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Google and Privacy

Google and privacy (or Google vs. privacy) has come up in my conversations quite a bit lately... the more Google sinks its teeth into the global social information sandwich, the more I hear concerns that the company will somehow sometime misuse its massive databases and algorithmic expertise. The Wall Street Journal discussed the Google vs. Privacy domain with Cory Doctorow, who ficitionalized the growing paranoia in his recent story "Scroogled." Cory talks about the "real tension about, on the one hand, being good to people, but on the other hand, acquiring as much information about them as they can, under the rubric that it allows them to be better to people."

And it does, a lot of the time. There are lots of ways in which Google knowing more about you makes Google better for you. But without much regard to what's happening in the world around us, in an era in which the national security apparatus has turned into a kind of lumbering, savage, giant toddler, it behooves us to not leave things within arm's reach that it might stick in its mouth. And that includes things like my search history. And I'd prefer that Google not be storing a lot of that stuff, especially today, especially after Patriot [Act] and so on. They're inviting abuse, I think, by doing that. The steps you don't save can't be subpoenaed. And by saving them, Google is inviting a subpoena.

So Google's always had this kind of "We will collect all your information, and it will belong to us, and you won't be able to take it away, but it's OK because we'll only do good things for you" attitude, and that's a bit of a problem.

[Link to the WSJ article]

Photo: Cory Doctorow, 2004, by Jon L.

jon posted this at 9:29 AM
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