While Google's infrastructure is no doubt secure, the technical security being meant is not the user's. It can't be, when a simple court order (or not even that) can trivially make the information accessible and searchable.
Unless the GP's VPS is located outside of the US, and any other governmental jurisdiction that issues search warrants, then that is the same. Also, I take issue with the "not even that" claim. Google has repeatedly stated that they only respond to proper, legal requests, which are narrowly tailored, properly written and very specific. They don't allow government agencies to go in and search. That may or not be the case with some small VPS provider... Google has legal staff to fight overly broad access requests, but small operations don't.
What people mean is that they want their data to be secure against viewing, usage, and modification by all third parties - That includes (but is not limited to) Google and law enforcement.
Google does strictly control access by Google employees. Looking at any user data -- even your own -- without a clear reason (e.g. debugging) is a termination offense. This is explained to all employees in their first orientation system, which is generally their first day of employment.
With respect to law enforcement, no data is safe from that, unless it's locked up inside your head, or falls into one of a very small number of other exceptions (attorney-client privilege, doctor-patient privilege, spousal privilege, confessional, etc.).
Interesting post.
What about a civil suit for damages? Google's business has clearly been damaged, and I'll bet if they quantified it they would come up with a number in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Just because the information is in your line of sight does not mean that it is in your focus. You have to shift focus to see information in the near plane.
Which makes Glass much better as an information display than your dashboard or your in-car GPS display, because the Glass focal plane is about 8 feet from you. So you have to shift focus from the road to a point somewhat forward of the end of your hood. Given the way lenses and focal distances work, that's a much smaller adjustment than the shift from that point to two feet from you.
Maybe she uses it for GPS? How do you know she uses it for something that takes her attention away from driving?
How about the fact that a cop was tailing her for a while and she didn't even notice him?
What makes you think she didn't notice him? She thought she was going 80 in a 75 mph zone. I don't know about you, but I don't bother adjusting my speed when I see police if I'm only going 5 over. That's pretty much normal speed. In fact, most of the time, I find that if I'm only going 5 over the cop will pass me.
Of course, the actual speed limit was 65, and 15 over is quite a bit different from 5 over. So you can ding her for not noticing the speed limit signs, but I don't think the fact that the cop tailed her means anything.
How, pray tell, is it able to put information in front of your eyes without blocking what's behind it?
It's above and to the right of your normal gaze. The comparison in another thread above with having a smartphone clipped to the visor is pretty accurate. You do have to shift your eyes and your focus away from the road to see it, but it's less of a transition than looking at your dashboard or your dash-mounted GPS receiver.
If you can't see the difference between a Prius (and similar cars with on board displays) and Google Glass, you shouldn't be allowed to use either.
So, what you're saying is that you can't articulate the difference. Got it.
No you fucking moron, it means since there is no Encryption inside the "google cloud" (because it is added at the border) when they tap the links between data centres (those squares "inside" google are data centres) they get full unencrypted information.
They don't need to break encryption to do this, since google isn't encrypting the private fibre lines the NSA is tapping.
Correction: Google wasn't encrypting the private fibre lines. Google announced a month or two ago that they're now encrypting all traffic in transit, even inside.
Google (and the others) shrugged and played nice with the NSA, to what extent we don't know.
Google hasn't "shrugged and played nice" with the NSA. Google has flatly and emphatically denied any cooperation. And after the Snowden disclosures began, Google started taking a hard look at internal operations to see if there's anywhere that the NSA could have gotten unauthorized access. The result was a crash company-wide initiative to encrypt all data communications -- specifically to ensure that connections between data centers couldn't be tapped.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google software engineer, focused on security infrastructure. I do have a great deal of insider knowledge about Google security infrastructure, but all of the above is from Google's public statements.)
I wonder if Google can sue? And if they can, will they?
Google has file a suit to be allowed to disclose the extent of the legal, government-required information sharing. I have no idea if they could sue for any illicit taps. There is no doubt in my mind that if they could sue for damages with some hope of success, they would. This is my own opinion, not an official statement.
For work, I suggest you dump the tabs.
The Gmail interface is tuned and honed by Google employees, and Google runs on e-mail, in a way that few other companies do. I get hundreds of e-mails per day from dozens of mailing lists and automated systems (no, I don't read them all); the Gmail UI makes it manageable. Labels, filters, searching and -- most of all -- the priority inbox are the keys. I could do most of what I do with a mail client like Thunderbird, but Thunderbird tends to bog down when you get huge amounts of mail in your mailbox, and any solution that is pinned to one particular machine isn't going to work well.
Oh, you should also invest a little time in learning the keyboard shortcuts. You can plow through a lot of e-mail very quickly if you don't have to keep wiggling the mouse around.
I think Gmail UI is very productive.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Google software engineer, though my interaction with Gmail is as a power user, not an engineer.)
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Bert Lantz
