EFF Warns Not to Use Google Desktop 562
neelm writes "The EFF is asking users not to use the new version of Google Desktop that has a 'search across computers' option. The option will store copies of documents on your hard drive on Google servers, where the government or anyone who wants to may subpoena (i.e. no search warrants) the information. Google says it is not yet scanning the files for advertising, but it hasn't ruled out the possibility."
EFF It (Score:4, Insightful)
"Google, is this painful?" you might ask. Not anymore! Thanks to GooLube Beta you won't feel a thing.
Folks, I'm not overly inclined to paranoia, but be careful. Unique application identifiers? Uploading information for across-machine search? Google never deletes anything. Ever. They might not be doing anything insidious with it now. But in five years, ten years? Who can say.
Wow, wow, wow.. let me get this straight.. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's scary. What happened to "do no evil"?
Either Google is dropping that premise, or the EFF is overreacting. I wouldn't rule out the latter, in the least..
Storage -- A Fleeting Concern? (Score:5, Insightful)
Double standards? (Score:3, Insightful)
It knows too much. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or as an alternative (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow, wow, wow.. let me get this straight.. (Score:5, Insightful)
By that logic fdisk and format are evil programs because they delete stuff.
Re:Convenience vs. "privacy" (Score:3, Insightful)
Nani? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow, wow, wow.. let me get this straight.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Convenience vs. "privacy" (Score:3, Insightful)
Because you have never been refered to as "The Defendant."
Oh, but you will be. You will be!
KFG
Re:Wow, wow, wow.. let me get this straight.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's scary. What happened to "do no evil"?
It's necessary for a feature they're offering (searching your files across multiple computers). If you disable the feature, no harm done. If you want the future, then you kinda have to give them the ability to store the stuff on their computer.
I'd say that Google has meet their "do no evil" requirement in this (I do believe they have broken it though by deciding to go against their morals to enter the Chinese market. They've gone from "do no evil" to "do nothing unlawful"). They haven't placed files on their servers for no reason at all. Instead they have done it and offered additional functionality as a result. Are they doing it to gain a profile on their users? Of course (even if they are waiting at the moment). But everything Google does is aimed at creating a profile on their customers in order to send them ads. You have to decide for yourself whether or not you consider that evil. I personally don't. Now if they decide to sell that profile to another company, THEN I would consider them even more evil, and will boycott all google products.
Re:file names (Score:2, Insightful)
Regards,
Steve
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:0, Insightful)
Jesus, come on! (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you serious? The only reason Bush is in hot water is because he didn't get a warrant, but had he asked, some judge would have given it to him anyway... Judges almost always rubber stamp warrants, after all, if "Law Enforcement" asks, they must need it, right?
Re:Wow, wow, wow.. let me get this straight.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh shut up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:5, Insightful)
But what happens when they lose their fight? All that data they are collecting for their 'marketing' gets turned over without any personal subpoena, giving any government agency the ability to subpoena one company and collect the personal data of almost everyone in the country.
Sad day when MS looks like the good guys, they don't store information from their desktop search, or use it for marketing, so even if they get a subpoena, all they can provide is generalized search data from MSN Search.
BTW did you ever stop to think the reason Google didn't want to turn over the information to the Government regarding searches was maybe not to protect their users, but to protect themselves? Could it be so far fetched that they don't want to disclose the information they are collecting from users.
Don't put faith in any company to champion your rights, and don't let them have access to your information even if you do trust them. I have people I work with I don't let know what documents are on my desktop and I like and trust these people, why on earth would I let Google collect this information?
Can you really trust a company, made up on individuals, that all it would take is one person getting $20 bucks and hour to take the information the company has collected and dump it into public domain?
Let me state this a little more clearly...
GOOGLE SHOULD NOT BE COLLECTING DETAILED DATA FROM YOUR COMPUTER, NOR DETAILED DATA FROM YOUR SEARCHES THAT LINK BACK TO WHO YOU ARE. With the government inquires on this aside, collecting this information for any reason is wrong, and especially when they are admitting that it is for future marketing.
People are scared about Bill Gates running the world, yet Google has more specific data on every individual that uses their Desktop and Online Search engines.
Re: Jesus, come on! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if that's true in general, but it is the track record of the FISA court Bush is skipping around.
The law also allows that court to give post hoc warrants, up to 72 hours after the unwarranted spying took place. The bit about needing to work without warrants in order to track immediate threats is pure bunkum.
Re:Wow, wow, wow.. let me get this straight.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Business Environment (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you imagine the kind of trouble employees and companies could get in if confidential data is being stored on Google's servers?
God help the company that accidentally gets medical or financial data stored on Google's servers.
This is a huge gaping security hole for companies. Google's Desktop Search is going to end up on the list of unnaceptable software... even if the feature is disabled by default.
Re: Don't Jump the Gun (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that's what they said about street-light cams and automobile black boxes.
Re:Double standards? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Double standards? (Score:3, Insightful)
Please feel free to explain to me how gmail is bad and hotmail is not. And while you're at it, does your "other than original owner" comment mean to imply random people? If so, I'd like to know how you think this happens. If instead you are noting that moving personal data to servers owned and controlled by others might be a bad idea... wasn't that the point of this article? And with that criticism in mind, where is this double standard you mention?
The EFF has a good point. You apparently don't.
Re:Guess what! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It knows too much. (Score:3, Insightful)
When little Billy comes over and sneezes on them, like he always does.
And then procedes to cut you, rape your mother and steal your cards. This is also why I think MS is a good investment, especially right now (buy low, sell high!). I guess when they steal Googles capitol their stock should rise about 200% or so...sad story but hey, it works for me!
(yes, yes, I know Google has all the "talent" and "new ideas" and technologically "cool" things. I know another company that did too.)
I think having the OS and browser is going to start paying more and more dividens soon as richer Web applications become richer and more popular. It's changing....the Internet...
Re:store copies? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they could "monitize" your ass for 50 cents worth of disk space, why not? It would only take one AdSense clickthrough to make a profit of the endeavor.
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:5, Insightful)
Another misleading Slashdot headline (Score:5, Insightful)
The EFF isn't advising people to avoid Google Desktop, just not to enable the feature, which IMHO makes complete sense. Google can't prevent the files from being taken if they're subpoenaed and a court orders them to make them available, now can they? It's not up to Google and the EFF knows this. They're not saying anything against Google here, just that people should be careful who they let have access to their files.
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:"Do no harm" to "Anything if it makes money"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow, wow, wow.. let me get this straight.. (Score:3, Insightful)
No it isn't. They could store the data encrypted (index data and documents), using a private key known only to the user. Not only would it work, it would be easy to implement. And you could toss in a compression algorithm to reduce bandwidth and storage overhead. And Google has far more than enough sharp minds to have thought of this. Assuming the EFF's report is accurate, Google chose to keep the data in accessible form. The only good reason to do so is to leave an open path to data mining. And they're doing it while the Gov't has them in court demanding access to other data generated by their customers.
Re:file names (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guess what! (Score:0, Insightful)
Assume for a moment I am a violent criminal with political connections -- basically, a Mafioso. For my convenience then, please post the following (truthfully):
* Name
* Address
* Home, cell, and work phone numbers
* Social Security Number
* Numbers and expirations of every credit card you have
* Medical history
* Tax records
* Political persuasion
* Religion
* Ethnicity
* Marriage status
* Sexual habits and history. Do you jerk off to gay porn when your wife isn't around? Or mess around with other women, at least?
* Whether you own a dog, own any guns, and at what intervals the police patrol near your residence. These will be useful in determining how easily you can be robbed in your own home.
Also, one more question:
* Does your wife want lube when I rape her up the ass in front of you and your children?
The day you trust your government not to do these things -- and history shows that every one of these things has occurred as the result of government power -- is the day you get screwed, possibly literally.
Hell, it's tempting to do these things to you and take advantage of the above information, just to prove my point...
Point is, everybody has something to hide, INCLUDING YOU. You just have not thought about the subject long enough and deep enough.
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How do you protect your intellectual property? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you hadn't thought about it I assume you'd be keeping those records on your computer, where Google gets access to them almost as fast as you write them.
If you had thought about it and decided it was a serious risk you'd probably go for the simpler and more sensible option; remove google desktop search completely.
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:5, Insightful)
Red herring.
This issue is a completely nonsense issue. Even if Google "wins" it's a mock trial. The government can already get whatever data it wants from Google using the Patriot Act and force them to keep completely mum about it. Who knows where that data goes aftwerwards. Everyone keeps saying "trust me" then you find out you were lied to afterwards... over and over again.
I have yet to hear a persuasive argument that the US government doesn't already have complete access. This is just an attempt at post-NSA leak damage control. The "brilliant" idea is to lure terrrorist email bombers everywhere to annouce their plans using gmail.
- the work of a pure rocket scientist who's quick thinking saved "liberty" tower
These privacy concerns are getting stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
I rent an apartment and do all the private stuff (including the extremely private stuff) in this apartment. I do not actually own the apartment. Is the apartment owner hurting my privacy? Can the apartment owner hurt my privacy?
I have my emails containing private information stored in a server. I do not actually own the server. Is the sevice provider hurting my privacy? Can the service provider hurt my privacy?
I believe storing your index in Google server is the same thing. Think the few megabytes Google uses to store your index as your rented storage space.
It is stupid to only trust stuff you own. If you need extreme privacy, get an isolated island. Oh, sorry for those satellites
What about China? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:"Do no harm" to "Anything if it makes money"? (Score:3, Insightful)
When you work with computers every day, it is extremely easy to overestimate the level of comprehension of the average person.
Re:"Do no harm" to "Anything if it makes money"? (Score:1, Insightful)
The vast majority of Americans in society is more Pavlovian than you think. Unless they are experienced at configuring their own kernel they're trained that an unchecked checkbox must be checked.
Re:Sigh. Another EFF overreaction... (Score:5, Insightful)
As Google's power grows, that power starts corrupting Google. It's inevitable. Those idealistic founders may still hug trees and wear heart-warming slogans on their shirts, but seasoned business executives know better how to milk the cash cow. And they are in charge now.
Yet, have they really ever betrayed us?
You are assuming a dichotomy [wikipedia.org] where none exists. Hardly ever betrayals are so clear-cut. Your local politician may promise $foo, but after one month on the job he says $bar is better - did he betray you, or he simply knows better now? If in a war a soldier tells his girlfriend that his unit is short on ammo, and the GF is with resistance, is it a betrayal? I would expect a smooth, gentle slide from "do no evil" to "do no evil unless you don't mind, and we give you a candy for that" to then "do no evil unless you fail to enter a 26-digit prime number here and now to opt out" to ... you see my point. And that's what is happening.
I, for one, believe that Google is on the side of the users.
You are personifying a company - a collective organism who does not think as humans do, and does not behave as humans do. It is genetically hardwired to get as much money out of you, me and everyone as it legally can. I would be wary of such an animal.
By going from nothing to superstar based almost entirely on word-of-mouth, Google demonstrated how powerful cultivating user trust can be
Mixing the "Google as a startup in a garage" with the "Google as a billion dollar publicly owned business" here. They are not the same, and different people are at the helm now. They don't care what the founders thought back then. They are not the founders.
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:1, Insightful)
Worse, they've taken the software EULA and made it irrevocable. I can remove software from my machine. I cannot generally remove my past searches and like data from Google's databases (there are some circumstances where I can but they are often very limited).
How strange that some
Oh, and since you seem to have missed the point of prior posts, the mere massive data collection by a private organization which claims to do no evil (and since changed that mantra) is the issue. Not that they do or do not hide that fact, so please stay on point.
Re:These privacy concerns are getting stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Well what this does, is bypasses both our security measures, and our legal measures that our company has invested in over the years. Now, google can be served for our data, and it isn't our lawyers dealing with it. Also google can be hacked, and it isn't our security defending it. As someone stated earlier, all it takes is one employee making $10 or $20 per hour to get disgruntled and your data is out there.
From a personal privacy perspective, I have no issue with it. People can choose to use the service or not. From a business perspective, this scares me.
Re:Typical Google fanboy apologist (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This has gotten ridiculous (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming you mean the fact that they keep a history of what terms you search for on google.com, then can you please point out where I go to opt out? I've had a look in the preferences, and there's nothing there for it.
Also, defaulting to on but allowing you to opt out is not the same as opt-in.
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:4, Insightful)
I have yet to hear a persuasive argument that the Illuminati don't really control the whole shebang, including our very thoughts.
My point: It's pretty much impossible to prove some negatives.
Nevertheless, I agree somewhat with the thrust of your (over)statement, "Everyone keeps saying "trust me" then you find out you were lied to afterwards... over and over again."
There's a balance point to be found somewhere between naïve and paranoid.
Re:Campaign:Break up with Google this Valentine's (Score:1, Insightful)
If you have a beef with China, why don't you start with Walmart or any of the other off-shoring corporations who have no problem working with a dictatorship just to save a few bucks. It's easy to act all high and mighty when most of the things you own say "Made in China" on them.
Re:Another misleading Slashdot headline (Score:5, Insightful)
How can we trust that the Mozilla foundation isn't doing the same during it's update checks - especially if you downloaded the binary version and didn't download the source, personally audit it and then compile it using a compiler and tool chain you've similarly audited?
How can we trust that ANY piece of software isn't spyware?
You can check these things be monitoring the traffic going out. It's not that hard if you're that paranoid, and even if you're not, it's pretty likely someone else has. Google's reputation would be slaughtered if they sent this kind of information from a PC that's specifically had this turned off.
Re:Sigh. Another EFF overreaction... (Score:4, Insightful)
Newsflash: Google != God ; faith is highly inappropriate here.
Why should anyone have faith in a company that has as its sole purpose to make money for its shareholders? (They may have had high ideals in the past, but those went out the window with the IPO, such is the nature of publicly owned companies. Any loyalty toward their users, which by the way are NOT their customers just "eyeballs" to sell to the advertisers, has gotten transferred to the shareholders.)
The correct attitude towards big companies, even the cool ones, is a healthy skepicism, not blind faith, for they will screw you over the moment you turn your back.
Re:"Do no harm" to "Anything if it makes money"? (Score:3, Insightful)
A corporation with morals is like a coathanger with a conscience.
Corporations have one purpose: making money for the people in charge.
However, they are also useful contraptions that, overall, tend to increase everbody's standard of living. As long as we construct secure legal cages to limit their actions, things work well. When we stop being vigilant about securing that cage...when we believe that a certain company can "do no evil", we get what we deserve.
When a wolf kills a sheep, it's not being evil...it's just being a wolf. The fault lies with the gullible shepherd. In a similar vein, anybody who buys Google's "do no evil" soundbite is a fool. Google exists solely to make a small set of people lots of money. The rest of get some nice benefits, so we allow it to thrive. That doesn't mean removing the leash or closing our eyes just because it promises to play nice.
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, computer/network security is most of what I do these days, especially for the seriously paranoid (and these people do have a serious reason to be paranoid). Not any different than when I working for da Man. The only thing you can expect is that so long as you fly under their radar, you'll be left alone and can expect reasonable (??) privacy. Way too late in my case, but I volunteered way back when.
A Google love affair (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't understand why people spring to Google's defence as if they are employees or shareholders whenever issues regarding the search giant pop up here. There are two issues here that people seem to be upset about:
As has been mentioned here, Google, while a large influential company that makes our lives simpler, is still bound by the laws of the countries in which they operate. The company is run by individuals who are open to corruption (since nobody's perfect). Most people would think twice before leaving their PCs unlocked if they walk away from their desks (rather than trusting their colleagues), but a disturbing majority of people here seem to have blind faith in a company simply because they have a "Don't be evil" motto.
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, and after watching our bureaucracy disintegrate from within thanks to incompetent and lying appointees, hearing reason after reason for going to war, imprisoning an American citizen without a trial for three years, electrocuting our detainees, and wiretapping American citizens without a warrant because they might be talking to someone who might be related to a guy who once talked to the 8th cousin of bin Laden, this "balance point" is most likely not on the side of "happy fun government with rainbows and cute bunnies".
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:5, Insightful)
I [slashdot.org] can [slashdot.org] assure [slashdot.org] you, everyone [slashdot.org] on [slashdot.org]
Re:Campaign:Break up with Google this Valentine's (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, if your point was to show how "google.cn" will proudly display honest search results for queries forbidden by the Chinese regime, you'd be better off (well actually worse off but hey...) trying that search from the other side of the Chinese Communist Party's fancy censorship filters, built with the courteous help by certain Cisco Corp.
Not only would do you fail to get uncensored results but the Party's own "Public Security" paramilitary police would be likely to learn where such "illegal" queries originated from. The small number of anti-dictatorship activists who are not only brave enough but also capable of finding and using outside proxies and tunnels but who have no way of communicating to the wider masses are currently not the primary worry for the regime which has itself admitted to "policing" a record 70 thousand uprisings, most of them against corruption and official abuse within the party itself, only last year alone.
Naturally most search results in Beijing's simplified Chinese tend to parrot the pro-regime party line even outside Chinese controlled territories. Very few Chinese within or outside China are able or willing to recognize the brutal reality about their powerful masters.
Re:Default option? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:EFF, Shmeff (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but if you believe TOR is going to give you any anonymity protection, you are living in a fantasy world. Sure, intermediate packets may protected but there is no protection at either the source, your ISP, or the destination
Do you want to go into more detail on this? The EFF certainly seem quite confidant in TOR's security and as I understand the technology, the concept is sound. Encrypted connection to a TOR peer, onion routing to your destination through an unknown number of intermediate peers (similarly encrypted) before reaching destination address. The destination sees only the TOR peer that is talking to it with no information in the packet as to where it will go after that. And likewise for each of the peers in the intermediate phase. All of which prevents the mass data-tapping / searching which I was addressing in my post.
Given that you state your profession is security for the seriously paranoid, perhaps you'd like to give more detail on where everyone else is going wrong?
Just need to be better than the next guy (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea that you can defend your privacy on your own just doesn't work. If everyone you correspond with puts stuff on servers you lose privacy anyway. Even if my suggestion is a slim chance it is the only chance we have.
Also hiring a lobbyist, no matter what position they support isn't the sort of thing that gets you made into road kill. You might not ultimately win but congressmen aren't going to get vindictive because you took them out to dinner. I think the best hope in this area is lobbying lawmakers not the courts (though we should pursue both avenues).