Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next
afr.com

And let’s never forget Eric Schmidt:

http://precursorblog.com/?q=content/googles-top-ten-anti-pri...

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place;"

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo 12-7-09.

The "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it;"

Said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic.

"Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are;"

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the 2010 Techonomy conference.

"We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about;"

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic.

"It's a future where you don't forget anything…"In this new future you're never lost...We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time;"

Explained Google Chairman Eric Schmidt at TechCrunch, 9-28-10.

"No harm, no foul;" Concerning Google's unauthorized collection of WiFi signals from tens of millions of homes in 33 countries over three years, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the Times of London in May 2010.

When you create a Google account, you're asked to provide your name, your gender, your date of birth, your location and your mobile phone number. Some of your most personal and private details, all of which will now be tied to your online behaviour.

That ceaseless data capture starts right from school, where millions of students use a cloud-based OS called ChromeOS that records everything they do. It's quite horrible that this is happening - the kids don't even get a say, it's the adults who've decided this.

It doesn't matter if that information is only collated in aggregated form and detached from user accounts, we don't know how that information could be mined or analysed either now or in the future. (In fact, I suspect that even Google hasn't figure all the possible uses of the ginormous quantity of user behaviour it has captured and continues to capture).

And we've seen from Spotify and Netflix how even aggregated data can reveal very private and personal user behaviour.

Google and many of it's supporters conflate security with privacy. Just because Google hasn't ever suffered a breach of user data, people say that Google can be trusted. You can't have privacy without security, but security by itself does not equal privacy. You're still being tracked relentlessly by Google no matter how securely it's storing your online behaviour.

The whole time I was using an Android phone with my google account logged in on the device, google recorded and retained basically everything. My location, without even me using the maps app. My old contacts which I deleted from my contacts lists were still in the records. Any IPv4 or IPv6 address my phone was assigned to. This was even more creepy than facebook's data trove. I deleted my data on facebook as far as I could and also the account (not just deactivated) and I deleted most of the data google had on me. The problem is that I only can assume that all the data is now gone, but how can I be sure?

Google might constantly assure that they handle everything with care, but the extent of their intrusion into my private life is really scary.

Are you absolutely sure about that? Are you absolutely sure it will remain that way tomorrow, or next month?