Schneier's response to Eric Schmidt
schneier.com
schneier.com
Regardless of how Google feels about privacy, it's unreasonable to expect them to martyr themselves for our sakes when the Department of Justice or the FBI knock on their door with a subpoena. The way to protect your privacy is to not tell people things you don't want them to know(or to use Tor or the like).
Edit: fixed a minor typo
I think you nailed it right there; after carefully re-reading exactly what he said I believe that was the intended meaning.
- "the thing you don't want anyone to know"
or
- "typing your thoughts into a search engine"
If its the latter, well, he's right actually.
http://www.buowl.boun.edu.tr/students/grammar/writing%20guid...
Sometimes a pronoun refers to a wrong antecedent. This problem usually occurs because the wrong antecedent comes between the pronoun and the real antecedent. To correct this error, place the pronoun as close to its antecedent as possible.
So this is not a case of English failing any more than it is Schmidt failing at English (if you believe he is pro-privacy).
Since Schmidt seems like a smart man, it is far more likely that he really did mean that "it" to be "the thing you don't want anyone to know".
1. Intelligence in one area does not imply intelligence in another. I don't know all of Schmidt's areas of expertise are but I doubt it includes English. (Don't link me to wikipedia, already read it)
2. Even if he is an expert at English, people are very sloppy with their native language. All you need to do is go to a university for a couple of weeks to figure out most PhDs make the same grammatical errors as the rest of us.
It is common sense that the antecedent of a pronoun defaults to the closest noun.
You don't get through college or even a PhD as Schmidt has (where you write many papers) by repeatedly making ambiguity mistakes like these. A research paper is useless if no one can make any sense out of it. Not to mention that he is a CEO: a job where you live or die by how well you communicate.
Secondly don't forget this is spoken - emphasis and so forth change in the spoken language. I haven't heard it myself (anyone got a link to a recording?) but it could well be dependant on how it was spoken :)
And finally I think applying strict grammar words to what someone has to say does them a lot of injustice :) people just dont work like that do they. Essentially it is saying were going to ignore any meaning or connotation or mistake and take everything literally - god forbid that becomes a fad! :)
In order to be outraged about this quote, you have to ignore the fact that ES is a smart guy and interpret the sentence as literally as possible (while simultaneously ignoring the implications of the word "maybe"). Then you have to take it out of context, and apply it to situations that ES obviously wasn't referring to.
People are making Eric Schmidt into the bad guy here, because they want him to be the bad guy. And that matters more to them than whatever his true intentions might have been when he uttered that statement.
No it's much more than that. You forgot the wiretapping advocates and corporations like AT&T who will most likely use this quote to support their position.
I've read it over about 50 times and I think he is giving an example - only a really unclear one, and a really bad one too. I do think it does read like the "worst case" guys are interpreting it: but I also am not convinced that was what he means at all.
Im still in the camp of Assume Good Faith for the moment.
also, your definition of "reasonable" is not one we all need share. there is a trade-off between profit and privacy here - the balance google has chosen is not the only one possible.
so twice you slant your argument to suit google. once by interpreting what was said in as favourable a way as possible, and once by presenting the false dichotomy of "google v martyr".
"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. 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."
The quote was in response to a question about to what extent it is wise to trust Google(not a moral question, but a pragmatic one). All of Schmidt's response, except perhaps one sentence("If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.") which is itself ambiguous, is describing pragmatic reasons why Google can not legally protect you from the government. Given that the context of the remark in which "maybe you shouldn't be doing it" either means you shouldn't be doing something you want hidden, or means that you shouldn't be trusting Google with the knowledge that you are doing something that you don't want the government knowing about because they may not be able to keep that information from the government without violating the law, I'm inclined to interpret it as the latter.
With regard to "google v martyr" being a false dichotomy, how could Google not respond to a subpoena for the search data for a certain IP address without suffering legal consequences?
Even in context what he says is worrying though. It is not just advising you on how to keep you data out of government hands. It is also making some sort statement about Google's position.
The point it becomes contentious (and something this doesnt touch on) is whether they need to keep XYZ data in a personalized way, and where holding said data tips over from giving us value into causing us danger.
Also, a theoretical possibility of a government demand for data is very different from a yearly demand for data on 5-10 people which is very different from a daily demand for data on thousands. US citizens/residents only or data on foreign residents? International terrorists? Terrorist states? Enemy states? Any states?
Which government? US only. Google invoices have an Irish address on them, btw.
A whole other spectrum of problems appears when you look at this internationally. The US has the Patriot Act? What other countries have or will have data seizing laws? Will Google hand over data to these? Does it depend on where servers are? Servers move.
It's not just that their position is unclear. Where you stand is unclear. People have no idea what could become of their data, what it can be used for & by who.
The excuse that people should only worry about privacy if they have something to hide, is nothing new. I think Eric Schmidt is good at recognizing patterns, and therefore must have noticed that he said that while he was taking part in the interview. I know I couldn't let those words slip by if I said them.
;)
My search history probably makes me out to be a psychopath, when in fact I just have a wide array of strange interests.
Quoting from the recently released public DNS service:
"The temporary logs store the full IP address of the machine you're using... We _delete_ these temporary logs within 24 to 48 hours."
http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy.html
Is there anything in the Patriot Act that says explicitly that search engines should keep search logs but not DNS queries?
If you're ever brought to trial using evidence gained by a warrant which didn't list that evidence to some reasonable specificity, any decent lawyer will have that evidence removed from consideration.
i.e. they would probably have to specify what they were looking for as well as some specifics of why they think X user (IP or google username) relates to Y person in their investigation.
Were forgetting, I think, there is already wide provisions for law enforcement to get your email password.. no one ever gets het up about that in the same way but most of the big ISP's can be forced, with warrants, to hand over access to accounts :)
Schmidt could have said "We understand that Google collects a lot of data; we have privacy policies that protect that data and we fire anyone who abuses them. We take data privacy very seriously. But we're aware that people are unhappy that various governments can compel us to disclose data. We believe that this is wrong. We believe that a world where anonymous government employees can see anything you do is a dangerous world. We believe in the power of data, but we want to encourage society to take steps to prevent this kind of abuse."
But he didn't, of course. Instead he told us that the innocent have nothing to hide.
it's unreasonable to expect [Google] to martyr themselves for our sakes
"Martyr", indeed. That is no mere hypothetical. Read this:
http://www.signandsight.com/features/1910.html
This is Herta Mueller, formerly of Romania, describing her life in the Ceausescu regime. There you could, indeed, face harsh reprisals, ranging all the way up to martyrdom, for refusing to spy on your fellow citizens.
I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect those people -- Mueller's friends, stuck in a scary totalitarian regime -- to stick up for their principles and resist the state's order to inform on their friends. (Though many did resist, and paid the price for it.) But Google? Google isn't even human. It has no fingernails to pull out. It is an American corporation, whose leaders live in America, with enough legal budget to sue God himself. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the company's leader to use some of that power to lobby for good, instead of looking sheepishly at his feet, kicking the dust, and claiming that he's only following orders.
Please keep in mind you're commenting about a snippet of a televised interview. For all you know Eric Schmidt agrees with everything you wrote above. (He may have even said something along these lines and it was edited out.) He certainly did not say or even imply "the innocent have nothing to hide."
Also, if it seems it might have been taken out of context, people should rail on what he said anyway, so he has a chance to defend himself. If he doesn't defend himself, there's a pretty good chance he meant it.
It seems like Google might be coming out of the closet as a regular megacorp, just like Apple did a few years ago when it started using DRM, and again a couple of years ago when it made a deal with AT&T, and finally put away any question of them being an exception to the rule when it came out with its app store.
I'm not arguing for them sacrificing their customer base. I'm arguing for us not letting companies like Apple and Google get away with looking like the good guys when they're just the profit-driven guys like everyone else. Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto makes me sick, just like the squeaky-clean reputation Steve Jobs once had.
Are you referring to the DRM it also dropped at a later stage after they managed to convince the content suppliers ;)
If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
I'm not convinced, however, that there's a reassuring amount of daylight between these two statements.
I should add that I very much agree with what you said about Google being in a position to make a much stronger stand for privacy rights in this country. I equally think that this is a pointless little shitstorm that detracts from the larger issue by making privacy advocacy look like petty language lawyering.
I want to live in a world where people have to make dry, quantified, lawyer-pleasing statements all the time just to make sure there is no speculation a lot less than I want to live in a world where Google may hold data about me which the US government can demand. :)
"A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty."
Foucault argued that the very act of being watched was dehumanizing. Google shouldn't watch us because it violates our rights, but because it's evil.
EDIT: I hear this claim all the time on the internet: Collecting data is evil. So please, go beyond the claim, and give me an explanation. Why is knowledge about people inherently evil?
EDIT 2: I know you're not supposed to complain about downmodding, but this comment has been downmodded four times. If you disagree so vehemently, then try defending your position rather than censoring me :)
It is claiming that invasion of privacy is evil in the way that hurting people is inherently evil. You do not call on someone to explain why hurting people is evil. It is calling on you to accept that invasion of privacy is just evil.
What I want someone to do is justify their claim, point by point, that what Google does with information is an outright invasion of privacy.
I think that the problem is that private vs public is often a question of expectations. People know that when you sit in your car people can see you & when you site in your house people usually can't. If you become viewable (public) while in your house it feels like an "invasion" whether it is malicious (telescope) or not (neighbour's new attic window).
When we talk about privacy in complicated, non obvious & changing circumstances, people constantly feel invaded because they find out that they might be in public when they thought they where in private.
I think that invasion of privacy is mostly about knowing where you are at any given time & having private as an option.
Ultimately, though, your example highlights the main problem: hurt is poorly defined. Hurt could mean anything from dumping them through to outright torture and everything in between.
Hence here is my worry in the privacy debate: I think everyone has a huge variation in what they class as privacy and how they feel it is being invaded. As a result we end up with lots of mixed up opinions - and, I worry, the risk that really serious invasions of privacy are passing us by.
I feel like we should be talking about it a lot more from a perspective of; ok these guys want to know about us, so can we sit and discuss how they can do that transparently and in ways that make us comfortable. At the moment I get this odd feeling it is turning into a 3 way combat between consumers, companies (who want data to use to make money: either ethically or unethically) and government who want it for a variety of reasons.
The government thing is the most worrying aspect. Im slightly biased because I count, really, as a consumer of private information - I "invade" peoples computers daily. I have only seen it ever done ethically but there is always the serious worry that someone could play the system or could be using it for their own ends. In the future that risk is only going to get worse; and when you add in the fact that once beurocrats get involved the data is even more at risk from outside attack it is a worrying problem.
How do we fix this? Completely no idea yet. But I do think blaming Google is a bad move; because they have stood up for our data in the past (publicly)... and perhaps it is not too late to get them fully onside?
Besides that, I agree with you on everything else. If we are going to call invasion of privacy evil "just because," we should define it pretty soundly. If we try to define it, I think we find that it's mostly about expectations, so making some clear rules/agreements is important.
Se my comment upthread from here.
I, and many others, including Schneier think you are wrong. Privacy is a basic human need, a fundamental part of our psychology that is as deeply entrenched as all our other basic needs and emotions. We are not whole, happy, fulfilled human beings without it. I guess one can debate whether this fits the definition of "inherent" or not. But I don't think it's necessary to pursue it beyond this point because it doesn't really matter - once something is a basic human need, taking it away from them is wrong.
That is an assumption not an argument. Can you reference any studies or data to support your position?
The only place to find evidence I can think of would be to look at different cultures with differing level of privacy to see what inherent 'needs' there might be and what the results were in terms of people's mental well being. Totalitarian societies would not be a good example as they actually rely far more of secrecy than more open societies.
I would argue (without data I admit) that the desire for privacy is actually caused by the desire to avoid punishment, ridicule and/or social exclusion. If these could be avoided then I don't believe there would be much of a 'need' for privacy.
I think you deconstruct things far too much. If you removed all those things from society right now people would still "need" privacy because we have been programmed by thousands or millions of years of evolution to need it. We don't need it on a rational basis (although there are plenty of rational arguments one can make for needing it), we need it because our brains evolved that way and we're stuck with it.
If you find a culture that has no privacy and no compensatory substitute for it then I'll readily grant that people in that society don't need privacy and we can qualify "basic human need" to something slightly more constrained. But it won't change the fact that we are stuck in a situation where the vast majority of human beings DO need privacy and it is wrong to take it away from them.
Actually I think our early ancestors would have lived with much less privacy than we do today. Many of the concepts of privacy don't even make sense the further back you go. Living in a tribe, spending nearly all your time outside and visible to other tribe members, with no/limited clothing, sleeping in large groups would offer limited opportunities for privacy.
If anything I would think that many of the traits of 'privacy' would have evolved more from the desire of others not to have to experience the 'private' matters of their fellow tribe members (i.e. see them having sex/naked/aroused or be interrupted by their loud conversations).
Even now they say that in small towns 'everyone knows everything about everyone else'. Only with the anonymizing effects of very large groups is the modern concept of privacy possible. So to me this all suggests that the 'need for privacy' is not a innate.
> But it won't change the fact that we are stuck in a situation where the vast majority of human beings DO need privacy and it is wrong to take it away from them.
I would argue that this is true primarily because of people's upbringing - in the same way that it would cause people discomfort to have to adjust to a world where they would routinely be naked in public.
Privacy seems a modern phenomena.
Your really going to have to cite studies to be honest...
> we are stuck in a situation where the vast majority of human beings DO need privacy and it is wrong to take it away from them.
Look at Facebook. There are lots of fairly complete options for privacy there. And yet most people don't even bother locking up their settings.
Given a choice, it seems, they aren't too worried.
You can try and justify any of these for other reasons. Discrimination creates civil unrest, it wastes some people's talents, it leads to civil conflict, etc. I think those are less satisfying. Discrimination bothers me regardless of its consequences.
I don't necessarily agree with Schneir I just think you have to admit some* arguments that things are inherent. We can reject this. Say that our inherently good/bad baskets are ful & that he'd better justify his need for privacy based on those inherently bad/good things.
I personally think that the further you go away from direct sensation (causing pain/injury etc) the more difficult it become to disentangle inherent and learned attitudes. Even with pain their are sadists and masochists who do not seem to share the normal response.
So while arguments based on our own 'inherent principles' may resonate with others (especially those in our self selected groups) we should be very careful before assuming that these are universal.
The subtle place we parted (I think) is where you interpreted "inherent" as meaning something about people, their feelings, attitudes, etc. I (he, really) meant it in a more abstract sense.
I'm not sure if this is something that reflects your general world-view, but you are taking a very relativist position. You are equating moral with subjective attitudes. That is OK of course, but it is a minority view.
(BTW, I'm not agreeing with the author, just commenting on the position he has taken)
Probably in the general population but I would have though it a fairly typical attitude of those who ponder these issues in depth with an open mind.
I should add that a great part of my relativistic attitude is informed by what I see as a great and inherent evil occurring in the world that apparently very few others seem to be bothered about - human caused animal suffering on a mass scale. I sometimes wonder if those who do not find this inherently bad can truly be sentient beings - but logic dictates that they are. Acknowledging that others don't share your point of view does not imply inaction in moral issues.
The place where relativist-like arguments are popular is with anthropologist evolutionist thinkers. From there perspective treating ethics as simply human traits, like a taste for sugar or music. They rarely attempt the normative leap though, go from a relativist argument to a 'you should do this' position.
Most vegetarian thinkers tend to be utilitarians. Most people are instinctively utilitarian & deontologist. When these come into conflict (kill a baby to save a village, harvest organs from unwilling person to save 5 people) they feel conflicted.
The key thing to understand about what is being discussed is that this is all with regards to an expectation of privacy. Such as, I buy product X and store Y every Friday. I have a reasonable expectation that store Y will not tell anyone that asks that I buy product X, or that I buy something every Friday, or that I buy product X every Friday.
This expectation of privacy is after having entrusted company Y with that information. An employee at company Y could suggest product Z to me, having seen me purchasing product X repeatedly. This is not an invasion of privacy as the information collected was with consent (I provided it to them), however, it may be a misuse of information collected, depending on any standing agreements.
However, if served with a subpeona, I should have no expectation of company Y withholding information, just as I have no expectation of preventing a search of my home if I was presented with a search warrant (providing the subpeona and warrant provide in them the necessary scope).
Search queries are pretty intermate knowledge. Who else has searched the anarchist's cookbook or DeCSS?
It would certainly be possible to have a situation where everybody is able to watch everybody else. Would that also be evil? Or is it just the asymmetry of access to information that is evil in your view?
Also let me clarify that I am not saying that Google has an evil plan to become a Big Brother and the aforementioned quote is not about that. My questions are (feel free to replace Google with any other company that collects information or even the government): A. How many googlers have access to my information? B. Am I sure that all those who have access are trustworthy? C. Am I sure that some ex-googler will not leak a big chunk of data just to get back at the company? And answers are always: A. I don't know; B. No; C No.
1) It's not being watched that's evil. It's watching - my argument is that being watched consistently has negative effects on a person.
2) I haven't said that collecting data is evil - by all means collect data. Data about a specific person or tied to a specific person on the other hand, is a mode of control of a person, whether or not there is intent to control the person with the data.
This fact, while not empirical, is reflected in the literature about humanity. Foucault, as I already mentioned, wrote extensively about the modes of security that a nation employs (note that security is a technical term that Foucault has defined to mean the ways that an entity in power may maintain that power, roughly). One such way is surveillance of the citizenry. Another is through spectacle (drawing and quartering). He argues that as a society, we've switched to a disciple/rehabilitation focused system of control. If you want to read more on this, see his work "Discipline and Punish".
Even fiction authors have found it fit to point out the control one possesses over another when they know things about someone. In "The Wizard of Earthsea" series, for example, knowing someone or something's name gives you power over it - and not just because of a mystical quality to a name. By the time the series is over, LeGuin has made her point that the name of a thing allows you to control it in part; at least make requests or commands of it, whereas when you did not know it's name you had no such power.
I could write a dissertation on this (and in fact, I did), but there's no point. I just figured that a question deserved a response. I'd love to hear if some disagree with me on this and why. Always love a discussion on Foucault.
It seems to me that when you compare what is happening in reality to the 'literature about humanity' they are very different. People are increasingly comfortable with allowing information about them collected and made public online. They are often prepared to give up significant aspects of their privacy for the slightest additional convenience. Check out Google Latitude or Rescuetime for some extreme examples. I fully expect this trend to continue to the point where significant chunks of people's life experience will be stored online.
I'm not sure what humanist literature will have to say about this. If you have an interest in where the world is headed with regards to issues like these you would be better to read some good transhumanist literature instead.
But don't forget, Google does a lot of wonderful things. Millions (billions?) of people's lives are enriched by Google's products, and most of those people (certainly those of us on HN) know that Google needs some information about us in order to deliver the things it delivers. The startups that will change the world in the next decade or two are likely to be built with the help of things Google makes — and which Google cannot make as well without some personal data about its users.
So yes, companies now know more about you than they did 20 years ago, and we should certainly note the dangers of that. But don't ignore the huge value of what you get in return.
Was any data involved in his 'studies'? Was 'dehumanising' somehow defined independently? I suspect his arguments are more philosophical musing relying on circular logic, unstated assumptions and social norms, rather like pretty much everything I seem to read from Schneier. I'm sure they sound rather clever but do they really amount to much more than a circle jerk?
One could just as easily argue that 'need for privacy' is just a learned social construct.
I value knowledge based on data and where that is not available, philosophical reasoning. I see 'philosophical knowledge' as somewhat of a contradiction in terms. However I don't see how there can be a point in trying to demonstrate that something is 'dehumanizing' without even properly defining what the term means. It seems to be a recipe for pages of word games rather than any useful philosophical reasoning.
> to that end I won't endeavor to persuade you of it's merit. I would advise you to read his work before you criticize it.
Could you at least provide the name of work that the quote comes from? Despite my pessimism I'm prepared to at least look at some of his work.
That said, I wonder what Bruce would say in response to a more optimistic interpretation of Schmidt's statement. What if Eric's sentiment was more along the lines of "if you don't want people to see you making love, then don't do it behind the bushes in Buena Vista Park"?
I applaud the librarians for standing up to the government. Google... not so much.
I see your point though, the costs to Google and their users is higher.
No amount of posturing and rhetoric about rights and privacy will long delay the world we're moving into; those are political activities, and the coming abolition of privacy is a technological and economic matter; politics can only weakly affect such things without becoming overwhelmingly invasive -- a solution more to be feared than the problem.
Not only that, but it makes it easier for 3rd party groups to try and gain information to silence opponents, Scientology being the first to come to mind.
In general, all of this information will benefit people, but possibly only people that 'keep their head down' and don't 'go against the flow.' For people that have strongly held beliefs that are against the 'norm,' it will make it easier for them to be attacked and (eventually) silenced. It will be the tool used to bludgeon people into becoming a homogenized society.
While I think that it is worthwhile trying to increase privacy on the data collection side (eg Google recording search queries), the more important part is what happens after. Is it anonymized? Is it available to government organisations? What happens after they get it?
Scheier's response is expectable from someone living in a fear-based society such as ours.
http://www.stockmaven.com/ibmstory.htm
"This approach appears to have been used in the Netherlands when small-area tabulations of population data by religion from the 1930 Dutch census made up one of several data sources used in the development of the so-called 'dot maps' of Amsterdam," he says. "These maps, which showed areas of the city where the density of the Jewish population was the highest, were used in planning Nazi-inspired attacks on some of these neighborhoods in February 1941."