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Google Ends Privacy
40hz:
But relying on the likes of Google or Facebook to help keep you safe is plain naive.
-Eóin (January 29, 2012, 10:16 AM)
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Apparently Twitter feels the same way about it and is saying as much. Once again from gHacks:
In other Twitter news the company behind the hugely successful micro-blogging site has today announced that they have developed a way to selectively censor tweets on a country by country basis. In it’s blog they said they could now “reactively withhold content from users in a specific country”.
It is curious as to why Twitter, a company that has always encouraged free speech, would make such a move. Social networks were used extensively in the uprisings in Egypt and the middle-east last spring, and were widely hailed for helping protestors galvanise such huge crowds of support.
Having the ability to censor specific types of tweet in individual countries could potentially prevent this type of thing from ever occurring again.
As justification the company said “that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression” going on to cite France and Germany for banning pro-Nazi speech.
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Gee, isn't that wonderful? Even if it is a pretty obvious dodge attempting to invoke that old 'banning pro-Nazi speech' bromide as part of your justification.
And which, if you think about it, is a rather silly argument...
Unless, of course, Twitter's management refuses to see the fallacy of mentally equating blatant hate speech with public demands for reform of government corruption, and its cessation of vindictive and brutal oppression against those who ask for it.
Hmm...I was just thinking...
But never mind.
If someone can't see the moral and logical problem with arguing something like Twitter is arguing - and using that as their excuses - well...they're beyond hope and not worth the bother.
I'd have had a lot more respect for them if they just came out and said: Look. We're looking for market domination. And we'll do whatever we have to do - and go along with whatever we have to go along with - to get where we want to be.
But public candor is an increasingly rare commodity these days.
About only place you do find candor any more is in hate speech.
Funny how the pro-Nazi crowd can find it in themselves to show more backbone than companies like Twitter.
8)
40hz:
That's slightly conspiracy-ish.
-Eóin (January 28, 2012, 11:02 PM)
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Yes. There is a conspiracy.
No. It is not a theory.
Yes. It is well documented in countless places.
No. It is not well reported on in mainstream media.
Yes. It is in both government documents and other sources.
Quite simply... The road to tyranny is paved one brick at a time.
-Renegade (January 29, 2012, 01:58 AM)
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Speaking of government documents, this too from gHacks (who is on a roll this week. Go gHacks! :Thmbsup: )
The FBI is looking to develop an emergencies early warning system that works by “scraping” information in real time from social networks. The US policing and intelligence bureau has asked contractors to suggest possible solutions and to come up with ways in which this might work. In a post on the Federal Business Opportunities website called “Social Media Application” they say…
The Federal Bureau of Investigations is conducting market research to determine the capabilities of the IT industry to provide a social media application. The tool at a minimum should be able to meet the operational and analytical needs described in the attachment.
This is actually harder than it might appear. On the face of it such a program would scour Twitter, Facebook and other websites for key words. However disasters can never be predicted and, as such, determining the language people will use at the time is extremely difficult. Even harder would be to determine where an event is taking place.
In theory such a program would also be able to highlight major crimes when people mention them online. People have until February 7th to submit their ideas to the bureau.
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Download a copy of the actual document at this link.
It's a good read. Eye opening too. It comes right out and says it's looking to gather data from realtime and cached social media sources using a scrape and mash-up approach.
Like I said earlier: It's called data mining.
And it works.
And if all this is starting to sound exactly like something the 'conspiracy yahoos' have been worried about, please don't be alarmed. It's only a superficial and unintended resemblance. Trust me! :P
8)
tranglos:
There's a thread on Google's privacy killer on Dave Farber's "Interesting People" mailing list. Though somewhat tangential, I highly recommend this reply from Tim O'Reilly (yep, *that* Tim O'Reilly).
(And I should say I disagree with his first paragraph. Whether or not Google goes and does evil stuff with the data it gathers is almost immaterial; what's important is being at their mercy. You just don't give someone the ability to do evil and count on them being kind enough to never use that ability. So I strongly disagree with that part. But the real payload of O'Reilly's response comes in the paragraphs that follow.)
40hz:
Whether or not Google goes and does evil stuff with the data it gathers is almost immaterial; what's important is being at their mercy. You just don't give someone the ability to do evil and count on them being kind enough to never use that ability.
-tranglos (January 29, 2012, 12:47 PM)
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And saying you'll "do no evil" while washing your hands of what somebody else may do, using the tools you've created, is one of the oldest acts of moral evasion known to mankind. Right up there with all the weapons scientists who deny any responsibilty for what their work gets used for. Nations have been trying to make that same argument about warfare for as long as wars have been fought.
The following soldier/taxpayer infographic sums it up far more neatly than I can. Click to expand it:
Google Ends Privacy
Deozaan:
Though somewhat tangential, I highly recommend this reply from Tim O'Reilly (yep, *that* Tim O'Reilly).
[...]
But the real payload of O'Reilly's response comes in the paragraphs that follow.
-tranglos (January 29, 2012, 12:47 PM)
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I'll say!
If you want an example of a company that is doing "evil", consider Apple. I was horrified, when I heard Mike Daisey, author of the one-man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," talking on This American Life about working conditions in the factories that make the iPhone and iPad, and Apple's tepid monitoring of those conditions. When a company has $98 billion in cash, and profits of tens of billions of dollars each quarter, does it really need to squeeze every last cent out of manufacturing costs.
The account of how Apple's factories substituted n-hexane, a neurotoxin with well-documented long term adverse health effects, for alcohol to wipe those shining screens clean, gaining a miniscule advantage in drying time but exposing workers to a lifetime of disablement nearly brought me to tears.
That's evil. Of course, Apple never promised to do no evil, so they get a free pass.
Journalists should listen to this episode, and then write about that, please:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/454/mr-daisey-and-the-apple-factory
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:(
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