Gagging on Google
blogs.ft.com
blogs.ft.com
Google represents the transparent society. Tons of information that used to be public but impractical to collect is now available to ordinary citizens, who can use it for good or evil as they please. There are plenty of examples of both.
Financial Times is located in what is likely the most extreme example of a surveillance country in existence today. There are cameras everywhere, and the government collect detailed information about all citizens. Strict regulations exist to ensure that this information can only be used by the government, and there is an outrage only when these regulations are broken.
It is not surprising that these two views on the role of information in society clash. Information is power, and the question if this power should be centralized in the government, or spread out to the people. The risk of abuse is far greater for the later, but the consequences of abuse is far greater for the former.
Some may prefer a third way, an opaque society where public information won´t be collected, even though the technical means for doing so exists. I doubt that is feasible, it will probably result in another society where the collected information is only available to the few.
Cookies are sent by your computer, which is under your control, to Google and other advertising companies. The solution isn't regulation. The solution is browsers that make it easy to control the information that you're providing. Every existing major browser is produced by an internet advertising company or is paid by an internet advertising company, so there's a bit of a conflict of interest at the moment. If governments want to solve this problem, it would be cheaper to create a browser extension that achieves their goals, or publicize an existing one.
What expectation of privacy should one have on the internet in the first place? If I patronize some establishment in the real world, there's no guarantee that they won't tell anyone else that I went there. Safeway probably shares my purchasing history with all sorts of companies. The assumption that your web site visits are private isn't based on any analogue in the physical world.
If the government thinks it's a good idea to inform people of the supposed dangers of letting internet advertisers accumulate information amount them and ways to prevent it, that's fine with me. Making it illegal or imposing onerous regulations on tracking cookies is silly and unnecessary.
If this guy gets his way, every website is going to have some annoying interstitial that asks you to opt in to their tracking cookies, and you'll get them every time your cookies get cleared or expire. That would be extremely annoying.
It would also likely be the end of free, advertising supported services on the internet.
He seems to be right in pointing out the problem. Whether we have a right or even a hope to privacy is another matter.
"They must be regulated and restrained by law so we can sleep at ease even though we know we cannot trust them."
Tracking cookies don't strike me as much of a problem. All the author says is that Google tracks us on the internet. So what?
"Search engines like those of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft can provide the companies that own and manage them with detailed information about many aspects of our lives, including our intimate, personal lives."
He doesn't elaborate on this point. What data about my personal life do tracking cookies give those companies? Oh no, Google knows how much I futilely try to disprove Rule 34.
Google does have my email and calendar, which could be a problem, but I'm more afraid of the government subpoenaing or PATRIOT Act-ing my data than Google misusing it, and the government can get it no matter who has it. In fact, Google's sheer size increases the financial incentive they have to not misuse my data. Their reputation is incredibly valuable.
As for privacy, and the data tracking cookies provide: it would depend on the web sites you visit, wouldn't it? I think in the average case, it would provide pretty much every bit of information about you imaginable (for example illnesses in your family).
But I'm scared outright by the people who might regulate them. Governments are pushing for much more far reaching and much more consequential invasion of privacy than would ever be in google's interest.
Buiter makes it appear as if evil commercial interests were the worst that could happen to us. Being spammed with dog food adverts is not nearly as bad as being charged with crimes you didn't commit by incompetent morally confused totalitarian law makers.
European governments are currently building a system of censorship and questionable evidence collection, partly to enforce laws against the very "crimes" that google allegedly commits. We're being subjected to grotesque disproportionate surveillance techniques by our governments in the interest of Mr. Buiter's own commercial interests as an author.
It's amazing how incredibly clueless even the most esteemed academics can be.
I suspect I'm more "anti-Google" than most people here, but when the article starts out like that, even I have to just say "flamebait" and move on.
/reads his bio on the right..