Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Google Tracking
From: Peter van den Heuvel <peter () txnt net>
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:51:46 +0200
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 _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
Current thread:
- Google Tracking Kristian Erik Hermansen (Sep 15)
- Re: Google Tracking Cyberheb (Sep 15)
- Re: Google Tracking Peter Besenbruch (Sep 15)
- Re: Google Tracking Michał Jęczalik (Sep 15)
- Re: Google Tracking Peter van den Heuvel (Sep 16)
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- Re: Google Tracking Throwaway1 () columbus rr com (Sep 15)
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- Re: Google Tracking Marcin Wielgoszewski (Sep 15)
- Re: Google Tracking Thomas Coppi (Sep 15)
- Re: Google Tracking Cyberheb (Sep 15)