Orwell's 1984.

[Beet]

Except it's easy to avoid if you're a tinfoil hat wearer.  So it's nowhere near as good as Orwell's.

Except contrary to dystopian fantasies, the so called lone tinfoil hattie or lone wolf is no threat to the system. By dropping out of society, they have already removed themselves from relevance. Real power and control comes from managing the masses, and this is what companies like Google have the power to do. Sure, you might be able to avoid their products with a few conscientious people, but as soon as you start to become relevant, they know you- And the more influential you are, the more you show up on their radar. And they may know you at that point better than you know yourself. It's the mass movements and mass phenomena (such as, for example, the Arab Spring) that companies like Google now have the Eye over.

Second of all, even if you are a lone operator, unless you are doing something such that the cost of allowing one of these companies to see what you are doing outweighs the convenience if the service they provide, most people will accept their loss of privacy. This is insidious, for it seems like something voluntary, even when the person making the decision would rather protect their privacy. For instance, let's say I don't want Apple or Google to know what I'm doing on my smartphone. But let's say that means I can't buy an iPhone or android phone. I'm left with Windows or Blackberry. But the quality if those phones are so much worse, and Id still be giving up my habits to a giant corporation, so there's very little benefit and a high cost. Not buying a smartphone has an even higher cost, since now everyone is expected to have one, and even my boss expects it. So I give in and buy an android phone. Repeat that over virtually every consumer in the country and you have a situation where technology itself, as it invades our lives, strips us of our privacy and essentially turns us into guinea pigs for these secretive, powerful corporations.

[Beet]

You can have extreme privacy or you can join the 21st century.

You just summed up the precise problem far more succinctly than I could have. The loss of privacy is now taken with such fatalism, inevitability, that it is now being equated (almost accurately) with the march of time. "Lose your privacy and join the 21st century, or be stuck in the past!"

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The fact that Google seeks profits does not, in my estimation, make them benevolent. It makes them the same as any other amoral, profit-seeking entity. The same objection (benevolent inspector), of course, can and usually is made about any loss of privacy. "Why, it's okay if the NSA violates the fourth amendment, they're just looking out for our interest. You don't trust the government? They would never take advantage..." and so on. No, I don't trust Google. An entire generation is now growing up with no conception of what privacy even means, as previous generations understood the term. And I see very little public debate about this issue.

For just as the industrial revolution opened up whole new levels of extreme inequality, in wealth and in power, so does the information revolution open up whole new levels of inequality, the inequality of information, which was not even conceivable 20 years ago. The power not only to invade the private communications of individuals but to monitor, track, study, analyze, model, predict, and ultimately manipulate entire populations and their social behaviors. And unlike the industrial revolution, where the wealth of the nouveau riche, or the power of Gatling-gun equipped European empires was on public display for all to see, this revolution has largely been occurring invisibly.

[Beet]

dead0man-- I think you've missed my points-- although understandably. I'm not advocating getting rid of the Internet or Google here. Luddism, although an understandable reaction to the Industrial Revolution, proved unworkable in the long run (I know what a tracert is-- I work in IT). And the ability to see more of what people are doing has certain benefits- in catching child pornographers, or in epidemiology, for instance (although in the case of child pornographers and other criminals and terrorists, they want to engage in private abuses, so an easy solution for them is to simply stop using technology vis-a-vis their illegal activities. Ironically, it's those who are "innocent" or have nothing to hide who are the most vulnerable to having our privacy given away and our actions manipulated).

The point here is not to roll back the clock but to address the vast new issues and power imbalances that the aggregation of so much information - which was once considered private - has created. It must be recognized that the public has an interest in knowing what information is being collected about it, and to what uses this information is being put to. This is perfectly addressable through regulations, for example, that require corporations to report what information they are collecting on consumers and how they are using it, and perhaps, making the raw data available for academics and social scientists to also study this information and use it to advance public knowledge. I would have no problem with such corporations being compensated for such data. Of course, certain things-- such as anti-competitive behaviors, would be prohibited. I would elaborate more, but it would take time, and I am on lunch break.

[Beet]

Does privar is really breached? I mean, the volume of emails sent is so big, it would take thousands of employees just to read them all.

There are entire (growing) fields of study devoted to this topic. No, one does not need an army of people to sit there and read through emails-- analytic methods or other forms of research can be used to single out those of interest.

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No one has said it does.

To take just one small example, suppose any of you young people who are in college or university want to conduct a survey of a few hundred people for the purposes of your academic work-- for a paper whose results will be published and available to the general public, and whose motive is not profit but learning and the general advancement of knowledge. You would still have to go through a rigorous review process and get approval from a local Institutional Review Board. Usually you would also have to provide assurance that you will safeguard "the rights and welfare of human research subjects." (Source). And yet companies like Facebook and Okcupid may conduct behavioral research on thousands, even millions of people with impunity. These two cases we only know because they publicly admitted it. Given the backlash against Facebook, many users did not sign up to be a part of such experiments. Over time they will amass an awesome amount of knowledge about human behaviors, and will be able to manipulate the public to an increasingly high degree. What is to stop companies from abusing this power?