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Google: Open Letter to Australians

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Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#361

Post by 3131s »

catmanjan wrote: post #321
sjy wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not indexing news content in order to avoid submitting to the proposed new law is itself prohibited under the new law.

That is utterly false The Australian government isn't forcing Google to index content, and I suspect what op suggested is what will happen and News corp will beg for reindexing

I don't get it... if News Corp doesn't want to be indexed can't they just set their robots.txt accordingly? It doesn't seem like they'll be able to successfully argue this.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#362

Post by MertsA »

harry8 wrote: post #221

Open comment from an Australian to google: "Pay your f#$king tax like the rest of us or shut the f%$ck up." This comment stands apart from any and all implications of their special interest policy pleadings above which are all pretty tedious in comparison. Google don't pay tax for profit made selling in Australia. To hell with them and literally any case they have to make.

I agree multinational corporation taxation is sorely in need of updating but this isn't taxing Google. This is just robbing Google and giving the proceeds to News Corp. The Australian people don't get anything from this, it's literally just taking money from one multinational and giving it to another. What would be hilarious is if Google just delisted News Corp in the US and UK and charged them a premium for adwords to offset the theft in the Australian market.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#363

Post by justaguyhere »

discordance wrote: post #119

Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0], can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1]. I trust Murdoch less than the government, and much much less than Google. Remember when Murdoch in…

Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data

Maybe, but can you guarantee they will be good custodians tomorrow, even if they are good custodians today? Privacy is a unique problem, in the sense that it only takes one incident (intentional or not) to ruin reputations/lives etc. The best course of action is not to look for good custodians, it is not collect even one piece of data that is not absolutely necessary.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#364

Post by throwaway45349 »

eru wrote: post #285
ssss11 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d genuinely like to know how everday citizens get their government to do the rght thing. It seems everywhere around the world they just do what benefits themselves. people protest, and get hit with rubber bullets, but nothing seems to change.

I would suggest to vote with your feet. Pick a government you like and move there, instead of trying to change the government in the place you happen to be born in. Voting with your feet also changes where you pay taxes. (Unless you are American, then you need to jump through some extra hoops to make sure your mother country doesn't get your money any more.)

I'm not sure this is a good idea. Why would anyone abandon their home/nation to jump ship into a culture they know nothing about -- except for government policy? Only in the US with it's state system is what you're describing practical.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#365

Post by throwaway45349 »

sthnblllII wrote: post #168
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In regards to parent commenters [0] link, this is the story that got a journalist's home raided by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) because she received leaked information (that turned out to be 100% correct) that the Department for Home Affairs was planning to allow the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) to spy on Australian citizens. Directly quoting from the linked article: ASD powers have been a source of co…

> this seems to be the Government that the Australian people want. I can assure you it’s not. The problem with Republics is that “one man one vote” does not translate into the majority getting what it wants. The loudest and most well organized political forces will get their way, even ones small in number or popular support. State security services have a long history of involvement in politics and media in the Anglo…

> The problem with Republics is that “one man one vote” does not translate into the majority getting what it wants.

This is not a bug, it's a feature. Otherwise you let the big cities stomp over the towns and countryside.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#366

Post by throwaway9d0291 »

peterkelly wrote: post #330
throwaway9d0291 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1] No, no it can't. I don't know how the media managed to get this so wrong and how so many people just accepted it without questioning it. The law explicitly limits, and limited from the start, the effect that a government request could have [0]: a request cannot introduce a "systemic weakness". Some relevant quotes of what a sys…

Any property of a system that makes it possible to intercept the communication of specific users is, in and of itself, a systemic weakness.

I agree and were a company to not already have that capability and the government were to request it, such a request would be legally worthless per the aforementioned law.

However pretty much every closed-source communication tool already has this systemic weakness, so the government doesn't have to ask for it to be introduced. WhatsApp, Facebook, Google etc. can all, today, as we speak, choose to push out an app update with code to send plaintext copies of a specific person's messages to Australian law enforcement/intelligence. There's nothing new here.

Open-source tools though do not have this vulnerability. Signal for example has reproducible builds and the Australian government cannot require it to remove them so that it can covertly intercept individuals' messages.

My point here is that contrary to reporting in the tech media, the law doesn't and cannot require that any backdoors be introduced. It can only require that existing ones be used.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#367

Post by justinjoshuak »

discordance wrote: post #119

Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0], can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1]. I trust Murdoch less than the government, and much much less than Google. Remember when Murdoch in…

> who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0]

The linked article is about planned changes that haven't yet been legislated - "Details of the new powers – which will require legislation – are not contained in the strategy"

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#368

Post by sukilot »

discordance wrote: post #119

Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0], can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1]. I trust Murdoch less than the government, and much much less than Google. Remember when Murdoch in…

> can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software

Google is a company.

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#369

Post by sukilot »

neiman wrote: post #334
corty wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they lost all their data to foreign secret services (the NSA) once. Google never loosing data and taking "good care" of it is a myth that needs to die. The only right way forward is to be parsimonius with data. Never pass it along, never collect it (if possible).

I just want to have a place where I can tick, "Google, please never ever collect any of my data". But I don't have such a thing, not because it's impossible to create one.

Have you tried incognito mode?

Re: Google: Open Letter to Australians

#370

Post by vntok »

neiman wrote: post #334
corty wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they lost all their data to foreign secret services (the NSA) once. Google never loosing data and taking "good care" of it is a myth that needs to die. The only right way forward is to be parsimonius with data. Never pass it along, never collect it (if possible).

I just want to have a place where I can tick, "Google, please never ever collect any of my data". But I don't have such a thing, not because it's impossible to create one.

> I just want to have a place where I can tick, "Google, please never ever collect any of my data".

You are asking for a paradox.

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