Privacy

Just when you thought Google can't possibly get any creepier, they come up with something so far out there your jaw just drops open. According to the Register, Google's techies have been playing with the microphones on your computer. They have figured out how to turn them on and listen to the conversation in the room, and/or what you are watching on TV. Why would they want to do this? So they can better "understand" you and what kinds of advertisements to show you.

This article demonstrates how easy it is for others to snoop around in your personal affairs if you like to use "free" services like Google Calendar. The author, simply by clicking on calendar items and using the information to dig up additional detail, was quickly able to identify where a woman lived and when she would be out of the house (handy for burglars).

If you have not tried the Snap search engine lately, you should take a look. Snap has added site preview screens, which will be familiar to those of you that use RSS readers, but may not be for others.

One of the most tedious parts of using a search engine is slogging through all the links that are not really what you want. Snap now puts up a preview of the site right in the browser window, so you can quickly see if it looks like what you are looking for. It is one more example of how far behind Google is falling in the search engine wars.

Much is being made of the AOL security lapse, where they left millions of search records sitting in a file anyone could download if they knew where it was.

The FBI continues to lobby to try to force ISPs to snoop for the government. This is something the federal agency has been asking for for years, and has tried to get Congress and the FCC to go along with the plan.

What the FBI wants is for every ISP to provide private access to an ISPs entire network so that the FBI can just log in and snoop at its convenience. In theory, court orders would be required, just like wiretaps, but to have private backdoors is to invite abuse.

Google has announced it will offer an online spreadsheet application, which sounds terrific in theory. How many times have you wished you could have several people on a phone call all look at the same spreadsheet at the same time, and even make live updates while talking. And a spreadsheet stored online means you don't have to keep emailing copy after copy of the same spreadsheet to people just because you updated a single cell.

So what's not to like about the Google app?

Lauren Weinstein, an expert on privacy issues, has written an open letter to Google asking the company to create the Google Privacy Institute. The new organization would not only advise Google on how best to protect the privacy of individuals and organizations using Google services, but also serve as a think tank and example for how to manage privacy in an Internet-connected world.

This hair-raising story from the UK is an illustration of the dangers that we all face from identity theft. A British security expert was able to obtain, among other information, a Dutch citizen's passport number and date of birth from a discarded boarding pass stub--the little scrap of paper many of us discard in the nearest airport trash can as we walk off the plane (I have been taking mine home and shredding them for years).

Dell has been pre-installing spyware on their computers that is apparently quite difficult to remove, and then asking customers to pay $49 to have it removed.

Congress is at it again. Apparently our Federal legislators don't have enough to do, so they have cooked up a new bill that would require every service provider and Web site to maintain access records indefinitely. Sponsored by Colorado Democrat Diana DeGette, the bill is supposedly to fight child pornography. But the bill would give law enforcement officials unlimited rights to snoop everywhere that anyone has ever been online, forever.

Anthony Townsend, an expert on the social impacts of technology, has written an important article about community WiFi projects. Townsend is concerned that community leaders, in the rush to show some progress in broadband, are inking deals that give away too much.

Broward County, in Florida (the Miami region), has been publishing all sorts of personal information on its citizens via the Web. They have been putting public documents online, but without redacting information like birth date and Social Security numbers.

The Federal government has reached a compromise with Google on the government's request to Google to turn over a chunk of search queries. The Feds claim they need to see what people are searching for so that they can design better child pornography laws.

A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over the URLs (Web addresses) of some of the sites Google indexes, but not the search queries that people type in on the search engine.

As we move more and more of our financial transactions away from cash and toward end to end electronic transactions, our systems have to become more reliable and more secure.

But a lot of systems were designed and implemented prior to ubiquitous worldwide access via the Internet, and the security that worked okay then has to be regularly scrutinized and tested today.

Google's new version of its Desktop toolbar will copy the files on your computer to its servers, where you can search them. Ostensibly, this free service is designed to make life easier for people that have multiple computers (like a desktop machine and a laptop). By letting Google index all the files on both computers, you can find any file on either machine simply by searching Google.

In yet another example that government is not usually the biggest threat to our privacy, a political blogger just bought the phone records of former presidential candidate Wesley Clark. For $90, the blogger got them from a company called Celltolls.com that has a business selling your phone records to anyone who wants them.

There is a tempest in a teapot over the National Security Agency's use of cookies on its Web site.

Let me say first that cookies can be and often are mis-used, and I routinely delete a lot of cookies left on my computer. And the NSA did use persistent cookies, which is against the Federal government's rules.

But having said that, the AP article being published almost everywhere is misleading, and perhaps intentionally so. Here is one example:

Red light cameras, which are used at busy intersections to catch people running red lights, are being turned off. Aside from some very serious privacy issues, the cameras cause accidents. Intersections with red light cameras are getting 10% to 20% more accidents than before the cameras were installed.

The notion of a national ID number is being considered for a variety of reasons: the Social Security number was never intended as a national ID number, but is used that way, the illegal immigration crisis is due in part to the difficulty of identifying valid U.S. citizens, and law enforcement, insurance agencies, and health care providers all like the idea of having a better way to keep tabs on people.

Meanwhile, we have Google and the credit card companies tracking and aggregating information on everything we do.

The tech world is abuzz with the announcement by Google that they are:

1) Rolling out a national fiber backbone

2) Offering Google Secure Access WiFi services

Throw a rock and you'll hit someone with an opinion, but on SlashDot, which usually has pretty sharp insight into these things, the consensus is as follows:

1) Google's network initiatives will allow it to know even more about its customers, making advertising on Google even more valuable (and it is the advertising that is paying the bills).