The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Most people won't even let themselves imagine what could be done with Google if evil was an option. How many hours would it take to compile a list of everyone who searches for incest porn and correlate that with 'people who are judges'. Considering that the incest fetish runs as high as 10% such information could be used to perform a bloodless coup. Call the legal system nullified, and lobbyists obsolete.
And that is just one facet of the simplest way Google could be used for evil (blackmail). There are infinite ways Google's information asymmetry could be exploited, and most of them would be completely invisible and 100% effective.
Thats why I'm glad we have Sergey and Larry running under the banner of "Don't be Evil." It shows that even from the beginning they realized they were going to wield terrible power, and they were a bit honest with that fact.
Which is precisely why it won't happen. The people in charge at Google understand this existential threat and that is why every feasible cultural and technical safeguard exists to prevent this from happening.
But the thing is Google has been one of the companies that has actively fought the hardest against such government abuses.
Others on the other hand are more than willing to do it. How long did it take Microsoft to brag to the Chinese authorities that they are on the Chinese government's side, just so they can gain 1% market share if Google was banned from China? A whole week? What about the partnership to create the surveillance tool that is TOM-Skype?
So yes, I think we could do much, much worse than Google.
Yes. We could do much, much worse than Google. We could also do much, much better. But the fact is that every company is complying with the basic tenants of the law and that is all that anyone can expect of them really.
But that is just a reflection of the low moral standards Sergey and Larry have. Instead of imagining what they could do if they committed senseless stupid evil on irrelevant perverts, imagine what they could do if they would actually do good.
They wield a terrible power, and worse the faceless public owners of Google wield it with them. If they truly were good, then the world would be a different place from what it is now.
And as for blackmail, who's to say it's not already happening? But even if the Googlers don't personally blackmail anyone to advance their own goals, how hard would it be for a crime organization to put a Google employee on their payroll? I don't know what kind of security they hav at Google, and chances are it's the wrong kind[1].
[1]: http://xkcd.com/538/
Actually, yes, this is pretty much what happens almost all of the time. People think long and hard about the ramifications about what they are going to do. That doesn't mean they always come up with the "right" answers, or that there isn't vehement disagreement, but yes, they do in fact, thing long and hard about it, and whether it is the right thing to do.
" I don't know what kind of security they hav at Google, and chances are it's the wrong kind[1]."
As you said, you have literally no idea what you are talking about.
A Google engineer keeping too much data in the Google Mapping car; some Google employees doing stuff that gets their product penalised in web-search.
It's very easy for these examples to be picked up. It's a bit harder for the other stuff - which is often invisible - to be remembered.
And so the definition of behavior that would qualify as "evil" varies even within Google itself, making the motto even squishier.
The reason it's a corporate value is because it's part of the culture. There is an actual conscience at the company, and you try to hear, understand, and deal with concerns people have, internally and externally. You try to do the right thing, for the right reasons. The fact that you may not always achieve this, or that people may disagree on what the right thing is, changes nothing.
The outside problem is that most people think "Don't be evil" means "don't do anything I <the user> morally disagree with".
This would be a pointless value, as it would be both impossible and meaningless to achieve at any scale. There are plenty of moral values on which large populations of people have diametrically opposed views. For example, from the perspective of a large population of people, Google's stance on gay marriage is evil.
There is nothing about what you have said that demonstrates this is a slippery slope.
Maybe you meant to make the argument that once something is okay, you start down the path to everything being okay. This would be false, since outcomes, reactions, and viewpoints of previous things are raised when new things happen.
It's not a court where once a ruling has been issued, that is the rule.
2. I'm really trying to understand your concern here, but, as written, seems to boil down to "if everyone is a bad person, bad things can happen". Since I assume this is not what you are trying to say, could you elaborate a bit?
This momentum is a force that affects the value system of the company's implementors and gating roles. It boils down to "bad things can happen even if everybody thinks they're working for good." Myopia becomes a bigger problem the older a company gets.
Maybe if the company had no turnover, no leadership changes, no nothing you could make this argument, becuase it would always be the same people.
But it's not the same people, and even where it is, nobody sits around and asks "in light of us deciding this wasn't evil in the past, is it now okay to do X". That's not the question to be answered. It's not "is this evil in light of us having done similar things in the past", it's "is this evil". Don't get me wrong - The past is evidence, and data, for sure. It would be stupid to ignore reactions, viewpoints, etc. But the world changes, decisions look different in hindsight, society changes. If there was no evolution of thought, you would be right. But there is.
But I even have doubts about Google's benevolence. What, a company that adopts a "don't be evil" motto is less likely to be evil than a company that doesn't? I'd be suspicious of a person that feels the need to declare that he'll do his best not murder anyone. By adopting the motto, Google had acknowledged the fact that corporations do tend to do evil. But is it because they intend to do so? Do chairmen and CEOs wake up in the morning all giddy about doing some evil or naughty, harmful, mischief today? Even Bernie Madoff didn't start out like this. And yet, corporations do evil in spite of people's best intentions. So Google said: we'll try to be careful. That's actually not bad, because I hope that that slogan makes the Google executives aware of the temptations and pitfalls that await all big firms. But I do not for a second believe that Google's executives are so much better than all other good people running large corporations that actually do evil. Because, hey -- power corrupts.
Nobody likes getting up one day and realize they've become a Bond villain, so they don't: that is, they just don't realize it. Also, nobody really is an actual Bond villain (well, Hitler). Even good people do bad things. My point is, people do need a little help from the outside to protect them from themselves, and with that much power, Google needs a lot of help. Google has become a big problem.
I would question whether society even knows enough about Google's intentions to be able to judge them as good or bad.
As for whether society should trust Google's intentions: I hope not. Society should be, in general, distrustful of corporations, and, for the most part, they are. That doesn't mean Google doesn't have good intentions, or that one should assume bad faith everywhere. At the same time, what was questioned originally was the operation of that corporation and it's people, and that's what i responded to :)
As for the adoption of the motto: The original outside publication of this was done while going public, and was intended to make clear to wall street that Google wasn't going to maximize profit at the expense of everything else, where everything else usually involves doing morally questionable things.
I think you read way too much into it.
"But I do not for a second believe that Google's executives are so much better than all other good people running large corporations that actually do evil. Because, hey -- power corrupts."
All I would say to this is I hope you get to meet them some day. Except for one, I can say they really are better than all the other good people i've met running other large corporations. They are honestly good people, and honestly care about doing right.
In the end, I guess we just disagree. I don't believe Google has become a big problem, and I don't think Google needs a lot of help from the outside to protect them from themselves. In fact, I think help from "the outside" would make things a lot worse.
For example, the last time I looked, the outside wants Google to try to detect when people are doing bad things, and report them.
Good, so they'll understand that no one, no matter how "good" should have this much power.
I also think that Barack Obama is better than most other politician, and that the US will be much better off -in the short term -- if he were allowed to operate without hindrance from that pesky, annoying, inefficient Congress that's just slowing him down. And yet, checks and balances are a good thing in the long term.
Augustus was a great ruler. Certainly much more efficient and benevolent than the senate. But he did effectively bring the monarchy back, and many of his successors weren't as good as him.
what you are suggesting with the power questions. Breaking up Google?
Yes, although we probably have a little more time (a couple of years, probably) before this becomes absolutely necessary. Also, we need regulation on companies holding personal information:
- Limitations on what information can be kept.
- FBI background checks on all employees with access to private information.
- Top notch cyber security (I'm sure Google does that; no complaints there)
- Maximum physical security, like access to private information only from certain, constantly monitored physical location.
Google doesn't oppose reporting on people because it's evil; they're opposed because it would be really bad for business. And while I do share Assange's concern about government surveillance, I'm much more horrified at the prospect of surveillance by a corporation.
"Google doesn't oppose reporting on people because it's evil; they're opposed because it would be really bad for business. And while I do share Assange's concern about government surveillance, I'm much more horrified at the prospect of surveillance by a corporation."
This is false. I have first hand knowledge of why we oppose it. We oppose it because it's evil. It is bad for business, but that is secondary.
Good. So you probably understand why amassing so much power in one corporation is evil in and of itself, even if the the people at the top have good intentions at the moment (whatever that means - I'm not sure most people share the same definition of good intentions).
The intentions of many influential people in government, including those at the very top, are not in the least bit less noble than those of Google's executives, and yet, while they may not always like it, they understand the necessity for checks and balances. Power must not be concentrated. Concentrated power is either evil, naivety or ignorance. It can never, ever-ever, be good, though it might have the appearance of good for a short while.
No, it really isn't. If you pretend for a minute that Google is a hive mind, with a single individual in control of its actions, it still doesn't have a power to match the federal government of the US, or even the President (who is a single elected official).
You keep going down this track and pretty soon you are arguing that you can't have capitalism and democracy at the same time.
> But I do not for a second believe that Google's executives are so much better than all other good people running large corporations that actually do evil. Because, hey -- power corrupts.
The Don't Be Evil principle is actually a check on precisely this concern. By having it as a principle, it invites the executives to be challenged on this basis by everyone in the company. That is the entire point. Having a motto Don't Be Evil doesn't magically change the nature of your executive team. What it changes is how that team is challenged.
There's a saying about a road covered in those...
Larry and Sergey have the majority voting power, and they have veto power over product changes :)
But that's probably not what you meant, so i'm going to assume you meant give "non-preferred stock holders veto power over product changes".
I'm not sure what this would accomplish, since institutional investors are not exactly who you want deciding the fate of products. Timeline wise, they are too short term of thinkers. Ethically, they are often very suspect. Strategically, most lack the knowledge to make the right decisions, and even if you gave it to them, they lack the experience.
What you are suggesting is almost identical to hiring a large set of outside consultants, bringing them into a well-functioning company, and letting them veto every product decision at the exec level or below. Worse the consultants would be experienced in say "women's shoes", and the company would be one that did something like "making airplanes"
I'm pretty sure i know where this leads, and it isn't "don't be evil" :)
What? I don't believe Google is evil, but at the same time, I'm not "grateful" that they're not evil any more than I'm grateful that a driver isn't evil and doesn't run me over. Yes, I'm glad, but I don't feel like she's going beyond what she owes me.
This perspective is subtly dangerous, because it takes the consumer out of the decision-making process. When we see Google as an amorphous blob of power we're grateful to, we've already conceded the right to set the terms of the marketplaces we engage in.
Individuals should be concerned about the state of the marketplaces they frequent. There are great reasons for simple rules and regulations. Except for the ideal case, individual incentives differ with the incentives of those the market serves.
For clarity, I love markets. The market is the most powerful tool society has ever developed. But a lot of the benefits of a very free market are lessened when the number of suppliers is small. In truth, how many companies do what Google does, even on a specific product other than gmail? A handful of search engines?
The point at which google is doing us a favor by not being evil, instead of merely abiding by the law, is the point at which our expectations should be updated.
(However I also know I am pretty selfish, so I could be simply reflecting)
As an aside, note that this way of thinking is compatible with determinism: while the murderer may not have any more control over his anti-social behavior than the altruist, the person is condemned for having a brain wired in such a way that is toxic to a collectivist society.
Here is a small list of examples which might serve as examples where decisions eventually hurt the company itself rather than only customers:
- early refusals to sell music, movies or television shows online
- highly inconvenient DRM strategies
- "closed software is more secure", and other non transparent practices
- cost cutting measures by manufacturers that reduce a product's durability in ways that are not obvious in the store
Google could monetize the information they can mine from their users more aggressively. They could also more actively depart from standards, such as by removing IMAP access to Gmail or requiring some proprietary plugin for Youtube. We'd be worse off, and Google would lose a lot of users and ad-viewing eyeballs. That still doesn't mean that it is a given that they would make these decisions. Facebook seems to have little reluctance when it comes to changing user agreements in non-obvious ways for the purpose monetizing their data, I switched from Yahoo mail to Gmail eight or nine years just because of IMAP, and Microsoft tried to push Silverlight for video content.
Even in the case of a cooperative game where mutually beneficial choices can be determined, that outcome is not always the result. What's wrong with being grateful that Google (at least some of the time) has apparently chosen such strategies? Claims that their benefit is somehow at the expense of users confuses the situation with noncooperative games, and suggests that Google would be better off not making the decisions that have benefited users, too.
You mean something like Flash Player?
Yes, I know, they are transitioning to html5, but not for everything.
Nobody owes you anything by default. We might agree to mutually abide by rules not to harm each other, but you are not owed anything for free.
This is part of "free markets", and indeed used to be part of being a citizen of a country; the country provides you with various things in exchange for things you give up such as some freedoms, some money, and perhaps other things too.
Given the norm of people being completely self-centered these days, and being proud of it on top, I think altruism should be applauded and encouraged whenever it happens.
You realize that these two sentiments are inconsistent? If Google could be evil without anyone knowing it, then you have no way of knowing that they are not evil.
By that definition, "Don't Be Evil" is the same as doing nothing. Google can play up the not evil card all it wants, but that doesn't make them good.
Apple equally could ship every iPhone with a keystroke logger and a C4 explosive to detonate every time someone typed Android. Or Microsoft could modify their browser to record bank logins and secretly steal 1c everyday from their customers.
The point about "Don't be Evil" was to not do anything that was immoral but legal. I would consider Google's support of Motorola's behaviour in abusing FRAND patents to be an example. Or Google's deliberate ignoring of the Do Not Track advertiser setting.
Obviously Google is not the only company that does this. Apple and other capitalist corporations do the same thing. But it's one thing to run a company based on naked greed and quite another to claim that you're somehow superior.
A better question would be posed to our governments on tax reform and simplification. But we all know the loopholes exist somewhat intentionally, otherwise they would have been closed already. The fact they're not getting closed indicates that our perception of what a company should pay and what they're legally obligated is basically wrong.
Because taxes (help) pay for the negative externalities that arise from the corporation doing business.
>A better question would be posed to our governments on tax reform and simplification. But we all know the loopholes exist somewhat intentionally, otherwise they would have been closed already. The fact they're not getting closed indicates that our perception of what a company should pay and what they're legally obligated is basically wrong.
The problem exists because of the international tax framework, and getting the governments of all the jurisdictions involved to reform the tax system is harder than a single country unilaterally doing so - especially when it greatly benefits some countries at the expense of others.
Basically is 35% of 0 dollars better than 10% of N dollars? In the US that is effectively our current dilema is it not? Our tax rates for certain things are so high people have no incentive to get double taxed in two disparate countries so they leave the money outside of any taxable entity. Improving the incentives to bring money back would seem to be a no brainer as it is a bit of a win/win situation to both sides.
As to disparities amongst countries, I'm not sure there ever could be a solution outside of some overreaching treaty agreements. Past that I'm sure there will always be a Caymans willing to lower their costs at the expense of the rest.
But as people said here the loopholes are probably deliberate.
why consumers want corporations to pay more tax as it effectively increases prices.
The fact is that most 'adults' understand that taxes pay for essential services such as education, infrastructure and health care. And during the tough times we live in aren't happy those services are being cut whilst corporations are making huge profits.
Remember this is people's day to day lives we are talking about.
I'm not arguing that paying more tax isn't inherently beneficial towards the state(s), but if the incentive is to avoid the tax, and it is legal, I fail to see the problem at all from the viewpoint of the corporation.
You're right, as long as the corporation doesn't mind if the public see it as a bunch of greedy, grasping, evil corporate bastards.
In Google's case, its "selling point" is "Don't be evil" and its business depends on trust. It's rapidly losing that trust.
For the record, Google's UK turnover in 2011 was £2.7bn, and based on its profitability, it's making about £676m and should be paying more than £180m in tax in that one year. In fact, it has paid a total of £10 million between 2006 and 2011 on revenues of £11.9bn.
If Google was a moral, ethical company then it would pay taxes that cover the cost of doing business in the UK, where it benefits from UK government expenditure on maintaining the country as a good place to do business (roads, schools, health services, police etc).
Essentially, Google is using fancy international book-keeping to defraud the British public.
That's evil in my book, whatever Google thinks.
“When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it.When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else,he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else's money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn't care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else's money on someone else, he doesn't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you.”
Just gathering power is evil, because in a few years the temptation to use the power will be too strong.
It's time to think that private companies has a most promising ethical future than public ones.
Let's face it, "Don't be evil" is nothing more than PR. Great PR, but still nothing more. Very few people actually do something they think is evil. Usually they only do what they had to do, or what they were ordered to do, or what the situation made them to do. And I have absolutely no doubt Google will do the same, and will if needed find reason why anything they do is not evil. Any of us is capable of it and Google is no exception.
One of the problems with advocating for stronger privacy protections now is that so much of the harm is hypothetical. It takes urgency and crisis to pass legislation, and Google (and Facebook, and others) have done a good job preventing crises.
Then how do you know they're not happening?
Jesus Christ, this is the top comment on Hacker News.
The sentiment is very similar to what you may hear in repressive countries: "Thank God, they don't do x to us".
This is very disturbing.
I think many people in this thread are forgetting that Google is a conglomeration of different people, opinions, etc., and it may not be as easily defined as the paranoid attributions given to the tangential predictions of one of its executives.
...
You realise that would mean they could be doing this right now? :P
Personally, I suspect they're not as I assume at least one person would have enough backbone to challenge them over it, so I don't think it's something they could legitimately get away with.
2 Corinthians 11:14-15
Right now many countries in south america maintain armies of paid bloggers dedicated to smear the opposition 24/7 in social networks. This is incredibly labor-intensive, costly and not always that effective since even the dullest individual can see through the obvious propaganda copypasta of those hired guns.
If google wanted it could just charge those governments to shut the opposition from its services and give all their data from emails to files and social activity to the local police, which would put it to use right away with a devastating effect.
But I must confess, that Julian Assange seem to be rather well spoken. And language wise - at least - it was a rather joy to read. Seemingly unlike the book he was reviewing.
> I think judgment matters. 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
Google is subject to the laws where it operates. Just this week a judge compelled Google to comply with warrantless searches (ie National Security Letters) [2]
Any sane person should.
For anything you do online you should ask yourself this "what would your reaction be if this were made public?" The gist of Eric's quote is that what you may consider "private" just isn't due to changing company policies (eg Facebook's continued privacy snafus), bugs, the courts and the legislature.
There is a good lesson in this. Just go to bing.com/social and search for "cheat exam" or similarly embarrassing terms to see why treating the Internet as public is a very good idea.
Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer but the views expressed are my own and don't represent my employer.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Privacy
[2]: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57587003-38/judge-orders-g...
Has he issued a clarification elsewhere that contradicts the parent's interpretation? He could, easily.
It most definitely changes the substance. From Google being the perpetuator of the said privacy problem, it becomes a participant that is legally bound to participate by YOUR legal system.
Disclaimer: Googler.
I think if you met Eric you'd realize he's just another hacker who ended up becoming a CEO. If he was posting here, he would be indistinguishable from most people in terms of his views, concerns, etc.
It sounds like you're saying that the first part of the quotation doesn't accurately describe Schmidt's views on privacy. I don't know him, but, sure, most people have more than one sentence's worth of opinion on most issues. :)
[1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/252514/hey_employers_my_faceb...
DDG doesn't do that. It's a participant in the same legal system.
If he wanted to make your point unambiguously, he could/should have left off the first sentence.
The oft attempted interpretation of the original quote is that Eric doesn't believe anything should be private online, and that anyone who wants privacy must be doing bad things.
As the context makes clear, his point was more that for better or worse, things generally aren't private online, and even if they wanted it to be, plenty of retention is legally required.
But you are certainly welcome to your opinion. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
Let's try a hypothetical parallel. "If you really don't want to go to jail, maybe you shouldn't be smoking pot in front of American cops." See how in my statement, there's no value judgement about smoking pot, and there's no value judgement about wanting to stay out of jail, there's just an observation about the realities of the world. This is NOT the same as "only bad people want to stay out of jail", nor "only bad people smoke pot", NOR EVEN "only bad people want to smoke pot and also stay out of jail". It's just "people who want to smoke pot and stay out of jail may be at the mercy of forces beyond their control."
I have no idea what Eric actually thinks. Maybe he does actually think that privacy should be outlawed or some other hilariously socially-unacceptable belief. But in the much-quoted quote, he said nothing of the kind. Protestations to the contrary are simply "I want to believe he's evil" paranoia.
Disclaimer: Googler
Why didn't he say, for example, "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know then don't publish it publicly and non-anonymously and don't use a cloud service like Google."
I haven't seen him say anything that would suggest that he holds an opinion different than the popular interpretation of the quote in question. And you would think, given the criticism, that he would have taken the opportunity to correct that interpretation if it was not what he meant.
I found it's surprising that you interpret the quote this way. Here's my interpretation: privacy on the Internet is an illusion.
[1] http://www.bing.com/social/search/updates?q=cheat+exam&g...
Would it be technically or legally impossible to partition data between different privacy regimes? I realise there isn't a pressing consumer awareness of the need, and hence cost, but it does bother me a little that "my" cloud data is controlled by the nationality of the service, rather than my own.
The matter is hugely complicated with CDNs, multinational infrastructure, etc, but there's some unease about ceding control to a legal system in which I have very no or little power to effect change. Especially one which has a taste of the power which modern data-vacuuming can provide, and seems unlikely to give it up.
This is a massive and in my mind entirely unfeasible assumption.
> If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.
No. There are things that we all do that are moral, ok, and even legal, that can be used against us. Privacy violations enable that.
U.S. law does not require this collection or retention of data; federal access is a consequence of Google's policies, not a cause.
I don't think Schmidt is cruel. I do think that like many ambitious people, he has a blind spot for conceptions of the world that conflict with his goals.
Although, I do have my own ideas about how much Google actually care about my privacy, hmm...
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
[1]:http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt?noca...
The correct response to "Why do you care so much about privacy? Do you have something to hide?" is: "From whom?".
If you define privacy from the wrong end, you end up with the wrong conclusions. The important question isn't "What do you feel comfortable sharing?", but "How come so many parties have curious interests in what I'm sharing?".
Of course, if you are google, phrasing the question as "think about what you want to share" makes it so that in answering the question, people basically follow a path that is profitable to you. With that, they focus your suspicions on the wrong end of the conundrum.
Yes of course, you should be careful about what you do anywhere in public and yes of course people have lessons to learn with the internet. But it's not as if humans are completely removed from the basic concept. In Medieval Times, people didn't run naked across the market thinking nobody would see them. Treating people as though the most important thing was to educate them about not posting naked pictures of themselves online (or whatever makes a better example for "you shouldn't be doing it in the first place") means infantilising them.
No. The question is: Who is so curious about what I do online. Cui bono!?
Google most definitely profits from hyperfocussing people on themselves. Just like websites do SEO to present themselves in their best way to the search engines, we now want humans who make themselves presentable, easy to index entries in the databases of our society.
In today's world, how much does your government know about you (or can get to know about you) via digital / technological means v/s the other way around?
I think it's clear that this is the future Google wants. If they occasionally have to hand over documents to the government, that's just the price of optimizing the lattes for the rest of us. If you don't like personal information lying in the hands of third party corporations and powerful officials, you have a first world problem.
What I am waiting for is a foundation focused on privacy. Our digital lives should be no one's rummage sale. The foundation would create software to make social networking truly controllable and private. No ability to read my private messages, no mandate to make money from me, no personalization, no backdoors.
The good news is that, thanks in part to this superficial and megalomaniacal book, the company’s mammoth intellectual ambitions will be preserved for posterity to study in a cautionary way. The virtual world of Google’s imagination might not be real, but the glib arrogance of its executives definitely is.
If people think their influence doesn't extend beyond "the technology industry", consider what it would mean if they ran successfully (and didn't pull a Meg Whitman).
As much as I sometimes enjoy free services from Google, FB, Twitter, etc. I also think that people like Julian Assange and Richard Stallman have an important message and warning for maintaining some control over personal data and our computing infrastructure.
In the video interview Eric Schmidt makes a point that they want people to opt-in for 'Google total information awareness' (I am using that term, he didn't). I make an informed decision on what information I will share but most of my non-tech friends (who are representative of the general public) do not.
Part of me likes a smaller world via the Internet, communicating with people with similar technical interests no matter where they live, and G+ and Twitter are great for this. On the other hand, I would also like to see a local network, possible centered around my town's library, that is effectively local to the small town I live in. The technology (encrypted VPN) is straightforward for implementing private group communication.
How do we classify that? Is it not evil? Given the basic premise, I can't imagine anyone classifying it anything but.
Assange, who was on the cypherpunks list (as I was in the late 80s/early 90s), should know better when he writes something like "The advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism. This is the principal thesis in my book, 'Cypherpunks.'"
He clearly was present for the Clipper chip fiasco which showed the state's fears over cryptography in the hands of private citizens, and the central tenet of cypherpunks was a belief that modern, unbreakable, cryptography could defang the state's ability to invade privacy. Back then, the big debate among 'punks was stuff like untraceable assassination markets using BitCoin-like distributed money in which police and the state were powerless. Anarcho-capitalists were salivating over how in the future people would be able to share and communicate with no intervention.
Point being, if you want privacy guarantees, truly want certainty, the technology exists to secure it. He was in fact, part of a movement aimed at providing the software to do it and make it easier for the average person. His experience on WikiLeaks shows how one can keep secrets from the state, even the US Government.
How one goes from the idea that cryptography presents the opportunity for undefeatable privacy, anonymity, confidentiality, etc no matter how much the state is against it, to, voluntary use of Google is the death of privacy, I don't get.
Now, I never believed that cryptography alone could overcome the state, but a lot of cypherpunks did. But there was a huge intersection between cypherpunks and libertarians, who would take the view that people have the right to trade their personal information and that there is nothing evil or bad about organizations offering to make that trade.
I also think people are too fixated on Google, when VISA/Mastercard, your Bank, your phone carrier, and your ISP have much longer, more comprehensive, and detailed records on your behavior that the police can, and have, been monitoring far longer and with less oversight. Remember Carnivore? Do you trust Comcast? I trust Google more to fight for privacy of my data against the government, than any of those organizations. After 9/11 AT&T practically rolled over for the US government. When a crime happens, the police can subpoena your email, but the reality is, they obtain your phone and financial records first. Google's stock price would go to $0 if there was a serious breach of trust, the company is built on that. AT&T or Comcast are not built on love of their products.
Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto is not about perfection, it is a value, a gradient, that you strive for. As Assange alludes to, Google culture is made of a mixture Silicon Valley graduate student culture, the hacker ethos, etc. The company chock full of 10,000+ people who believe or have internalized these values to some extent, whether you believe they are deluded cultists, or naive, that's how folks feel. There's simply no way Googlers would tolerate something like secretly sending user data to the NSA, it would be too hard to prevent internal employees from revolting. As an employee, I'd rather Google lose money and stock price and have the government shut them down, than send a firehose feed to the NSA.
Because ordinary people don't understand the implications of using these services. Every single person is surprised at what the government gets access to with an NSL, subpoena, etc, as evidenced by the Petraeus case and the several cases investigating reporters.
It's like saying that a company that provides paper, pencil, and mail delivery is building the greatest instrument for evil and authoritarianism, because it becomes a channel the government can intercept.
Every technology has upsides and downsides. That the state exploits the downsides doesn't make the provider or inventor "evil".
There's no denying that government military funding helped kick off Silicon Valley, as did DARPA and the Internet, but to say that means today's entrepreneurs in the valley are apt to serve military war interests is pure guilt by association, and a weak link at best.
They are as "apt" as anyone else, which is to say very; The government wields big carrots and sticks.
This is such an utterly disingenuous argument. I'm becoming more and more convinced as time comes on that analogies have no benefit whatsoever and just become a tool for people to warp the argument into something else.
The only difference with modern web portals is centralization, which allows the government to seize it in one chunk, vs distributed amongst N different organizations, but that's really only marginally more secure, because the government has no problem bulk subpoena-ing all of the major service providers.
The only real protection is to use pseudonymity everywhere and to never reuse a pseudonym between two different services.
Should we all be paralyzed to walk around because we may step on the last of some species, destroying something forever? Well, no. If it turns out that everyone did that pretty much on the daily, we'd all be surprised but we'd probably not stop walking places.
Similarly, just because I walk in public without doing everything in my power to keep surveillance from seeing what I'm doing doesn't mean it's the death of privacy. It just means I don't care.
For me, I and the rest (or the majority) of the world will gladly trade some information about the knowledge we seek for that same knowledge. It's just a no brainer.
It doesn't matter if employees would tolerate it: phone company employees wouldn't tolerate it either but the cell phone and location records of every American were too much for the authorities to resist - the great majority of phone company employees have no idea about the data that is handed over to government.
Google has a very deliberate policy of building a comprehensive record of searches, websites visited, comments, articles, private documents written, people collaborated with and communications - all linked to your real name and phone number. It doesn't matter that employees wouldn't tolerate giving it out, sooner or later some governments will pass laws giving them access to the data. The fact that Google is building the records is enough.
Google employees already object - look at Vint Cerf's confusion when asked about the real names policy.
To paraphrase Chris Morris: But who's to say a government with an authoritarian streak in a time of national crisis will pass a law giving the secret services access to those records?
Is it because they tend to support the government position that we need this data to fight terrorism? Or because they think that I'd they'll use such technology, the government will change the rules forcing them to use the less private tech? Or just plain profit maximizing - do the easiest thing that will bring the most money?
Some of them do, but shut up about it. It is a fact that AMDOCS (an Israeli owned company with alleged Mossad links) does outsourced billing for most major telcos in the US and many in Europe.
Sure, the government can use kangaroo courts and send goons to get the data, but there is nothing special about Google in this regard. They can also send G-Men to get your bank accounts, school records, health records, telephone records, safeway history, DMV records, IRS tax records, credit card accounts, library or blockbuster rentals, and tons of vital information about your behavior that Google does not have.
Nothing has changed, so if you want to stop this from happening, demand better government. Sitting around whining about Google, and then when push comes to shove, not doing your duty as a citizen, is not going to change anything.
If Google disappeared tomorrow, you'd face the same privacy issues, because simply living in a civilization creates a public paper trail, it is unavoidable. All that's different is that it's digital now, and we're networked.
Chances are you make phone calls over unencrypted mobile. The NSA could, at their perogative, intercept and transcribe every phone conversation you have. They don't even need Google. People need to fight to restore civil libertarian protections by rolling back the Patriot Act, NSLs, NDAA, and other stuff that's happened since 9/11. Trying to demonize Google will be ineffectual to the root cause.
My point about Google culture is that any attempt to put a Carnivore-style tap on a Google data center would run a very high risk of whistleblowers making it public. AT&T isn't exactly known for their Googley culture, but Mark Klein blew the whistle on the NSA/SBC/AT&T firehose tap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
That's great and much better than some of the other tech companies who silently hand it over.
However Google doesn't oppose collecting the data, it doesn't seem to worry about the implications of that for oppressive regimes or future radical laws enacted after the next big terrorist attack. Are there real objections within the company to the real name policy? Is it addressed by management?
Demanding better government is, of course, important. I spend a lot of time and money doing it - working with citizen lobbying groups, contacting my representatives and attending meetings. But you can't demand better government and ignore how one of the biggest corporate collectors of personal data is acting, and changing.
"A single unified beautiful product" - linked to your real identity (to set a positive tone "like when a restaurant doesn't allow people who aren't wearing shirts to enter") - and one that doesn't interoperate with other products because they're "milking off of just one company for their own benefit".
That seems to be the core of Google these days and it's very different from the company many Googlers joined.
I do commend Google for some of the good they have done but I think you are overselling Google way too much here when it comes to trust. They were a part of a trade group that backed CISPA. We shouldn't forget either the numerous privacy issues that Google has had. The last one was getting fined for bypassing Safari privacy settings.
While you have also mentioned many companies, some fairly and unfairly, Google has services that are aiming to compete against all of them in an attempt to gather all the information they can. Google isn't "evil" in this regard but I don't think anyone believes that one company having their fingers in so many pots is a good thing for user privacy or the internet in general.
>How one goes from the idea that cryptography presents the opportunity for undefeatable privacy, anonymity, confidentiality, etc no matter how much the state is against it, to, voluntary use of Google is the death of privacy, I don't get.
For one, Google doesn't offer any cryptography (except HTTPS, which doesn't matter on their side). For the billions that use it, they might have no privacy at all.
What's that hard to understand?
>I also think people are too fixated on Google, when VISA/Mastercard, your Bank, your phone carrier, and your ISP have much longer, more comprehensive, and detailed records on your behavior that the police can, and have, been monitoring far longer and with less oversight.
Because there are others doesn't mean Google is not one of the top offenders. As for what VISA/Bank/etc has, are mostly purchase lists and inferred whereabouts (very crudely). As for the ISP, with HTTPS that most sites use, they don't have much. I don't think they MITM Google, Facebook or your Bank.
Google, on the other hand, with their Search, Docs, Gmail and Android (which also includes GPS location data), has almost everything there is for an individual that uses it.
>Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto is not about perfection, it is a value, a gradient, that you strive for.
It's a naive marketing slogans for the press and the daft -- people have got over it for at least five years.
So, even if the government doesn't know what your online pseudonyms/usernames are, they can contact those services with traffic data to narrow it down.
You can downplay financial records if you want, but phone and finance records are the number one lead generation sources. And the government runs a "total information awareness" system for financialized behavior: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fincen that no one seems to care about, while they all worry about the government seeing their search logs for porn and cat gifs.
Here's a question for you: How many Americans were mistakenly put on terrorist watch lists because of information web service providers collected vs information from FinCEN?
Look, I'm not saying, don't worry about your data in cloud services being subpoena'ed. What I am saying is, worry more about the already existing firehose feeds the government gets from ISPs, phone companies, banks, and airlines. The government has to have a warrant or NSL to get Google to hand over data on selective accounts. But do you know what is going on in FinCEN and classified FBI and NSA monitoring with those other organizations?
The attention span of today's geeks seems woefully narrowed to only the stuff they know: social media cloud stuff, and precious little is said about the massive monitoring of traditional sources of service information.
Ah, the "you have a choice" argument.
Absolutely. You have a choice. I have a choice. I used my choice. I razed my Google account to the ground and scorched the earth over it several years ago, because I was fortunate enough to discover just how completely abusive our relationships with Google actually are.
The problem is that most people do not have that fortune. The problem is that Google is a billion dollar monopolist industrial player, with an enormous public relations and marketing budget, and the power to cause itself to be perceived as a big friendly giant. At I/O recently, it literally paid for favourable coverage with free hardware given out to all of the "tech journalists" who attended. And the result was 50+ articles on the main tech blogs all frenziedly discovering how wonderful Google was. There was a complete absence of a critical perspective.
Most people are not fortunate enough to know how dangerous it is to put your whole life into a foreign corporation's servers sitting on the other side of the planet. They do not realize that the consequence of a whole society doing this is to create the incentives for a less free society. And they do not realize that the moment they become "interesting" - such as if they become an activist - all of this technology becomes a weapon against them.
Given that they do not realize that - as I once didn't - they sign up for these services. They are given a false impression of how safe they are. They have a choice - yes - but they do not have all of the necessary information to make that choice in an informed manner. Google gives them that choice under false pretenses. And after several years of using it, if they do become aware of it, it is much harder to leave. They feel, "ah, it's too late now, I have to live with it." When it is not and never is too late.
The "they have a choice" argument you make is as about as nuanced as the theory that everyone in a "free market" is a "rational actor." Yeah, in no-space. Not in the real world. And that's why people get screwed. Assange's argument - and I agree with him - is that we are all getting screwed by Google. The fact that that royal screwing is the consequence of a symbolic choice made under false pretenses is not really a forceful counterargument.
>I also think people are too fixated on Google, when VISA/Mastercard, your Bank, your phone carrier, and your ISP have much longer, more comprehensive, and detailed records on your behavior that the police can, and have, been monitoring far longer and with less oversight.
For any one of those examples, it is false to say "more comprehensive and detailed" I think. These industries gather information on you in order to do their business. Google's business IS gathering information on you. When you take into account content, social graph, IP access logs, search history, browsing history, and all of the other stuff that Google voraciously gobbles up - which is increasing - any one of those industrial players is dwarfed in terms of the data it takes.
Taken all together, yes, they give a very detailed picture of you. That's the point. And everyone should be aware of it, and Google is a primary culprit.
It's also worth pointing out that Google very likely will attempt to replace each of those industrial players with a service of its own, and in some cases already has.
>Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto is not about perfection, it is a value, a gradient, that you strive for.
It's a marketing slogan. It is also phrased in the imperative. I have wondered more than once - as evil after evil is discovered being perpetrated by Google - whether it is Google's memo to itself, or Google's message to the world.
Google's real name policy was evil. Google's aspirations to "tame" the internet is evil. Google's evangelizing political correctness is evil. Google's mission directive of gathering all information is evil.
I don't care if each crop of comp sci students fresh out of university waltzes wide eyed through Google campus telling itself it'd blow the whistle on any evil it saw. I don't trust those people to know evil if they see it. When you consider how completely banal people like Sergei Brin's conception of evil is:
"[Google Glass] are, uh, a new form of computing, uh, that’s designed to really free you."
...it is possible to have a lot of sympathy with the title of Assange's essay.
For example, most reviews of the Chromebook Pixel, acknowledge it is a very nice, well built machine, but then turn around and list all of the reasons you shouldn't buy one: price, limited capability, similarly priced MacBook Air, etc. So much for free hardware buying rave reviews from tech journalists.
Google is perceived as a friendly giant because it mostly is a friendly giant. If you compare it to other corporate actors, like Microsoft who just handed over patents to a patent troll, it is a much better corporate citizen. Sure, it isn't perfect, but your conception of Google is delusional.
I, for one, have never been screwed by Google. I get a great deal of value from Google, and in return I see a few ads once in a while. I see nothing wrong with that.
> evil after evil is discovered being perpetrated by Google
What are these evils being perpetrated? I see a lot of handwaving and "what-ifs" in here, but nowhere do I see concrete examples of Google fucking people over.
The fact is that anybody with power can abuse that power. What if all of the police officers in the USA decided to shoot all the citizens? Should we dismantle the police departments because they could abuse their power?
You don't know when Google exports your records.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/googles-approach-to-g...
I always know when I have been shot by a police officer.
I do not always know when my data has been copied even with your assertion of Google's good will. Your conditional of "when Google is legally permitted..." is quite telling (information is fluid and ephemeral) and makes your contradiction, "False.", laughable.
The case of personal data privacy and control is categorically different than the case of physical violence.
Why?
> The point is, Google as a company opposes giving the data, it fights it tooth and nail. It does not have a policy of cuddling up to governments to curry favor by handing over data, and most of the NSA conspiracy theories are completely unfounded.
How do you know?
http://www.dailytech.com/Googles+Eric+Schmidt+Dont+Be+Evil+w...
http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt.html
I struggle to name three great present-time politicians.
In the absense of great politicians, any post-revolution cabinet degrades into tyranny of mediocrity or fails to work at all.
But the general trend you refer to is accurate. The various vested interests have got character assassination down to a science, and anyone who doesn't play ball at least a little tends to be filtered out of the political process.
Perhaps, then, our lack of good leaders is not about the leaders themselves, but rather due to the fragmentation of cultures and social institutions.
We desperately need politicians that will figure out this fragmentation thing.
But I will grant you, they both had something about them, a force of personality perhaps that exceeds many other politicians.
And Tony Blair? A head of state that was just seen as a puppet of another as 'almost great'?
Blair on the other hand led the reformation of the Labour party and made them electable again, whilst mainaining Britain's standing on the world stage, far from a puppet actually.
Better by comparison is not the same as great. It is quite possible that there be no great leaders. I do not know of anything Clinton did that would be great.
>Blair on the other hand led the reformation of the Labour party and made them electable again, whilst mainaining Britain's standing on the world stage, far from a puppet actually.
Making a party electable again may be a sign of a savvy leader, but it is not greatness. Britian's standing on the world stage under Blair was one of a lapdog in many circles. Again, a leader that garners the reputation as a puppet is not a great leader.
Clinton had the benefit of cashing on the post cold war sole super power golden decade and the upper slope of the dot com bubble. His mishandling of the Kosovo events set a ticking time bomb there.
Good. We don't need "Great leaders", in the sense of how most people use that term (that is, political leaders). We just need people to be free to do what they do best - live, love, learn, play, grow, work, build, create and dream without arbitrary restrictions and constraints imposed through force.
Having "leaders" who "lead" by being influential, outspoken, visionary, etc. is another thing. I'd call somebody like Elon Musk a "leader" in this regard, but he isn't forcing anybody to do anything.
I'm not a big fan of Nick Saban, but back when he was coach of the NFL's Miami Dolphins he was asked once about needing more leaders on defense. He said something like "We are looking for wolves, not sheep. We want every player on defense to be a leader, not somebody who's looking for a sheepdog to guide them around and lead them." That, to me, gets to the heart of the matter: We should all be leaders in our way.
I struggle to name three great present-time politicians.
That's OK, I struggle to name a single "great politician", ever. In fact, I consider the term to be an oxymoron.
That's extremelly cool but that does nothing for a country which have just experienced a revolution and now doesn't know what to do with itself.
There are people who proved capable of creating a country following a revolution. My latest impression is Ataturk, but you can find one or two in the history of USA.
All the more ironic when one actually understands the social structure of wolf packs.
If you've got leaders at least be sure you have good ones.
WRT power: you're so wrong. Great political leader is capable of creating a country. Or rethinking one. They produce power out of the thin air, for everybody to use. Mediocre leaders? They tend to "consume" power. Exactly what you are fearing.
Thank you very much, I'd rather deal with a hundred of regular politicians and their regular small-time stupidity and their regular small-time mistakes and evils than with one monumental charismatic figure like that.
My guess would be that most of those criticizing Assange in this thread support US policy on terrorism, Israel, Wikileaks, illegal spying, drones, etc. Most Americans (in both major parties) support government policies on these issues, and so HN readership is unlikely to differ much.
Most Americans are indifferent and/or oblivious to most government foreign policy. Yes, 9/11 was a big deal in this country, and so most Americans support a "war" on terrorism.
But the rest of it is totally off the typical American's radar. I'd venture that a majority of Americans couldn't find Israel on an unlabelled world map. Nor could they articulate US policy for/against Israel.
Same with Wikileaks, illegal spying, drones, etc. A majority of Americans don't know anything about those, nor do they support (or oppose) government policies on those issues.
I think that HN readership is atypical of "most Americans". IMO.
What will it take civil contractors to install backdoors inside government IT systems to regularly let the voting public know what their government is really discussing/emailing.
Why not focus attention on the actual bad guys: The NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the White House, and the entire fucking national security committee.
I am not following closely, but Mr. Assange does seem to have some public criticism of the organizations you mentioned.
I'm sorry but in no way does Google deserve scrutiny over the FBI/CIA/DoJ.
Having non-democratic oligopolies is already a threat, period.
Forced to use Google? No, but Google is certainly interested in convincing you to use them. So many people are convinced and aren't aware of any issues.
In the end, "forced to use" is bad rhetoric because it is a straw man. Nobody was arguing to the contrary. Tearing down that straw man fails to address the actual problems.
They continuously ran middle eastern TV on a few sets, and I'd be watching music video programs that gave phone numbers that people in Iraq, Kuwait, and other Arabic zone countries could send text messages to to vote for music videos.
My wife and I concluded that anybody who's been suckered into voting for their favorite music videos wasn't going to be a Jihadist, in fact, such a person would be harmless to anyone.
After Boston, however, I am not so sure.