Google plans comprehensive personal databases

This article causes me concern but I am not sufficiently technical to judge if I should view the developments and plans as a real threat, or paranoia.

When large companies start talking about "only doing what the customer wants them to do" I get nervous, especially when they have somewhat of a monopoly position.

I'd be interested to know how EU privacy law has played and may play a part in restricting possible invasions of privacy by this US based company.

Perhaps you fine people can offer some views?

Google is watching you

'Big Brother' row over plans for personal database
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Published: 24 May 2007

Google, the world's biggest search engine, is setting out to create the most comprehensive database of personal information ever assembled, one with the ability to tell people how to run their lives.

In a mission statement that raises the spectre of an internet Big Brother to rival Orwellian visions of the state, Google has revealed details of how it intends to organise and control the world's information.

The company's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said during a visit to Britain this week: "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'."

Speaking at a conference organised by Google, he said : "We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms [software] will get better and we will get better at personalisation."

Google's declaration of intent was publicised at the same time it emerged that the company had also invested £2m in a human genetics firm called 23andMe. The combination of genetic and internet profiling could prove a powerful tool in the battle for the greater understanding of the behaviour of an online service user.

Earlier this year Google's competitor Yahoo unveiled its own search technology, known as Project Panama, which monitors internet visitors to its site to build a profile of their interests.

Privacy protection campaigners are concerned that the trend towards sophisticated internet tracking and the collating of a giant database represents a real threat, by stealth, to civil liberties.

That concern has been reinforced by Google's $3.1bn bid for DoubleClick, a company that helps build a detailed picture of someone's behaviour by combining its records of web searches with the information from DoubleClick's "cookies", the software it places on users' machines to track which sites they visit.

The Independent has now learnt that the body representing Europe's data protection watchdogs has written to Google requesting more information about its information retention policy.

The multibillion-pound search engine has already said it plans to impose a limit on the period it keeps personal information.

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK agency responsible for monitoring data legislation confirmed it had been part of the group of organisations, known as the Article 29 Working Group, which had written to Google.

It is understood the letter asked for more detail about Google's policy on the retention of data. Google says it will respond to the Article 29 request next month when it publishes a full response on its website.

The Information Commissioner's spokeswoman added: "I can't say what was in it only that it was written in response to Google's announcement that will hold information for no more than two years."

Ross Anderson, professor of Security Engineering at Cambridge University and chairman of the Foundation for Information Policy Research, said there was a real issue with "lock in" where Google customers find it hard to extricate themselves from the search engine because of the interdependent linkage with other Google services, such as iGoogle, Gmail and YouTube. He also said internet users could no longer effectively protect their anonymity as the data left a key signature.

"A lot of people are upset by some of this. Why should an angst-ridden teenager who subscribes to MySpace have their information dragged up 30 years later when they go for a job as say editor of the Financial Times? But there are serious privacy issues as well. Under data protection laws, you can't take information, that may have been given incidentally, and use it for another purpose. The precise type and size of this problem is yet to be determined and will change as Google's business changes."

A spokeswoman for the Information Commissioner said that because of the voluntary nature of the information being targeted, the Information Commission had no plans to take any action against the databases.

Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy Counsel, said the company intended only doing what its customers wanted it to do. He said Mr Schmidt was talking about products such as iGoogle, where users volunteer to let Google use their web histories. "This is about personalised searches, where our goal is to use information to provide the best possible search for the user. If the user doesn't want information held by us, then that's fine. We are not trying to build a giant library of personalised information. All we are doing is trying to make the best computer guess of what it is you are searching for."

Privacy protection experts have argued that law enforcement agents - in certain circumstances - can compel search engines and internet service providers to surrender information. One said: "The danger here is that it doesn't matter what search engines say their policy is because it can be overridden by national laws."

How Google grew to dominate the internet

It's all about the algorithms. When Google first started up, in summer 1998, it quickly made its mark by being the internet's best, most efficient search engine. Now Google wants to know everything - all the knowledge contained on the world wide web, and everything about you as a computer user, too.

The key, at every step of the way, has been the methodology the company has used to catalogue and present information. The first stroke of genius that the company's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, had while they were still in graduate school was to measure responses to an internet search not only by the frequency of the search word but by the number of times a given web page was accessed via other web pages. It was a revolutionary idea at the time, now copied by every one of their rivals.

A decade later, their technical brilliance is operating on an altogether more ambitious scale. Google is now a $150bn (£77bn) company and a seemingly unstoppable corporate, as well as technical juggernaut.

The big question, of course, is whether the idealism that first fired up Page and Brin can survive in a dirty corporate world where information is not just an intellectual ideal, but also a legal and political hot potato involving profound issues of privacy, intellectual property rights and freedom of speech. "You can make money without doing evil," runs one of their most celebrated mantras. Does that extend to signing a deal with China whereby its search functions will be subject to state censorship? The furore over that particular decision, made at the beginning of last year, still rages.

Google's activities thus touch on some of the key philosophical questions of our digital age. Because of its power and prominence, it will also be the benchmark by which we come to measure many of the answers.

Andrew Gumbel

*Gulp*
That scares me, for some reason I had always seen google as "good guy's" in the battle over internet privacy.
That these people believe they have the power to tell people what is best for them, even if they did I don't want to be privy to it.

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Originally Posted by Bopa the Magyar

*Gulp*
That scares me, for some reason I had always seen google as "good guy's" in the battle over internet privacy.
That these people believe they have the power to tell people what is best for them, even if they did I don't want to be privy to it.

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Probably because google had not been as obtrusive about it as Microsoft. They're either more sneaky or smarter, I guess.

Doesn't make them the good guys. Still, I'll admit that Google is just too addicting, with the best search engine in the whole internet, and that gives them too much power. I feel like Google.com is the window to the internet. If ten millions other than me agree then you can see how it goes.

Sad that they feel the need to abuse it. I don't know why either, since the more private information they have the more temptation for the civil rights-hating Bush Administration and its men-in-black to be knocking on google's door trying to secure that stuff for themselves for Jehovah knows why.

Just what the world needed another multinational trying to control the World... Where is the Justice League when you need them?

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Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

The company's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, said during a visit to Britain this week: "The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as 'What shall I do tomorrow?' and 'What job shall I take?'."

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Douglas Adams was right after all.

The Three Stages of Civilization:

1. How can we eat?
2. Why do we eat?
3. Where shall we have dinner?

I for one welcome my database overlords

https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v...ckjoe-base.jpg

Heh, I knew it would come to this.

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Originally Posted by Evil_Maniac From Mars

Douglas Adams was right after all.

The Three Stages of Civilization:

1. How can we eat?
2. Why do we eat?
3. Where shall we have dinner?

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Actually this is stage four.

4. What company you shall have dinner from.

Given that so much 'pawn' is surfed for on the internet is there going to be some sort of new adult versions of the happy meal home delivered?

Brings a whole new meaning to supersized. Would you feel comfortable to saying no, no I'm not?

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Originally Posted by article

Google's declaration of intent was publicised at the same time it emerged that the company had also invested £2m in a human genetics firm called 23andMe. The combination of genetic and internet profiling could prove a powerful tool in the battle for the greater understanding of the behaviour of an online service user.

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Huh ? What are they planning ?

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Originally Posted by Banquo's Ghost

I'd be interested to know how EU privacy law has played and may play a part in restricting possible invasions of privacy by this US based company.

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EU's privacy laws will do practically nothing. The servers arent in the EU and the companies in the USA. Whats more realistic is Google will be sued for putting spyware on millions of computers. Also a crime in most states, including CA.

Creepy stuff though. Maybe this could be useful. Off to go google the meaning of life.

Borgworld. I'm telling you. :yes:

For this reason I try to limit the amount of personal info about me on the web. Unfortunately because of my job and political dabblings, I can't do this as much as I would like, but as for myspace and the like, fergedaboutit.

Remember farenheit 451, and how the government kept tabs on people who didn't watch their telly all night like good citizens, and did things like go for walks instead? Its all going to come true.

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Originally Posted by doc_bean

Huh ? What are they planning ?

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Combining electronic data with genetics is the ultimate control freak's wet dream. I didn't know Google was up to this.

Suddenly I'm all for Bill Gates. I mean it. I am going to de-install whatever Google files I can find and never look back.

Morons. :furious3:

I wonder how this will work. If I search for "9/11" "Al-Qaeda" "Bomb", will the google service recommend me to become a suicide bomber today?

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Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix

I wonder how this will work. If I search for "9/11" "Al-Qaeda" "Bomb", will the google service recommend me to become a suicide bomber today?

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They would probably at least mark you as suspicious or "in need of investigation."

Why? What if I do this to search for news articles? Similarly, I heard some story about someone being arrested and interrogated for borrowing some communist book in either a European or American country. The problem was, he was a student in history and reading the book for research, but assumed to be a communist-terrorist for requesting it from his library. I don't believe a computer algorithm or human being either for that matter can draw very accurate conclusions about people's intentions or desires from looking at their log in a particular place.

One more example are those "customized ads" that appear. If you search for something that you have a temporary interest in, but don't want to hear a thing about once you've looked it up, you will still end up seeing ads within that particular field for months before they go away - really annoying. I actually tend to click more on banners that are randomly chosen, than about customized ads based on my visitor patterns. The customized ads incorrectly assumes that what I looked for once is something I'll keep looking for, whereas in fact I tend to NOT want what I've just looked at, because I hopefully found it and have no reason whatsoever to search for it again. Some of the "customized ads" are really bad, because they start customizing for you even when they only have data from 1 visit from you. Then this effect tends to get even worse.

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Originally Posted by LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix

Why? (...) Similarly, I heard some story about someone being arrested and interrogated for borrowing some communist book in either a European or American country. The problem was, he was a student in history and reading the book for research, but assumed to be a communist-terrorist for requesting it from his library. I don't believe a computer algorithm or human being either for that matter can draw very accurate conclusions about people's intentions or desires from looking at their log in a particular place.

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Because they don't know which is why they would investigate the person.
It's not at all meant to be a perfect concluder of facts (though if they are really that illogical (or stupid), they should not even be in the position to judge in the first place), but as a hint to "possibly dangerous ones". Then when they have investigated they can be sure whether the person in question is really dangerous or not.

By the way, you used the word "Similarly" as if your hypothetical idea of...

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I wonder how this will work. If I search for "9/11" "Al-Qaeda" "Bomb", will the google service recommend me to become a suicide bomber today?

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...was similar to the first quote in this post. It did not include something as... "noticeable" as "Bomb", then again what I've read about the story of the student wanting to do communist research is hearsay at best without factual detail.

Or "Similarly" was used to refer to the idea of...

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What if I do this to search for news articles?

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...but we don't know if it is similar because the story about the student is (presumably) true, and whether you've done the search and have been investigated and arrested and interrogated.
If we would have to judge with the current information, it is probably false that you yourself have been arrested and interrogated, though the registration of your search, if true, can be assumed to be true at least.

Resistance is futile. You will be classified.

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Originally Posted by Bijo

Because they don't know which is why they would investigate the person.
It's not at all meant to be a perfect concluder of facts (though if they are really that illogical (or stupid), they should not even be in the position to judge in the first place), but as a hint to "possibly dangerous ones". Then when they have investigated they can be sure whether the person in question is really dangerous or not.

By the way, you used the word "Similarly" as if your hypothetical idea of......was similar to the first quote in this post. It did not include something as... "noticeable" as "Bomb", then again what I've read about the story of the student wanting to do communist research is hearsay at best without factual detail.

Or "Similarly" was used to refer to the idea of......but we don't know if it is similar because the story about the student is (presumably) true, and whether you've done the search and have been investigated and arrested and interrogated.
If we would have to judge with the current information, it is probably false that you yourself have been arrested and interrogated, though the registration of your search, if true, can be assumed to be true at least.

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For the record I haven't made any of these example searches I posted above as far as I can recall nor have I been arrested or interrogated for search phrases, because thank God I don't live in a country that does surveillance - but the government is of course trying to introduce it, like all governments at present (though I think there would be civil war if they succeeded in introducing surveillance laws). But I do recall having made other searches which were intended to find news articles, but, when the search phrases were seen alone, would give a far from flattering picture of me if interpreted in the way one would suspect the algorithm to do it.

The gentic compony and cookie parts worrys me but I think everything else is blown out of proportion. How is this different from a waiter remembering what you ordered to try to perdict what you want again. This is just a way of gathering data and trying to customize google even further to each indivual users. Done correctly it can be a no problem but if done wrongly then it can turn into a threat to civil rights.

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Originally Posted by Adrian II

Combining electronic data with genetics is the ultimate control freak's wet dream. I didn't know Google was up to this.

Suddenly I'm all for Bill Gates. I mean it. I am going to de-install whatever Google files I can find and never look back.

Morons. :furious3:

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I'm of the same mind.

Google wants knowledge of your life - and knowledge is power. Microsoft just sells software to people. Sometimes they're a bit pushy as a business, but they aren't trying to dig up info on you, they just want to sell you stuff.

Google's plan is to find out everything they can about you. And I think even the emo kid blogging on myspace might hesitate to have all that info kept and neatly stored for the rest of their life.

Their vision is where they know everything about everybody.

So, the question is - what's the best search engine excluding google?

CR

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Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit

I'm of the same mind.

Google wants knowledge of your life - and knowledge is power. Microsoft just sells software to people. Sometimes they're a bit pushy as a business, but they aren't trying to dig up info on you, they just want to sell you stuff.

Google's plan is to find out everything they can about you. And I think even the emo kid blogging on myspace might hesitate to have all that info kept and neatly stored for the rest of their life.

Their vision is where they know everything about everybody.

So, the question is - what's the best search engine excluding google?

CR

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I agree! If someone has a good tip for which alternate search engine to prefer, I'll switch to it asap. I'm a bit tired of the policies of google. Boycott is unfortunately the only way a customer can influence a company's policy.

Google could at least have the option to turn on/off the collecting of personal info.

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So, the question is - what's the best search engine excluding google?

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Well most of the others, besides Google, have had a history of handing records over the government already so theres not alot of choices.

Nearly every search engine uses google software anyway.

All our base aare belong to them.

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Originally Posted by Destroyer of Hope

Well most of the others, besides Google, have had a history of handing records over the government already so theres not alot of choices.

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Yeah, but only one is planning to know everything about my life and tell me how to run it. I can see searching for various rifles to purchase and get directed to some anti-gun group because google thinks it's good for me.

And google will hand over records if it has too. Heck, it had to be forced to only keep records for two years.

CR

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Yeah, but only one is planning to know everything about my life and tell me how to run it. I can see searching for various rifles to purchase and get directed to some anti-gun group because google thinks it's good for me.

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It's not telling you how to run it thou. This sounds like an optional feature no different then the meatporical sales person remembering what you've bought in the past and making suggestions about what to buy next.

Is every one here so parinoid that they think that google's perpose is to gather data on you? For those who think so my question is why? Why would google want to or bother to go through all this trouble and then what would they do once they have all this data?

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And google will hand over records if it has too. Heck, it had to be forced to only keep records for two years.

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Thissays differently.

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He said Google, at its own initiative, had decided in March to limit the time it kept engine search information to between 18 and 24 months. The company previously had no set time limit.

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Originally Posted by Destroyer of Hope

Thissays differently.

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Your name fits you well, heh :)


I've heard even of another online search engine, but forgot the name. I used it once but you know what the thing about it really is? They employ people who are good at... "searching" and they allow you to interact with them live through chat.
You tell 'em what you're looking for and they start lookin', and when they find something they think is useful they send the search result to you on the same (chat) page on the side.

If you find Google suspicious, then whaddaya t'ink o' dat, eh? Who knows what the hell they're doing in there behind the scenes, even employing searchers FOR you.

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This sounds like an optional feature no different then the meatporical sales person remembering what you've bought in the past and making suggestions about what to buy next.

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Except this salesman wants to know about my whole life so he can make suggestions for my whole life. Aren't you a bit worried about all that data being stored by a company?

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Is every one here so parinoid that they think that google's perpose is to gather data on you?

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Um, google said they want to.

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For those who think so my question is why? Why would google want to or bother to go through all this trouble and then what would they do once they have all this data?

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So they can carry out their stated goal of being able to tell you what to do tomorrow or what job to take.

CR

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Except this salesman wants to know about my whole life so he can make suggestions for my whole life. Aren't you a bit worried about all that data being stored by a company?

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It sounds like an optional future. You may as well be using the same arguements about Horescope.

As for the data gathering I'm a bit worried but you have to accept it as the invenitable when using serch engines. Lets not just single out google the rest of the indistry does it too. At least googles trying to put it towards making their product better instead of just leting it sit there.

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Um, google said they want to.

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Let me refraze the question why does everyone think google's intent is malicious.

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So they can carry out their stated goal of being able to tell you what to do tomorrow or what job to take.

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But that dosn't generate any profit which is google main goal as a company. Also are you telling me that google honestly has spent proably millions of dolars just to tell someone what to do with thier day? Don't they have other things to do?

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Your name fits you well, heh :)

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~:confused:

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Originally Posted by Destroyer of Hope

~:confused:

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I just meant that the article you linked to was almost like... "destroying hope" (at least for my understanding), hence my saying that your (user)name fitted you well :)


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Google appears it has possibilities of abusing gathered personal information, simply because they have it. Morality, ethics, etc., are not even the question: they have much information and that's enough to suspect them.

On April 20, 2007, three consumer privacy organizations, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), and the US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), urging the Commission to open an investigation into Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick, specifically with regard to the ability of Google to record, analyze, track, and profile the activities of Internet users with data that is both personally identifiable and data that is not personally identifiable.

Clicky