Google vs. Privacy (discussion on facebook)

[The_Flying_Skeptic]

TFS: I don't understand how Google is getting away with having the hardware capable of illegally intercepting encrypted WiFi signals in the street view car. The street view car's only purpose was to take pictures. How did encryption breaking WiFi signal receptors get mixed in with photography?

House panel presses Facebook, Google on privacy edition.cnn.com
The U.S. Congress' interest in probing Facebook's and Google's privacy practices keeps growing.

friend that goes to Penn university: haha we were just discussing this is one of my classes.

TFS: what was the discussion's conclusion?

friend: In a nutshell: google can get away with pretty much anything since it's complient when the gov. wants to regulate something in the internet (which is highly effective since 60% of web browsing starts through google).

TFS: nice. i really don't like this... but Google is somewhat transparent about how many times the US gov has asked for information to be censored (just not about 'what information' since that would defeat the purpose). i really don't like how Google got away with scrolling around the country in a car with illegal technology disguised as just a camera ...

TFS: why did they even admit it? was it because they realized they were going against their 'don't do evil' informal policy?

friend: Google CEO Schmidt response to that: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
They do it because they can.

update: Google might not have been recording information from encrypted WiFi signals, rather they were recording info. from insecure networks.

[mysoogals]

Google knew it was going on, because there was a budget set for that project there were people brain storming that idea, you really think Google will let somebody to tarnish its image like that ? it's in my believe that Google is not innocent thus should be punished and they still have not handed the hard drive to the Germans police, what Google did is consided espionage since this information could be used to market gains, and information sharing.

Google also records what you search on the search engine, its on by default it records everything you look up, log into your account and disable it
https://www.google.com/history/

Google is using this to profile people, or should i say the CIA or NSA has a hand in this. why would a search engine log search results

[The_Flying_Skeptic]

Google is using this to profile people, or should i say the CIA or NSA has a hand in this. why would a search engine log search results

I think there is value in profiling for Google. They'll be able to find out which ads their users would be most interested in: targeted ads. However, I agree with you about their unlawful acts concerning the street-view car and so does the government, I guess, because they are being prosecuted. link: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security/201...-40089204/

[Tiberius]

why would a search engine log search results

The same reason any company keeps logs of it's customers. Even if you disable Web History, Google keep the log; it just isn't viewable by you. It's useful for dozens of reasons: advertisements, trends, stats, etc.

Google is a company providing a service (for free I might add). Why wouldn't it keep logs of how people use the service?

[WingedFoe]

why would a search engine log search results

The same reason any company keeps logs of it's customers. Even if you disable Web History, Google keep the log; it just isn't viewable by you. It's useful for dozens of reasons: advertisements, trends, stats, etc.

Google is a company providing a service (for free I might add). Why wouldn't it keep logs of how people use the service?

This is why I use NoScript and CookieMonster