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On Confirmed Assumptions or, Not Trusting Google is a Good Idea

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Re: On Confirmed Assumptions or, Not Trusting Google is a Good Idea

#141

Post by embolism »

jmillikin wrote: post #127
embolism wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google isn't forced to rely on stockpiling personal data as a business model. It could create the exact private service that you are looking for, but it intentionally does not.

> It could create the exact private service that you are looking for, but it intentionally does not. Most of Google's products are "webapp" equivalents to traditional desktop software. It is not possible to create webapps which are private against the webapp's host. What you are essentially arguing is that Google ought to shut down its current business in favor of writing security-conscious desktop apps. The result w…

Google was perfectly capable of creating a secure browser and propagating it through all manner of mechanisms. There is no reason they couldn't do the same with a secure mail system, for that matter they could just deliver it as a chrome update and smoothly redirect people into it if they wanted to. There is absolutely no reason why users would 'all jump ship' to another provider.

All you are really saying is that Google exposes data to the government because its business model dictates that it put privacy below behavioral profiling it its list of priorities. That is not in dispute.

You are arguing that Google is incapable of solving this problem, whereas I think that a group of people as talented and resourceful as Google could solve it if they wanted to, but they aren't trying because they think their value is tied to the amount of personal data they collect, rather than what problems they solve for society.

Right now, this privacy problem is a serious one for society, and who is better positioned than Google to solve it?

Re: On Confirmed Assumptions or, Not Trusting Google is a Good Idea

#143

Post by contingencies »

embolism wrote: post #116
saalweachter wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any personal knowledge of this but if I were to recklessly speculate, I would wager "deleting stuff is hard". The typical concern is data loss, so to delete something completely you need to unwind your entire data loss prevention stack. Delete a file, delete a row from a database, wipe a cache from another server, scrub any ZFS-style filesystem versioning of data, mirror the changes to any off-site on-li…

Creating a massive behavioral profiling advertising system is hard , as is creating a self driving car. Protecting users from Government intrusion is simply a lower priority for Google.

Think of the architects!

Each of them believe they are doing nothing wrong.

Re: On Confirmed Assumptions or, Not Trusting Google is a Good Idea

#145

Post by anigbrowl »

ef4 wrote: post #48
tptacek wrote: post #24

How, in short, is this shit valid under the U.S. Bill of Rights? I’d really like someone to explain that to me. With a straight face. Preferably without making me want to punch them in the process. Well, he's going to want to punch me, but here's what I think(?) the answer is: (a) He's not a US person, but instead a well-known citizen of Iceland, living abroad, and is thus not protected by the Fourth Amendment, at le…

The legal theory that the bill of rights only applies to US citizens is dangerous and wrong. It applies to actions of the United States government. It is a list of things they may not do.

That's what you may have thought it meant, or what you think it should mean, but it's not what it does mean. If you are so sure it's wrong, then it's up to you to make the argument for why, instead of just handwaving it away because you don't like it.

Re: On Confirmed Assumptions or, Not Trusting Google is a Good Idea

#146

Post by zenbowman »

"I believe that organisations don’t really have a right to secrecy and I believe that the more open a society, a society where people have more information is a society where we can take more informed decisions and where we perhaps won’t need the gatekeepers that are currently in place as much" -Herbert Snorrason

If he doesn't believe organizations have a right to secrecy, then why does he believe that he is entitled to secrecy. Privacy and secrecy are the same thing, claiming to be pro-privacy but against secrecy is dishonest.

Re: On Confirmed Assumptions or, Not Trusting Google is a Good Idea

#147

Post by embolism »

burntsushi wrote: post #137
embolism wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a laudable and idealistic goal, but we don't live in that world. Furthermore Google itself knows more than we do about how easily governments can access the data it accumulates. If it chose to, Google could protect users by developing services that do not rely on Google itself examining their personal data. Google understands the risks better than its users but chooses to expose them because doing so is align…

> If it chose to, Google could protect users by developing services that do not rely on Google itself examining their personal data. I'm perplexed that you'd call me idealistic for not wanting a coercive third party secretly taking a company's data by force, and in the next sentence suggest that a company should provide services to me in exchange for nothing. I give my data to Google. In exchange, I get their service…

I'm not calling you idealistic for what you want. I want a trustworthy government too.

I'm calling you idealistic because you are putting your hopes in an idealistic solution when Google could provide you with a technical solution now. One type of check and balance against untrustworthy governments is robust civil institutions. Technology companies could be helping to provide those.

It seems to me that in the presence of an untrustworthy government, a state of affairs that had existed throughout history, you prefer ad-supported free email to privacy.

Re: On Confirmed Assumptions or, Not Trusting Google is a Good Idea

#148

Post by magicalist »

icebraining wrote: post #129
magicalist wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What paid web service based in the US (or in a country with applicable data sharing laws) is going to refuse all search warrants for you? Maybe you were looking for "Most other web services not in Iceland aren't much better"?

Complying with search warrants would not be nearly as problematic if Google didn't capture so much data about its users, or made a bigger effort to prevent itself from reading it (and hence be unable to provide it). See http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-w...

Some data could be captured less, but what about data like email contents, files, contacts, calendar data, chat histories? Retaining those things are part of the whole purpose of having web clients and dwarf logs like the IP address you used to do a web search, which is ephemeral anyway. Can we at least define the "so much data" that we're talking about here? Going to my Google account page, for the most part I see services that I specifically turned on. What other data are we talking about here that would really save the day if not present?

Meanwhile, some of the objections in this thread seem kind of selective. With a search warrant, the FBI can tap your phones and record your conversations, they can tap your internet connection and watch every IP address you connect to and record all the unencrypted connections you make, they can place tails on you that record every word they can pick up with a microphone, they can track every financial activity you engage in and every person you meet with; they can go into your house and take everything you own. If Colin was in the US, they could certainly go into his house and install a keylogger.

If you just want an online backup system, definitely use tarsnap or the like. I have an offsite backup that's locally encrypted. If you want a web service, though, with all the tradeoffs that implies, that's what you're going to be subject to. For US citizens, search warrants are actually good things; probable cause is a high bar to meet. It's the bullshit lack of disclosure/secrecy culture that the judiciary accepts so often that is the problem here (as well as the problems of if you're not a US citizen...). If we ensure that warrant disclosure policies are reformed, at least we can be informed that our data has been seized and defend ourselves.

Re: On Confirmed Assumptions or, Not Trusting Google is a Good Idea

#149

Post by magicalist »

embolism wrote: post #122
jkrems wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with privacy and free services. Yes, that is a problem, but it has no connection at all to this case. It's about emails and private chats being given to the government without any limitations. It's about non-US citizens having zero protection or due process when they use US-based cloud services. That's a couple of degrees more severe than "Google is storing personal details about you and may gi…

You can't separate the two. The reason why foreigners are uploading their data to the NSA when they use Google is because of the way Google makes its money and engineers its services. Compare this to Apple's iMessage or FaceTime - Apple cannot decrypt the contents of the messages, and therefore cannot give the contents to the government. They designed the service this way because their users pay for the service as pa…

Even leaving behind the arguments that Apple was incorrect on iMessage history being inaccessible to them, what about the rest of Apple's services (like all your icloud email, your contacts, calendar, etc) that certainly can be turned over with a warrant?

Your conclusion does not follow.

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