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Comment by rayval | Hacker News Reader

Gruber misinterprets what Schmidt said. He was making a prediction, not a prescription, regarding future social behavior -- young people changing their name as they come of age.

Ten years ago, would anyone have predicted that today we would be able to have online friendships with 1000 people whom we have never met (Facebook), know what they had for lunch (Twitter), see photos from their vacation (Flickr), know their exact location at this moment (Gowalla), what items they have just bought (Blippy), etc. None of this has anything to do with Google or how "creepy" Schmidt is. It seems to me a prescient forecast.

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He also takes the "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place." quote out of context, as so many did at the time. Schmidt was pointing out that the government can demand access to data about your searches, and that you need to be conscious of that and be careful.

Between two misinterpretations and quoting a 'quip' to imply that google somehow things it should make all your decisions for you, it is a pretty shoddy post.

Truth. The full comment: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it's important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."

If anything, he's saying, don't use Google for illegal searches. Seems like a valid argument and we can apply that to Schmidt's more recent comments too.

Define "illegal search."

Anything that would embarrass your parents :)

God, I hope that is not the standard. There are some things I want to know that I think are perfectly legitimate questions, but which I would not wish to ask my parents.

It was a joke, hence the smiley.

Something the government would ask Google for when they are investigating you for the illegal act that they suspect you of. If you kill someone, and your recent Google searches are "how to kill someone", then that's not going to look good.

That's not Google's fault. They don't want to leak that information to the government; they have to. So if you don't want Google to leak that information, don't type it into Google. Use Tor, or figure out how to kill someone yourself.

Or, as Schmidt advises, don't kill anyone.

That's all very easy when the fundamental act is "kill someone".

What if the fundamental act is something you consider innocuous like "donate money to charity"? And the charity is at some point in the future considered by the gov't to be a funnel for terrorist activities.

Or perhaps you do multiple searches along the lines of "jewish traditions". And at some point in the future the gov't declares Judaism illegal, targets jewish-sympathizers and uses Google's data to identify them.

The point (I believe) of the "define illegal search" comment is that what may be considered legal or harmless today isn't necessarily non-criminatory tomorrow.

(On the other hand, there's no such thing as an "illegal search" on Google, so perhaps that was the point of that comment - regardless, my point stands)

In other words: Don't use the Google for anything if you don't automatically accept everything the gov't decrees today and tomorrow.

That is, effectively, what Schmidt is stating when he says "if you have something you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place". Which is also why that statement, in context, is just as creepy as Gruber states.

Obviously it's creepy, but Schmidt is not the creep.

Talk to your congressman.

Schmidt could have phrased it much better as "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, Don't tell anyone."

Schmidt could have phrased it much better as "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, Don't tell anyone."

Great point, in hindsight. It's much harder to know these things when you spend a lot of your time in front of reporters.

Maybe it's prescient if it came from you and me. But if it comes from the CEO of one of the companies that has never seem to care much about privacy it's another matter. They _can_ do thing, change them. It seems to me that Schmidt has not problem with such a future, and that's creepy.

There is no reason why Twitter, Gowalla, and the rest could not have good privacy settings. But that would be horrible for Schmidt since he makes money from knowing what you like or what you may like (and you don't even know it yet).

David Brin made a similar forecast more than ten years ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

...unless you're violating the privacy of a police officer, prominent businessman, or a politician. In that case, you'd better be ready to fight a felony wiretapping charge.

How can you predict the future? Simple. It's easy when you're building it.

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