The Cost Of Being Online And Being Social
Joe M posted in opinion on December 13th, 2009
Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, said in a recent CNBC interview:
“I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines — including Google — do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”
Asa Dotzler, director of community development for Mozilla, saw the interview.
He was not pleased, to say the least.
He has also proclaimed that the privacy policy for Microsoft’s Bing is better than the privacy policy for Google.
You can read his blog posting here.
For the most part, I would tend to think that looking at an individual’s data in the mass of Google infrastructure would probably be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Sure, if you are a little paranoid… and think that they are actually out to get you… it could be unsettling.
Reading over the posting, I am scratching my head.
I approach the whole internet thing, much like Mr. Schmidt.
I doubt there is anything that most of us do, that anyone would find interesting.
Even though Bing’s privacy policy may have better wording… I think I would still rather trust my privacy to Google.
In the big scheme of things… I have the opinion that there is not a search engine or ISP out there that will not buckle to a government agency, if pressured… if only due to a loophole within a privacy policy.
As we continue to find new ways to socialize online… one of the tradeoffs is…
That our information is easier to access… and more of our information is available for access.