Internet Privacy- Don’t Count On It
Last week during an interview on CNBC with Maria Bartiromo, Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google) made a statement that was a bit eye opening to many people.
A clip of the interview can be seen here, CNBC clip, but the surprising content was in reference to a question concerning how people use Google, and is as follows:
“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.”
These comments can be taken a few different ways. One of which is that we should not be doing any actions at all that we wouldn’t otherwise be doing if someone were watching us. Bruce Schneier provides an outstanding response to this view in his blog, where he equates true liberty as being security without intrusion plus privacy, and writes that if everything we do is observable and recordable we lose our individuality.
I tend to think that Eric Schmidt meant that if there is something that we don’t want to be public, we shouldn’t be doing it on the Internet in the first place. Since Google revenues were nearly $22 billion last year from people using the Internet, I can understand the omission, and I will leave others to debate whether or not Google should provide its users an option to opt-out of the tracking mechanisms it has in place or whether this tracking data should be retained in the first place. But the fact that the CEO of the largest Internet company in the world made this statement is very significant- we should not enter anything on the Internet that we may not want to be made public now or at some point in the future.
We often take for granted that pictures, videos, financial records, text messages, email, bank account data, passwords, etc. are safe within the organizations that house the data, but this just isn’t the case. Hackers access servers, servers crash, programming errors occur, employees can’t always be trusted, and the government can have access to information with a proper warrant. Don’t just take it from me, ask Eric Schmidt.
By the way, the issues stated above are the main reasons why we at Black Box Innovations developed the Classified family of products- to help people easily secure, backup and store the things that matter.
-John
Filed under: Encrypted USB, Privacy, Security, Technology, USB Security | 2 Comments
Tags: Classified, CNBC, Eric Schmidt, Google, Privacy, Secure USB Drive, USB Security
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I caught that interview last night as well and Schmidt’s statement was eyebrow raising.
Clearly the notion of “privacy” online requires individuals to be conscious of the choices we are all making when using search engines and the like to find what we want and need quickly and conveniently.
Individuals cannot depend on the vehcles we use for our convenience to “protect” our privacy. We either go with less convenience or be subject to the prying eyes of marketers and/or a government that wants to do who knows what.
Both Microsoft and Google are evil. Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil. Neither deserve recognition, support or to be spat upon. Privacy is about freedom and choice, not necessarily “hiding things”. And what is so bad about practicing privacy? I believe that people should maintain privacy to a certain degree. These corporations don’t need to know everything about you. [Personal] “Information” is a hot commodity seller. Information = profits. Money is the “god” of planet earth. Money is the root of evil. As the old saying goes, a fool and his money soon part.