The Psychological Dark Side of Gmail

[El_Johns]

Some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley recently announced that they had gotten together to form a new forward-thinking organization dedicated to promoting government surveillance reform in the name of “free expression” and “privacy...”

But while leading tech and privacy experts like Jarvis...praise their heroic stand against oppressive government surveillance, most still don’t seem to mind that these same tech billionaires run vast private sector surveillance operations of their own. They vacuum up private information and use it to compile detailed dossiers on hundreds of millions of people around the world — and that’s on top of their work colluding and contracting with government intelligence agencies.

If you step back and look at the bigger picture, it’s not hard to see that Silicon Valley is heavily engaged in for-profit surveillance, and that it dwarfs anything being run by the NSA.

But while leading tech and privacy experts like Jarvis slobber over Silicon Valley megacorps and praise their heroic stand against oppressive government surveillance, most still don’t seem to mind that these same tech billionaires run vast private sector surveillance operations of their own. They vacuum up private information and use it to compile detailed dossiers on hundreds of millions of people around the world — and that’s on top of their work colluding and contracting with government intelligence agencies.

If you step back and look at the bigger picture, it’s not hard to see that Silicon Valley is heavily engaged in for-profit surveillance, and that it dwarfs anything being run by the NSA.

I recently wrote about Google’s Street View program, and how after a series of investigations in the US and Europe, we learned that Google had used its Street View cars to carry out a covert — and certainly illegal — espionage operation on a global scale, siphoning loads of personally identifiable data from people’s Wi-Fi connections all across the world. Emails, medical records, love notes, passwords, the whole works — anything that wasn’t encrypted was fair game. It was all part of the original program design: Google had equipped its Street View cars with surveillance gear designed to intercept and vacuum up all the wireless network communication data that crossed their path. An FCC investigation showing that the company knowingly deployed Street View’s surveillance program, and then had analyzed and integrated the data that it had intercepted.

Most disturbingly, when its Street View surveillance program was uncovered by regulators, Google pulled every crisis management trick in the book to confuse investors, dodge questions, avoid scrutiny, and prevent the public from finding out the truth. The company’s behavior got so bad that the FCC fined it for obstruction of justice.

The investigation in Street View uncovered a dark side to Google. But as alarming as it was, Google’s Street View wiretapping scheme was just a tiny experimental program compared Google’s bread and butter: a massive surveillance operation that intercepts and analyzes terabytes of global Internet traffic every day, and then uses that data to build and update complex psychological profiles on hundreds of millions of people all over the world — all of it in real time. You’ve heard about this program. You probably interact with it every day. You call it Gmail.

http://www.alternet.org/google-using-gmail-build-psychological-profiles-hundreds-millions-people

[Warren DeMontague]

1. The difference being, Google doesn't throw cancer grannies in prison for 10 years for smoking pot

The government has been known to.

[Ron Green]

2. There are different ways to "Don't be evil."

Or to be.

[frazzled]

3. If so, they've done it without the help of NSA surveillance

The government has been prosecuting people since the inception of the nation. That's what it means to have a nation of laws (whether we like some of the laws or not.)

There is no proof that any pot-smoking "granny" has ever been unearthed through the collection of metadata phone records or any other known method of security surveillance. Maybe the neighbors reported her. Maybe her dealer ratted out his clients in a plea bargain. The old-fashioned way.

It's one thing to want (as I do) limitations put on government surveillance enacted in the name of security. It's another thing entirely to sow this kind of exaggerated fear about the government. That's the province of right-wing anti-government paranoia, not something the left should be promulgating. Sounds like a bunch of hillbillies spreading fear about the "revenuers" coming to destroy their stills and collect taxes.

[Warren DeMontague]

4. Really. So, that stuff about "parallel construction" was.... what?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/05/the-nsa-is-giving-your-phone-records-to-the-dea-and-the-dea-is-covering-it-up/

[frazzled]

7. I doubt they were looking for grannies

but rather major international drug runners. So I still have to accuse your post of fear-mongering with the "granny" canard.

You can't ask someone to prove a negative here; you have to be able to show that a granny really was tracked down in her bedroom slippers via NSA data-sharing with the DEA. Lotsa luck with that. And believe me, we would be noticing if an inordinate number of our grannies were disappearing into the federal prison system.

My argument is not that the NSA should be collecting or sharing that data; au contraire. I'm only saying I don't like the use of hyperbolic fear-mongering. It's as bad as what we accuse the government of doing with respect to terrorism.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. Oh, goody, we can take their word they only subverted the Constitution to prosecute BAD folks

I don't have to prove anything, certainly not that the drug war is an offensive travesty which has filled our prisons with low level drug users. That's a fact.

What you're trying to do, is defend the indefensible... and this OP is a tired rehash of the "Google spies on you, facebook spies on you, so stop complaining about the NSA" bargle.

[Th1onein]

5. The truth is the truth.

Whether it fits your picture of who should be saying it or not. The government should not be spying on it's citizens.

[sabrina 1]

6. There's also certainty now that no terrorist has ever been caught by all this creepy spying by the

govenrment on innocent people, violating their 4th and 5th Amendment rights.

So, the question now that we know this for the American people is, why have our tax dollars, billions of them, been paying for all this 'collection of meta data'?

What's it all about? I have some theories, how about you? It's NOT about terror, so what IS it about?

And we know now, thank you Snowden, that they are not 'just collecting and storing' (not that was okay to begin with) this data, they ARE SHARING IT with LAW ENFORCEMENT agencies and people HAVE BEEN arrested and charged and even convicted based on this spying. And worse, they were not TOLD how they came to be arrested in the first place.

I see thousands of lawsuits in the future. I sure hope we the people are not going to have to pay for that also.

[merrily]

13. Yep. Very important. Also, Google is not bound by the Constitution.

[merrily]

16. P.S. Also,

I can avoid all involvement with Google and I am not required by law to to pay taxes to Google to help fund it's invading my privacy.

[Warren DeMontague]

17. Of course.

The post downthread nails the OP, squarely. It's #7 "Corporations have my data anyway"

Only one he forgot on that list was the thing about the pole-dancing girlfriend.

[merrily]

20. I only wish that everyone on this board, of all boards, saw it as an "of course."

Or maybe they do see it that way and are on a mission, whether as paid posters or as volunteers to attempt to herd Democrats. I can't tell, but this is not the first time I've come across the google defense on this board, not even the first time in a week.

[GeorgeGist]

21. Not all of us are knowledgeable enough to avoid google.

For example, Non-donors on DU must be pro-active to avoid the Google.

[dickthegrouch]

24. Unless you have some form of script blocker

Even DU sends all its data to google. One of the domains blocked by my noscript on the DU pages is google-analytics.com

[okaawhatever]

8. I hope this gets the attention it deserves. The only reason Silicon Valley is getting involved in

gov't surveillance reform is to direct the laws so that they aren't included. They will make sure they can continue to collect info on a scale much worse than the government. I'll bet there won't be a law saying they can't sell it to the government either. The gov't doesn't need to hack your info, it will be able to buy it from google.

Google has saved every email ever written by anyone. Why do you think that is?

[freshwest]

10. Agreed. And they are forcing users of other services to have gmail accounts. I hate it. n/t

[agent46]

11. This is an indicator of the showdown

This is an indicator of the showdown currently underway between the centuries old Nation State model and the new supra-national capitalist corporate paradigm.

It just keeps happening.

[PSPS]

12. This piece is just another #7

The difference between Google profiling its users and the NSA vacuuming everything up for retention and possible future use is that, unlike a government, Google doesn't have the power to rob you of your freedom. It's the very reason we have a fourth amendment.

----

Worshiper/Apologist Hit Parade:

1. This is nothing new
2. I have nothing to hide
3. What are you, a freeper?
4. But Obama is better than Christie/Romney/Bush/Hitler
5. Greenwald/Flaherty/Gillum/Apuzzo/Braun is a hack
6. We have red light cameras, so this is no big deal
7. Corporations have my data anyway
8. At least Obama is trying
9. This is just the media trying to take Obama down
10. It's a misunderstanding/you are confused
11. You're a racist
12. Nobody cares about this anyway / "unfounded fears"
13. I don't like Snowden, therefore we must disregard all of this
14. Other countries do it

[SCVDem]

14. I like #2

When someone says they have nothing to hide I respond with, then you wouldn't mind making your internet search history public, right?

[merrily]

18. I would not mind. But the Constitution says I do not have to.

I really do have nothing to hide. I am sure that, on my deathbed, I will probably regret not doing things that I wanted to hide. However, that is not the point. I am supposed to have constitutional guarantees against having my privacy invaded for no reason. If in fact those guaranties under the Supreme Law of the Land mean nothing, then we are not living under the rule of law, period.

BTW, it is precisely because I have given no one reason to believe that I am a criminal, or even mildly pervy, that I so object to having government feel free to invade my privacy at will.

I don't think Al Capone had any righteous indignation about wiretaps. He knew exactly why he was being surveilled. I don't.

[merrily]

15. Government is selling our info to private companies; and also buying it from private companies.

Government buys our information from private companies.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/how-private-tech-companies-are-collecting-data-you-and-selling-them-feds-huge



Government also sells our information to private companies.

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2013/08/26/sales-of-public-data-to-marketers-can-mean-big-for-governments


I don't believe for a minute that Google has more surveillance capability than the US government, either the US government on its own, or as it cooperates with other nations, Interpol, etc.



For one thing, rich as Google is, the US government is richer. Also, the US government and its predecessors have been at this since the USA was pledging allegiance to George III.

Besides, it's irrelevant which of them spies more. I have no Constitutional agreement with Google and Google is not running any prisons or keeping me on any no fly list, etc.

Talk about a false equivalency.

[mwooldri]

19. One doesn't have to use Gmail.

The phrase no such thing as a free lunch comes to mind. Once you use services offered for no direct monetary cost to you by companies like Google, your cost is them having permission to access your data that you store with them - within certain parameters.

As for its street view cars gathering stray unencrypted wifi signals... anyone could do that.

The problem is that if you want true internet privacy, there is a price to pay. Regular people don't want to have to fart around with security settings, encryption, and keeping any data they want secure on their own computers. For me to set up and run an advert-free, secure email service ... I'm looking at $150/month to rent a dedicated server... I'd have to pay more upfront if I want full control over the hardware and software. Plus maintenance time. And traffic costs.

Sometimes the cost of having the likes of Google handling this is a price I'm ok with.

[enough]

22. I don't use it, but I see that they also do "content extraction" on e-mails SENT TO Gmail addresses.

snip from the article>

“Gmail violates the privacy rights of non-subscribers. Non-subscribers who e-mail a Gmail user have ‘content extraction’ performed on their e-mail even though they have not consented to have their communications monitored, nor may they even be aware that their communications are being analyzed,” EPIC explained at the time. The organization pointed out that this practice almost certainly violates California wiretapping statues — which expressly criminalizes the interception of electronic communication without consent of all parties involved.

snip>

[seveneyes]

23. No wiretapping or interception required with Gmail

If you use Gmail, all your data are on Google servers and they can read it anytime they desire. Same for any host/server based mail system.

Privacy only exists in ones own mind and thoughts.