Eric Schmidt: "If you have something [to hide], maybe you shouldn't be doing it"

Judgement matters... If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place... 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 and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.

Schmidt's statement is clearly pragmatic. One might even argue there's an implied criticism of laws like the Patriot Act. Could he have phrased it better? Yes. He shouldn't have said the sentence in question. But next time, actually read/watch the primary source so you can get the full picture. His closing remarks completely change the tone of the conversation. Are you really going to let The Register do your thinking for you?

This is typical Internet drama. We have seen it a million times. I give the guy the benefit of doubt since this wouldn't be the first occasion some journalist taken a sentence out of context.

The right to privacy from the government is a logical consequence of the fact that the government is the servant of the people, put in place to protect and promote the people's interests. The Declaration of Independence describes our reason for instituting a government at all:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ..."

We need no justification for privacy from the government and its proxies. The most upstanding citizen still has the right to keep his affairs private. Even people with nothing to hide have the right to hide it.

We explicitly give the government the power of search, but only when we (through a judge) agree that it's necessary. Without that agreement, they're not allowed:

Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

We explicitly restrict all other powers of government through the 10th Amendment:

Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

We do that because we recognize the tendency of unchecked governments to gather more power to themselves. When a government becomes more powerful than its people, the people are slaves who have lost "the Blessings of Liberty" as listed in the Constitution's Preamble.

Government is a dangerous tool. It's the people who should be watching the government, not the other way around.

For example if you plan to murder someone you better not google for "how to hide a corpse" :)

My concern is about the people in power abusing their power to get information about their main rivals. Think "Watergate". Except without the physical breaking and entering.

There are legitimate reasons why people who have done nothing wrong would want what they have done not revealed to those in power. My concern about our descent into becoming a police state is that the checks and balances that should protect those people are disappearing.

- http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

From Wikipedia Article about Google Chrome: Chrome sends details about its usage to Google through both optional and non-optional user tracking mechanisms

"...we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act..."

How many of you are actually concerned you'll receive a subpoena from the feds to reveal you porn viewing habits?

Universal sousveillance is the future, but since you'll be less and less able to tell whether you're in the future in this sense, acting as though you are might be prudent. :)

If this anti-google sentiment is to be believed and they are marching the corporate road to evil, I shudder to think of the information that could be inferred from collective search pattern trends.

I just noticed that the example had not been given yet and I think it's an important one in this debate. It is a seemingly benign, if not entirely altruistic, case study. What is the consensus, smoke and mirrors, or is there a real social value to be gleaned [2] from the harvest of the vast data swarm?

[1: http://www.google.org/flutrends/] [2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleaning]

Imagine putting that on Youtube.

(EDIT: yes, I know they own Youtube. Of course they'll take it down. But it would be reposted on Vimeo and the like, and the publicity for the takedown would cause the Streisand effect).

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_p...

there is a much deeper, more philosophical reason for instituting a right to privacy than just the fear of corrupt governments.

humans are adapted to signal certain values for the sake of group cohesion. we have a "public persona" and a private life. this isn't something sinister, it's a way of coping with the demands placed on us by our interaction with others. we know in practice that depriving people of the ability to hide things from each other is extremely detrimental to their psyches. most importantly, it is detrimental regardless of the triviality of the things kept secret.

when deprived of the ability to keep secrets people are forced to be "always on". they must maintain the "proper" signals at all times. this is extremely draining (yes, even for extroverts, eventually). the things we like to signal to others aren't necessarily the things that make us most happy.

3 days ago in this case.

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ab8jt/googles_ce...

It's like a very slow echo.

Idea: A new competing search engine could release a General Privacy Agreement along with their search service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google#China

I think that most non-tech people would be very surprised if they realized how much personal data our corporate overlords have collected.

I don't want employers, grandparents, and the government to have access to my private and personal life.

No reason everyone should know movies, books, music, games, sexuality, political beliefs, and everything else about me.

the more people who realize how little privacy they have left the better. it's the only way the trend will be reversed.

I'm definitely not a fan of exposing data that people wish to keep private. It seems conceivable, though, that privacy is an idea that won't survive time and technology.

Hypocrite.

There are plenty of legitimate, even honorable actions which are threatened by poor privacy policies.

It is very easy to get caught with this type of argumentation. It is wrong.

Keywords may actually reveal a lot more that one would assume, and prone for des-interpretation as well.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=982838

Though unfortunately my submission didn't get as many upvotes for whatever reason.

Telling us what 'personalized' is about. Not doing better searching, doing better selling. Find the people with a little extra money, 24/7, and offer them something they might go for, 24/7, whether they need it or don't. Helping them stay one paycheck away from broke.

https://ssl.scroogle.org

Problem solved!

He mentions the Patriot Act and I would paraphrase him as throwing up his arms and saying "Hey, we're subject to those laws just like you! We have no choice!" Alas, Google does have the choice and unique opportunity to challenge those laws but it appears that they simply decline. That is why I think he's preparing for Google to be outed vis a vis the extent of its cooperation with government.

Next, asked about privacy concerns, he immediately reframes the question as if it were a question about government surveillance - neatly ducking any issues about private surveillance. Bartalomo fails to follow up.

The issue about private surveillance is significant in mundane (but serious) ways and in more speculative, cultural crisis kind of ways.

A mundane concern is the question of whether or not Google "leaks like a sieve". For example, if someone at Google dislikes me, how hard is it for them to scratch around for dirt in my (nominally) private information? If someone at Google is a friend or (black market) business partner of a recruiter at some other firm to which I apply for employment, is an unauthorized background check possible? Do such things happen? It's hard to imagine that they are technically hard to prevent....

A speculative but serious cultural crisis concern regards Google's deliberate and accidental implementation of what we could dub behavioral tracking and targeted manipulation. For example, let's suppose that one day I get a crazy suspicion from something I read on a blog. I think that there could possibly be a vast conspiracy and that my best chances for survival might be to liquify all of my assets and invest everything I have in personal caches of peppermint candy. I don't fully believe it but I start researching via Google. Google's AIs quickly figure out that I linger on ad-carrying content from backers of this conspiracy theory and, pretty soon, that stuff is at the top of all my searches and predicts 40% of the ads I see. From my perspective: that stuff is "all over the Internet" and I begin to wonder if my neighbors aren't in on the conspiracy since none of them talk about it. Pretty soon, Google has built me a personal, private channel of conspiracy news and peppermint candy ads. I sell my house, leave my family, cash out my retirement plan, by a van to live down by the river, and fill up a rent-a-store spot with boxes of candy.

Now, that same personal bug - my vulnerability to a conspiracy theory - may have been there all along. The change here is that back in, say, 1975 - the biggest mistake I might make is to subscribe to a few newsletters and magazines, perhaps hedge by buying a dozen boxes of candy rather than a gross. Meanwhile, the TV, the radio, all these other things are feeding me counter-evidence to the conspiracy and I'd eventually have a much better chance of coming to my senses.

But Google is unprecedented in its comprehensiveness as a source of monitoring and manipulating my attention. Like the Vegas slot machine that convinces me (wrongly) that I have a system to beat the slots because it pays out 49% of the time, so long as I pay it with my recognizable frequent-gambler credit card -- Google's AI can potentially really mess a person up.

That is a privacy concern. That's a privacy concern directly raised by Google's stated intentions of dabbling in behavioral tracking. And it's a concern that Schmidt deflects from attention by turning the question into a question about government surveillance.

Now, things can get even worse. Suppose that Google's AI doesn't cause large numbers of people to drop out of society and load up on peppermint candy but that, shucks, little discrete tweaks here and there can use the same behavioral science effects to, say, influence the next election for the local dog catcher. And one of the candidates for dog catcher has a slush fund, and a friend at Google.... Or, forget the friend at Google... suppose the dog catcher candidate has a friend who, this year at least, has found some underhanded tricks that currently work really well for SEO....

The ethics of running search and ad placement are unprecedented and difficult and hinge very much on how we update our understanding of "privacy". They hinge very much on the question of privacy vs. behavioral tracking. Schmidt appears uninterested in talking about these issues and very much interested in deflecting attention away from them.

At most only slightly exaggerating: we're all analogous to lab rats, now, in Google's massive-scale human-subject psychological research project with unprecedented amounts of automated surveillance and stimulus production. With money and power hinging on the outcome.

Bullshit argument for invading privacy. I prefer to hide my genitals from public view.

Since he has nothing to hide, let's set up a streaming webcam outside his house, zoomed in on his bedroom. Or better yet, let's implant a nano-camera up his rectum.

(see voter privacy)

That would be awesome!