What answer do the engineers at google working on this have for this violation of privacy?
We don't know who you are, you are just a number in a database, and we don't even know what number, we just get the total number of visits for each website, not who visited it. It is like counting cars on a highway, not following your car. Plus, it serves the useful purpose of providing you with better search results, the terms and conditions allow it, and it can be disabled.
Similar to how insurance companies have offered voluntary, “anonymized” data dongles for discounts that are now being used (or at least revealed to be used) to collect data most often used to reject claims.
The logic does not follow. "A is required for B, B is bad, so A is bad" is not logically valid.
Much like inventing the wheel (positive) is a necessary precursor to both ambulances/fire fighting (also positive), as well as DUIs (less positive).
The larger point being simply that I find it somewhat disingenuous for those of us who consider it our job to think through problems from many angles to pretend we’re somehow unable to imagine the potential unfortunate consequences arising from our work, given the existing Powers That Be (meaning both entities and trends).
This is not what a clickstream is. A clickstream requires that the sequence of clicks be preserved, and preserving that sequence undermines anonymity.
Google researchers spend time ensuring k-anonymity (for reasonably large k) when using data.
De-anonymization would require linking that click stream with something that identifies the user, rather than the click stream. Perhaps that exists, perhaps not. GP didn't provide enough material to go that far.
Exactly because Google has these powers is why they have internal processes to avoid it. Of course there are products that use non-anonymous data, but this idea that everything at Google flows around with user-IDs for everyone to use and abuse is a weird stance. Google has a lot of internal auditing and validation systems when e.g. reading logs and doing feature extraction.
But I also got way more respect for Google's internal systems after I worked there than before, so I understand your scepticism.
In some way our interests define us more then social security number assigned.
It certainly is not "to improve the net or advertising" - that would be the lying part.
Google has done some good for the net, but the scales of their contributions slowly but steadily move to the negative side.
Basically if you believe lies you tell yourself, they tend to turn into truths in your mind over time. Even if you were doing it “ironically.”
Personal opinion about work at Google (still not googles opinion) I’m consistently impressed with how seriously this stuff is taken and the amount of work that goes into making sure that things like this sharing can’t happen accidentally, and that user choice is respected. The engineers on the ground are absolutely making sure this all works, and most of us care deeply about user privacy. I have personally worked both on implementing new features that significantly push forward privacy, and on implementing privacy controls for regulatory purposes.
If I'm letting you scrape crash dumps and my browser happens to crash in the request where I send my credit card information to xhamster, that's one thing. Odds are that's never happened to anyone. It's another thing for you to guarantee that you're planning to record that information.
You do realize the majority of people are completely oblivious as to why privacy matters as it relates to their data collection.
It's not that they're willing to do anything. It's that they're passive/apathetic when faced with vague prompts telling them about a matter they don't have insight on, after being bombarded by terms of service agreements, cookie pop ups, etc for years and years.
> This is a fair position to take, but assuming good faith all round, one that I think will typically be a minority.
If they were aware of privacy implications / exactly what's being collected on them and how that data is being used, then it's safe to say that they'd be the majority. Can't blame them for not taking the time to read into the matter either, as most outside of tech are wrapped up with a million other hostilities in their daily lives.
Defend it all you want, but it's just one more unethical thing screwing people over.
But why would anyone assume that? I think the position of many privacy advocates is that we're long past the point where it's reasonable to assume Google is acting in good faith in the best interests of its users. (Again, to be fair, this is true of more companies than just Google.)
Corporations measure success by one metric and one metric alone: shareholder value. Under our current system, a corporation that doesn't increase shareholder value is considered a bad company. Such a company is punished.
If Google can increase shareholder value by violating user privacy, and the consequences of getting caught won't reduce shareholder value too much, it's a bad company if it doesn't violate user privacy.
Of course there are mechanisms that slow this down, like laws and employees trying to follow laws, employee ethics, old guard culture, etc, but all will be defeated one by one for shareholder value.
In fact your opinion is not a fact.
The right spirit is informed consent.
Exactly this. It doesn't matter that google doesn't "share" what they gather if they own so many conversion funnels from top to bottom anyway.
Require opt-in by default. In all cases.
All PII data at rest must be encrypted at the field level. Like how passwords should be stored. aka Translucent Database techniques. Not just in transit. Not just encrypting the whole database. But encrypt the actual fields within a database.
Constitutional privacy means personal sovereignty over oneself. (A superset of the folk definition of keeping secrets.) Meaning any and all data about me is owned by me. Any one using my data for any purpose has to pay me. (See opt-in by default above.)
I'm sorry but this is just wishful thinking. It might be what the spirit of the DMA & GDPR want but definitely not the reality thanks to inadequate or outright non-existent enforcement.
There are businesses out there whose entire business model and revenue stream are based on violating the GDPR. Not some kind of internal conspiracy or rogue employee, but the entire company is doing it in the open and the result of its doings (targeted ads or spam) are visible out there in the open for all to see.
Facebook, credit bureaus, data brokers, "consent management platforms", etc. All these companies' business models are big, obvious breaches of the GDPR. Yet, they are... still alive and kicking?
There is no chance that a concealed GDPR breach (whether intentional or accidental) will get addressed when the biggest intentional breaches are still allowed to continue out there in the open.
I suspect something very similar is going to happen with the DMA - Apple is already acting in bad faith but have yet to see any consequences.
I believe the law is violated when it's sufficiently profitable -- it just requires VP permission.
No public sources for this except Jedi Blue, the old anti-poaching case, etc.
The same answer you probably have for the millions of questions about what the things you do that some other people find offensive to their personal views and beliefs.