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Robert Scheer: Google’s Spymasters Are Now Worried About Your Secrets
from truthdig:
Googles Spymasters Are Now Worried About Your Secrets
Posted on Apr 29, 2013
By Robert Scheer
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution, makes for very scary reading. It is not so much because of what he and co-author Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, have to say about how dictators can use new information technology to suppress dissent; we know those guys are evil. What is truly frightening is that the techniques of the totalitarian state are the same ones pioneered by so-called democracies where commercial companies, like Google, have made a hash of the individuals constitutionally guaranteed right to be secure in his or her private space.
The dictators, mired in more technologically primitive societies, didnt develop the fearsome new implements of control of the National Security State. Google and other leaders in this field of massively mined and shared information did. As the authors concede and expand on in their new book:
Despite the expense, everything a regime would need to build an incredibly intimidating digital police stateincluding software that facilitates data mining and real-time monitoring of citizensis commercially available right now. ... Companies that sell data-mining software, surveillance cameras and other products will flaunt their work with one government to attract new business. Its the digital analog to arms sales. ...
The Google execs have inadvertently let us in on the world that they inhabit, where the data mining of individual preferencesfor such interests as sex and politicscan be cross filed and tabulated by supercomputers to be exploited for commercial gain. The drive for ever more detailed information on individual behavior is on with a vengeance in the profit-driven world of data mining, as anyone who observes the ads that mysteriously pop up during Internet browsing sessions well knows. But that invasive technology is now undergoing a massive revolutionary upgrade provided by the collection of vast numbers of biometric markers. .................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/googles_spymasters_are_now_worried_about_your_secrets_20130429/
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Robert Scheer: Google’s Spymasters Are Now Worried About Your Secrets (Original Post)
marmar
Apr 2013
OP
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)1. We are faced
with an almost visceral predicament.
The fact that nobody is actually immune should help to dispel any bubbles of denial that might give a false sense of how the system is working for you and so, why make waves or be concerned about the ramifications.
yodermon
(6,143 posts)2. on the bright side, I'm sure Google knows who all the closeted pedophiles are, based on their search
terms.
I'm sure Google can be trusted with that information. "Don't be evil", after all.