full-disclosure - Re: Google Tracking

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Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:51:46 +0200
From: Peter van den Heuvel <peter@...t.net>
To: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: Google Tracking

> But this 'big brother' scenario is not the case in my opinion. At least 
> not now.
That might be true. But the case is that somebody could. And we all know
that if something can, eventually someone will.

> The case is to sell more Adwords.
The difference between intent and ability. Personally I find the extent
of this ability rather scary. Specially as we have not yet seen the end
of it. You can already upgrade your navigation package subscription with
a feature that allows you to see where exactly your "buddies" are. This
can (too) easily be extended for different purposes and combined with
other data sources.

Anyway, personally I see a HUGE risk that does not have it's precedence
in history. Remember that governments increasingly court-order access to
communications infrastructure and are spending billions on intercepting
and searching all global communications ex. Carnivore and now Echelon).
At some point some official will wake up and think "What a neat idea!
It's all there!" And of course criminal organizations are likewise
interested.

Then even more, THE Google keyword is selling. They already sell
censorship technology to at least China. What would stop Google from
selling the combined collected surveillance data on Chinese citizens to
the Chinese government. Yes you can throw up smoke curtains and hide
your tracks and some will, but most won't. And that would effectively
stop social reforms dead in it's tracks as that's a thing of the masses,
not the "elite".

I even doubt there is legislation in effect that is able to deal with
the type and scale of privacy risk that is being whipped together here.
I'm not even sure anybody is fully aware of what is really happening
behind those curtains. And when things blow up, "I did not know" can
never be an excuse.

-- 
Peter

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