googleprivacy channel

YouTube - googleprivacy's Channel

Apparently Google has an entire youtube channel devoted to privacy issues. Currently, the channel houses 49 videos. The main page video makes mention of Google's Data Liberation Front site, which states:

The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product. We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to "liberate" their products. This is our mission statement:

Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google's products. Our team's goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.

Interesting! I will definitely be experimenting with this site in the near future.

Cloud computing: Privacy and trust up in the cloud

BBC News - Cloud computing: Privacy and trust up in the cloud

This article addresses the issue of privacy "in the cloud," but not in much detail, and definitely seems biased toward the companies who offer these services.  It states:

Dropbox has more than four million customers who can upload digital content which is permanently synced across a number of their devices.

Adam Gross, senior vice president of marketing for the storage service said the cloud needs the trust of users.

He believes the cloud is "helping people keep their files backed up and safe and secure, rather than the old model where each individual PC user had to be responsible for it alone."

The following part of the article was of great interest to me.  I use Gmail and Google Docs quite a bit for schoolwork (and even work-related things) and definitely take for granted that those documents are always available from any computer.  Rarely do I also back up the files on a jump drive or some other tangible media.

Many students have become heavy users of the free collaborative online tools that are based in the cloud. This has prompted some colleges to go as far as banning cloud computing completely.

Others like the University of San Francisco have to send out constant reminders that trouble on the net is unacceptable as a classroom excuse. 

Not relying on the cloud entirely is one concern, but critics advise students to ponder on the physical location of their work, issues over ownership, and the rising fees for accessing it.

These factors may have to be taken into account by governments too in the future, and legislation could be needed to define new parameters for consumers.

Moving information to a virtual computer puts someone else in control of security, and there is an ever-present risk from hackers.

There, near the bottom of the article, the possibility of hackers was finally mentioned.  I decided to do a bit more research on privacy in the cloud and found this article, which took a much more frank look at the issues of privacy in cloud computing and provided several examples of what hackers have accomplished.  For example:

There already have been examples of privacy and security problems with cloud services provider Google. In March 2009, it was revealed, “Google discovered a privacy glitch that inappropriately shared access to a small fraction of word-processing and presentation documents stored on the company’s online Google Docs service.” Though the technical problem was fixed, customers’ sensitive data was exposed, and consumers had no control over the security situation. In July, A hacker was able break into a Twitter employee’s e-mail account and through that was able to get to confidential business documents that were stored on the business version of Google Apps.

When Privacy is No Longer Convenient

On February 9, 2010, Google provided an extensive Gmail privacy notice on their site. Here are two areas on the site that might be of interests to readers:

Information sharing and onward transfer

--When you send email, Google includes information such as your email address and the email itself as part of that email.

--We provide advertisers only aggregated non-personal information such as the number of times one of their ads was clicked.

--We do not sell, rent or otherwise share your personal information with any third parties except in the limited circumstances described in the Google Privacy Policy, such as when we believe we are required to do so by law.

Your choices

--You may change your Gmail account settings through the Gmail "settings" section.

--You may organize or delete your messages through your Gmail account or terminate your account through the Google Account section of Gmail settings. Such deletions or terminations will take immediate effect in your account view. Residual copies of deleted messages and accounts may take up to 60 days to be deleted from our active servers and may remain in our offline backup systems.

The public's criticism of Google certainly extends back further than recent issues with China.

This 2007 CBC news clip highlights Google privacy issues beyond the U.S. borders. Newscaster Nancy Wilson amps up the fear factor usually devoted to Fox News but does so with an endearing Canadian accent. Bill O'Reilly, take note. Please practice your Canadian accent.

Here's another clip that relies upon similar scare tactics but provides spiffy graphics and a British accent. (Anyone seen 28 Days Later recently?)

A year later, the impetuous Rachel Maddow from MSNBC interviews CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, about Google privacy issues and highlights how our good friend, free market capitalism, will play a role in determining at what point Google users will shift to a less "sinister" competitor.

Google launches new government transparency tool

FP Tech Desk: Google launches new government transparency tool - FP Posted:

Google Inc. has launched a new tool which the search engine giant hopes will shed some light on how it handles the sensitive private information of its users and how it responds to requests for information from the governments of the world.

Here it is: Google Government Requests