Just when I have thought I have heard it all about Google thinking that the normal rules of ethical behavior simply don't apply to Google -- they come up with another of their heralded "innovations without permission" that just leaves me shaking my head in disbelief.
ParisLemon.com has a great post: "Goog-411 is the Ultimate in Ulterior Motives: its really about getting voice samples from you."
- "They've hyped up a service, GOOG-411, making people think it for the betterment of man to have a free 411 service - when in actuality it was always all about getting vocal samples from people to perfect speech-to-text technology!"
Aren't we all familiar with the phone disclosure recording when we call a company that informs us that "this phone call is being recorded for training or quality assurance purposes"?
- Otherwise, isn't it illegal to record people's conversations (voices) without their knowledge -- unless its disclosed or you have their permission?
It only confirms a Google trait that I have driven home before that Google has no adult supervision or internal controls to speak of.
- Why is it so hard for Google to be transparent? up front? forthright? ethical? privacy respectful?
Has anybody at Google thought about the implications of assembling a calndestine national database of Americans' "voiceprints" without their knowledge, permission or an opt out mechanism?
Google's poodle Moveon.org, which it defended in the Senator Collins/Moveon.org Googlegate scandal earlier this fall, has been hugely active and vocal about opposing communications firms wiretapping cooperation with the Nation's national security apparatus.
- It will be telling if Moveon.org remains silent about Google's clandestine national voiceprinting project, because it would seem to allow Google, or anyone else, a new "Big Brother" way of identifying who is talking in any given conversation because Google has created a new "cloud" capacity to match a voiceprint with an actual person for the very first time...
- "Who knows what the cloud knows..." but its always listening, recording, tracking...
Is Moveon.org truly principled about its privacy concerns? or is it just an attack poodle for its most generous patron -- Google?
