With all due respect, this attitude really disturbs me. It's becoming very common these days: the implication that only deviants, criminals, off-the-grid wackos, and the anti-social have any real need for privacy.
No. I reject that premise. We all have a right to privacy, and we shouldn't have to give our reasons. (That's why it's privacy, after all!). We're quickly turning into a society whose members need to opt into privacy, and in which doing so is somehow stigmatized as abnormal.
I'm not suggesting that you are championing such a viewpoint, or that you even mean to suggest it. But that line of yours -- the idea that only a subset of us have privacy "needs" or "concerns" -- is troubling, and it reflects the rapidly encroaching, popular attitude of which I'm speaking.
[FWIW, I agree with you that Google's data-gathering isn't exactly a cause for immediate alarm. It's hardly taking us on some ominous path toward 1984. But I'm more concerned about the slow, steady erosion of privacy in the digital space, of which Google's activities are only one small part.]
Fair. Whatever case you want to call it, the point is that privacy shouldn't have to be a conditional, special-case thing (a "specific" "concern" or "need").
I think the point he was making is that the average person doesn't need to (or want to) care about these kind of things.
I mean, the mentality I'm seeing on HN and Reddit and other sites nowadays is "How DARE $company tie my activities using their service to the IP address I accessed it from!"
It always seemed like common sense to me that any data I give a company (whether implicitly or explicitly) would be combined and reused and remixed in almost any way possible.
Google is welcome to my web activity, as far as I'm concerned, that's my payment for some really awesome web services that don't really have an equal anywhere else, especially wrt. integration.
But then again, I'm not a political dissident and I don't really have anything to hide during an average day on the internet. (And if/when I do have something to hide, I take steps to anonymize myself)
There most certainly is something as a need for a certain degree of privacy, but please do not confuse "need" for "justification". A soccer mom's average activities might not need privacy, but any justification she has is none of anyone's damn business but hers. If she wants to keep everything she does private, fine.
Someone who has a need for privacy would be the usual, political dissidents, unpopular opinions, etc.
There is very relevant post on a webcomic for people who things that privacy is only for people who have something to hide: http://abstrusegoose.com/strips/missing_the_point.png and sometims images is worh thousand words, right?
I think that is alarmist in the context of this conversation. Google is not 2 people watching me sleep, shower, drive, date, make love, etc. It is software that stores and analyzes data that I choose to send to it. I choose to send my search terms to Google because I value the responses I get from Google; this strikes me as a voluntary exchange of value between two parties, not Big Brother from 1984.
The Abstruse Goose comic is much more applicable to pervasive government surveillance. To the extent that I fear that the government would get its hand on Google's cache of data about me, I blame the government, not Google. I think if people spent as much time focusing their attention elected officials as they spend on hand-wringing about Google, we'd probably have better laws.
> Google is not 2 people watching me sleep, shower, drive, date, make love, etc.
its irrelevant how many people is watching you, but Google will watch you as much as technology and law (sometimes bent to maximum) lets them. Like you stated you value responses, but it doesnt get the rocket science to know humans are unique enough that one search to one person is irrelevant to another. Hence, search needs to be customized. If they could turn your security camera on, they would watch you sleeping. You can learn plenty from the act alone: having problems sleeping, snoring, moving your legs (whatever the symptom is called), waking up too early/too late -- al this information is gold to Google. Your driving behavior is important to insurance companies. Your dating life is important to dating websites - if you are single you are worth money to them. Otherwise they dont care. Making love is important too -- can you handle the ride, are you an impotent, do you like wearing kinky clothes, etc etc. This is all GOLD to google. Now, they may not throw at you Viagra pills when you search for steakhouse in New York but if they AdNetwork goes to other website they may, in their discretionary, use information gathered about you to serve better ads and get better click-through.
> It is software that stores and analyzes data that I choose to send to it.
but you not always aware you sending, sometimes knowing what you "sending", you wouldnt!
> The Abstruse Goose comic is much more applicable to pervasive government surveillance.
whats the difference if Google has to abide by the laws of the country they do business? They can sometime deny response to govnt subpoena your searches, but I say more and more they just comply. I dont think number of gov inquiries will go down. I dont think % of denials by Google will go up.
> I think if people spent as much time focusing their attention elected officials as they spend on hand-wringing about Google, we'd probably have better laws.
how is this relevant to the subject or your comment at all?
With all due respect, this attitude really disturbs me. It's becoming very common these days: the implication that only deviants, criminals, off-the-grid wackos, and the anti-social have any real need for privacy.
No. I reject that premise. We all have a right to privacy, and we shouldn't have to give our reasons. (That's why it's privacy, after all!). We're quickly turning into a society whose members need to opt into privacy, and in which doing so is somehow stigmatized as abnormal.
I'm not suggesting that you are championing such a viewpoint, or that you even mean to suggest it. But that line of yours -- the idea that only a subset of us have privacy "needs" or "concerns" -- is troubling, and it reflects the rapidly encroaching, popular attitude of which I'm speaking.
[FWIW, I agree with you that Google's data-gathering isn't exactly a cause for immediate alarm. It's hardly taking us on some ominous path toward 1984. But I'm more concerned about the slow, steady erosion of privacy in the digital space, of which Google's activities are only one small part.]