Hacker News Reader

Comment by ralfd | Hacker News Reader

Did you read Larry's blog post? He didn't rule out the NSA, he did rule out the USgovernment period. Quote:

> Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers.

View on HN

I did read it, with the dozens of other articles and such it's blurred together. He did rule out the US Government, does that rule out contractors? Does that rule out Verizon? What if Google has data in someone else' datacenter? That's specifically what they said the US government doesn't have direct access to.

Do they give carte blanch access to their data to ANYONE? Regardless of the datacenter. If they don't they can say that.

No one gets carte blanch access. Even Googlers don't get carte blanch access.

And yet this still misses more important issues. While it is fantastic that Google does not give the USG a free pass to the whole enchilada, Google still collects and stores this data, and gives it when compelled, if they truly had the users best interests in mind they would reduce the data collected to only what they MUST have to do what they do, and not use Vacuum cleaner like methods to get and keep everything they can, if Google did not keep it, the USG would not want it. So the best way for Google to be a part of the solution would be to reduce what they intake and keep, burn the rest.

What do you consider to be "what they do"?

https://www.google.com/dashboard provides an overview over your data at Google. Most/all of these services have permanent delete buttons.

It is possible to permanently erase or disable your search history from here: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/54067?hl=en

You can opt out of Google Analytics using this add-on: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

Reply on news.ycombinator.com