Internet Security

New evidence continues to contradict Google’s public representations of outrage over, and non-involvement in, NSA spying revealed by the Snowden leaks.

Please see my latest Daily Caller op-ed:  “Google’s Robots and Creeping Militarization.”

• It explains how the U.S. military is on path to become Google’s largest customer and why Google likely has a closer working relationship with the NSA than it acknowledges publicly.  

It is Part 20 of my Google Spying Series.

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Google Spying Series

Part 1: All the Blackmail-able Info that 'J. Edgar Google' Collects on You [7-17-08]

Big Brother Inc. Google is outraged at Big Brother NSA?

Is there no honor among spies?

Google represents its new default policy -- taking a user’s name and picture and putting it in their ads without permission or compensation -- as “Shared Endorsements.”  This deceptive and unfair business practice is more aptly named Google-YouAd, “Pirated Endorsements,” or “Swindled Endorsements,” because they are taken deceptively without permission or compensation.

To Google, people apparently are just another form of digital content that should be open and free to exploit without asking the owner for permission and without any expectation of payment from Google for the value that Google generates from the taken content.

We should not be surprised. Google is treating their users, not as humans with privacy and ownership rights, but as inanimate products, content, and “targets” of their advertising model. Notice that they are treating people’s unique identities just like they treat others valuable content that is trademarked, copyrighted, patented, private, confidential or secret. Simply they take it without permission or compensation until an authority that they fear compels them to cease and desist.

Given that Google’s Privacy Policy Counsel, David Lieber, is the only corporate representative speaking at Cato’s impressive conference tomorrow in D.C. on: NSA Surveillance: What We Know and What to Do about It, let me suggest some questions to ask Mr. Lieber about Google’s views on surveillance and spying in general. 

Google can expect a big rest-of-world trust problem when it rolls out Google Glass overseas, because of: foreign fallout from Edward Snowden’s illegal disclosures of NSA surveillance activities; Google’s reputation for aggressive and pervasive spying on people’s privacy; and Google’s cavalier legal stance that people have “no legitimate expectation of privacy.”

Yet again, Google has violated the first rule of holes; when in a hole, stop digging.

Google is unwisely keeping the story alive that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said this to Charlie Rose on air: [Google] “took our stuff and … that was wrong. This really bothers me. I don’t see how [Larry Page] thinks you can just copy someone else’s stuff.” 

In a Google+ post to his followers, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt responded: “We typically try to avoid getting dragged into public battles with other companies. But I’ve gotten a lot of questions about Larry Ellison’s claims that Google “took [Oracle’s] stuff”.  It’s simply untrue -- and that’s not just my opinion, but the judgment of a U.S. District Court.” 

Does Google really want to engage in a broader public conversation about the truth and facts of Google’s serial disrespect for the property of others?

Google is the spy tool of choice, the one stop-shop for spying, and the spymaster’s dream.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s famously quipped: “if you have something you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.” Given recent spying revelations, what Mr. Schmidt apparently means is: “if you don’t want to be spied upon, don’t use Google’s products and services.”

Why is that true? Let’s examine the top ten reasons.  

Summary

Google is the only company with a mission to organize the world’s public and private information, and it is also unique in having developed more ways, to monitor more people’s behavior, more intimately than any entity ever.

Please see this one page graphic summary to get a big picture view of the almost unimaginable scale and scope of the intimate private information that Google routinely records and analyzes. 

Since all other companies have much more narrow and focused businesses and missions than Google’s unbounded ambitions, they represent a fraction or slice of the whole public and private data pie that Google collects, stores, and analyzes.

Other than Google, only an Orwellian “Big Brother” state would aspire to collect and store indefinitely all private, intimate information on everyone online like Google is doing.

We know information is power.

The problem with Google becoming Big Brother Inc., is that if a state were to combine its state powers with Google’s unique information monopoly, unaccountability, and surveillance powers, it creates huge natural temptations for corruption and abuse in the absence of meaningful competition, strong checks and balances, and real public accountability.

Every system has a most vulnerable point, an Achilles heel. The overwhelming evidence below indicates that Google is America’s cybersecurity Achilles heel.

While America faces a plethora of serious cybersecurity vulnerabilities, Google’s unique scale, scope, tracking, and centralization puts Google alone at the pinnacle of America’s cybersecurity vulnerabilities, in a class all by itself.

Simply, hackers understand Google is by far the world’s single most-comprehensive source of intimate surveillance information on people and their behaviors, while also being the major entity that is least-committed culturally to protecting people’s security, privacy, and property.