You are here March 2010
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Mon, 2010-03-29 14:16
Google continues to send very mixed messages to the world about Internet freedom.
While Google's PR machine has focused world attention on it's decision to stop censoring its search results in China, (which I commend Google for finally fulfilling), Google has downplayed its activist lobbying of governments around the world to mandate national net neutrality restrictions on the Internet.
- Like a ten-year-old that plays with matches and starts a fire he can't control... Google has been lobbying foreign governments hard to preemptively restrict Internet behavior, but when China continued to restrict Internet behavior the way it always had, Google claimed to be shocked, shocked, that a nation would restrict the Internet in their own national way and for their own national purposes and not the way Google wanted them to restrict Internet behavior...
Think about it. Is there any more mixed message than Google asking a foreign government to mandate a restrictive national net neutrality law or regulation to preserve Google's "innovation without permission" ethos?
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2010-03-30 16:47
Yale University has postponed its adoption of Gmail in part because of concerns that Google will/can not tell Yale where or in what country their private information/data will be stored -- per Yale Daily News.
- "Google stores every piece of data in three centers randomly chosen from the many it operates worldwide in order to guard the company’s ability to recover lost information — but that also makes the data subject to the vagaries of foreign laws and governments, [Yale computer science professor Michael] Fischer said. He added that Google was not willing to provide [Yale] ITS with a list of countries to which the University’s data could be sent, but only a list of about 15 countries to which the data would not be sent."
It appears that Google continues to organize information for the benefit of Google's own engineering efficiency, simplicity and convenience -- without regard to what is best or safest for its users.
- WHERE users private data is stored by Google has immense implications for users' privacy, security and whether or not their private data/communications are vulnerable to subpoena, with or without their knowledge.
This is further evidence of Google's cavalier approach to privacy and security of users.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2010-03-30 20:54
Ever since Google announced it suffered a cyber-attack from China, Google's legendary PR machine has gone into overdrive, opportunistically framing the conflict as a good versus evil story, and positioning Google as the Internet's benign superpower defending free expresssion, and as a new kind of business that puts morality before money.
- Google understands it is easy to politically demonize China, because China's pervasive censorship and trampling of fundamental freedoms and human rights offend all freedom-loving people.
However, those willing to look behind the curtain of Google's self-serving political rhetoric here, will discover that many of the attributes that offend so many people about China, Google shares to an unfortunate extent.
- Let's review four significant strategic similarities between Google and China -- brought to you in Google's own words.
First, Google's leadership, like China, has affirmatively chosen to not be democratically accountable.
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Wed, 2010-03-31 19:43
The New America Foundation and Slate Magazine is presenting a forum on Friday April 2nd in D.C. entitled: "Why your cell phone is so terrible" featuring:
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