Day of the Groundhog

Are They Privacy-Busters? · Potentially, but it doesn’t feel like a big deal.

Tim Bray is among the willfully ignorant/deliberately obtuse when it comes to anything Google. The privacy implications with Glass are more troubling for the wearer, especially if it becomes widely adopted.

This is undoubtedly overlooked and excused by the implied and explicit consent the wearer offers when he agrees to Google’s terms of service. But it’s disingenuous to believe that users really read, think about and understand TOS; and extend that thinking to the implications of huge swaths of the world’s population agreeing to the same thing. 

And again, Google doesn’t need Glass to be ubiquitously deployed. It will be adopted by a significant cross-section of society. Data from Glass will be used to refine the predictive value of data obtained from slightly less creepy Google surveillance efforts, such as Maps, Google+, gmail, Google Docs, Google Drive, and every other honey pot that Google offers users to surrender their data and privacy.

And again, the issue is not one of the desirability or lack thereof of “advertising” supporting “free” services. The issue is what Google will be able to achieve using big data techniques on incredibly large quantities of surveillance data that make the Stasi look like rank amateurs. 

We don’t know what Google’s doing in its data centers. We don’t know how it’s analyzing data obtained from users in Washington DC, or federal law enforcement agencies. We don’t know if Google can sift through the data and tell if a Congressman or Senator is having an affair, or taking bribes, or considering legislation that may be inimical to Google’s interests. 

Why do you think Eric Schmidt uses a Blackberry?

We don’t know how Google chooses what’s “relevant” in your search requests if you’re a political activist, a likely voter, a congressional staff member, a reporter or a federal investigator. Can Google influence users through the tailoring of “relevant” information? I think it can, and I think it’s experimenting with that now. But I don’t know that for a fact. 

We don’t know what Google’s doing in its data centers.

We don’t know when Google’s wealth of surveillance data is going to become irresistible to those with “national security” responsibilities. 

For a company supposedly not “evil,” supposedly “open” there’s an awful lot we don’t know about what they’re doing.

And they’re awfully good at offering distractions.

We are headed for a confrontation with Google.

And it won’t end well.