Google Motto, fine distinctions and the ethics of knowledge

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: larry price <chef () zoneverte org>
Date: September 3, 2006 3:20:58 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: For IP: Google Motto, fine distinctions and the ethics of  
knowledge

Google's informal motto is not "Do No Evil", it's "Don't BE Evil"  see
http://investor.google.com/conduct.html

While this may seem like a distinction without a difference to some;
"do no evil" is an impossible injunction, because if you are doing
anything of consequence someone will regard it as evil. Whereas,
"don't be evil" implies that you are biased against being an evil
entity, not that you are perfect and blameless.

As far as I can see Google does not force anyone to use their
services, and denying them access to your publicly available web
resources is a matter of making an entry in your robots.txt file. So
any information that Google retains was gathered with the cooperation
of the parties involved (and if the cooperation was unwitting... the
witlessness does not appear to be google's). That said I and many
others do have expectations of privacy of our communications with
google that are greater because of the greater trust we have for it.

In the brazilian court case, and the other subpoenas that google
responds to on a regular basis, would it be more evil to respond to a
legal request for information involved in the commission of a crime or
would it be more evil to conceal that information.  Consider this
analogy, a neighbour leaves a note in your mailbox asking if you know
where he could get child pornography, later the police ask you if you
have had any contact with that neighbour, do you lie and protect your
neighbour, or do you give over the note?


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