Posted on 11/25/2017 5:28:34 PM PST by texas booster
Comment According to an old Chinese proverb: "When a wise man points at the Moon, an idiot looks at his finger." Google may have been hoping that you were examining a finger, not reading a Quartz story yesterday, which reveals how Android phones send location data to Google without you even knowing it.
Google received the data even if you didn't have a SIM card in your phone, and everything else was turned off.
It's such an old story, you'll fall asleep reading it, so please don't, urged one blue-ticked tweeter. Nobody suspected Google did this practice – and Google has now vowed to stop.
But you may want to consider two questions about a story that goes to the heart of the human relationship with technology: "Who is in control, here?" Firstly, can you turn it off? If you can't turn it off then obviously you are not in control. Secondly, do you know it's happening? If you don't know it's happening, you're not even in a position to turn it off. This entirely changes the terms of that human-machine relationship.
What Google did is also illegal here because consent is the key to data protection in the EU. This is what motivated a student, Max Schrems, to look into Facebook's cookies in 2011. An Austrian studying law in California, Schrems was curious how Facebook could track you across the web, even though you hadn't given it permission to do so. Europe's data protection laws had been introduced in the mid-1990s, with memories of East Germany's Stasi fresh in the memory. Schrems investigated, and discovered that Facebook didn't delete the data even after you asked it to. Four years later the "safe harbour" provisions governing data flows from Europe to the USA lay in tatters.
The paparazzi in your pocket Some of Silicon Valley's vanguardistas are fond of a phrase "permissionless innovation", a propaganda expression which implies that somehow progress won't take place if it respects human boundaries. For obvious reasons, the phrase is coming back to haunt them.
This is "permissionless", too, it just wasn't very innovative. As Charles Arthur notes, Google's response is similar to another piece of permissionless data collection. "Very reminiscent of the collection of Wi-Fi network data by Google Street View in 2010. That was blamed on a rogue engineer, even though the system had to be approved by a manager," he writes.
Indeed, Google advanced the theory that it was the work of a lone gunman: one rogue slurper, acting alone. The FCC demolished the theory. Google had intercepted the data "for business purposes", privacy group EPIC concluded.
There's an obsessive quality to Google's collection of location data, and its insistence that it alone should have it. When in 2010 Motorola decided to go with Skyhook for its location data based on triangulating against a database of Wi-Fi access points – something Skyhook had invented – Larry Page went ballistic, threatening to close down Motorola's production lines. Skyhook was "contaminating" Google's own data collection, Page fumed.
Google went further in the dog days of the Obama administration, with the FCC being run by one of Obama's biggest fundraisers, Tom Wheeler. Although the FTC has traditionally handled data protection, the FCC drove over its lawn and introduced a regulation attempting to stop ISPs doing what was central to Google's business model – data collection. The regulation meant you could opt out of your network's data collection, but never opt out of Google or Facebook. It was a brazen attempt to wrestle the issue of privacy away from a watchdog that was obliged to treat everyone equally, to Google-friendly regulators. The regulation was never implemented.
If Google was a person, it would have had a restraining order for stalking slapped on it by now. Google argues that it needs this data to bring you lovely services for free, and that users happily consent to the data collection. But the Street View and the Quartz story blow away the argument: consent didn't come into it.
It's worth examining exactly why Oracle brought the issue of data collection to the attention of the European Commission – and it's not out of direct self-interest. Having promised both users and regulators that it would never combine data from its advertising silos into one giant "super profile", Google went ahead and did it anyway. Everything is now co-mingled with everything else.
The European Commission is examining the complaint because data is key to effective behavioural advertising, and the super profile (like Facebook's Graph) presents an insurmountable barrier to entry for competition. The super profile is like Napoleon crowning himself Emperor. It's intended to ensure Google retains its part of a dominant advertising duopoly forever.
You can accuse Oracle of many things, but it isn't an ad-slinger, and has no interest in becoming one either. Quartz is to be commended for... hey, look over there! A finger! ®
Add to this tidbit that Google and FB have obeyed their masters in China on a variety of anti-freedom requests, and you have an industrial-government complex that is truly a threat to mankind.
I despise Google, but am forced to use it.
I hate it.
I still use them, some, but have recently finally taken active steps to minimize my usage. None of my devices / browser installs use Google as a default search, for example. I DuckDuckGo now. And for as much as people gripe about Apple, they seem to have as good a commitment to user privacy and data security as about anyone outside of serious Linux-heads. So I use their phones and tablets.
“permissionless data collection”
AKA theft.
Why?
Bend over, here it comes again.
The real problem here is that because these systems are in place by virtue of industry its nothing for the US gov to co-opt it and monitor you.
If they were just collecting data, like how many ice-creams I eat a week, that would be one thing. Its not though, its online habits and political views and also marketable information which they didn’t pay me for.
Because all of that is built into the infrastructure its also an avenue for bigger brother to monitor speech and behavior. When that’s innocuous who cares, when I start a political movement to gather followers to win elections against establishment? Then the Government might care. And what court will stop it?
Between 2007 and 2010, during the debut of its Street View service, Google gathered all the Wi-Fi network names and router MAC addresses it could find from wireless networks encountered by its cars as they drove around snapping photos of buildings and roads. It also captured some network traffic from open Wi-Fi networks and, in the years that followed, was pilloried and fined some measly millions by privacy authorities around the world for doing so.
On Tuesday, Google said since the beginning of 2017, it has been collecting the locations of cell towers near Android phones. But having not found much use for the info, the practice is supposedly on its way out.
Essentially, when an Android handheld passes a phone mast, it quietly contacts Google’s servers to report the location of the tower, even if the user has disabled location services – allowing the ad giant to potentially figure out folks’ whereabouts as they wander about town. Google claims the collection is part of an experiment to optimize the routing of messages through mobile networks.
Even if you never travel with a mobile phone, the potential for abuse of the rest of the Earth's citizens through this blatant data collection is enormous.
Think about how an abusive government or government agency could use this data against you. The EPA under a Hillary clone would salivate.
Just ask Mr. Bundy if the government ever abuses its power.
Or a Christian in China or North Korea.
My employer made the decision to transition to Google Mail and the suite of Google Apps.
Instead of Outlook and Microsoft Office.
Unbelievable. But I have no say in it. The loss of productivity is, in my opinion, appalling.
I believe they will see the light eventually, but they are completely focused on the bottom line and I must support them until they see the light.
And I will, even if I don’t like it.
I have tried other search engines for over a year, and am forced to admit they don’t measure up, even if I use them.
But I have a choice in that matter and have tried to exercise it.
I have no choice professionally. I have to use Google.
Google is evil. I have been boycotting them for years. Almost every major website has google Java spy applets on them, that record every item you look at, and how long you look at it.
With some sites, (like even here at FR) you can (with the right browser settings) still use the site while blocking the google bots. But the trend is to not show you anything until you allow google to log your activities.
I recently quit shopping at one of my favorite websites, (Midway USA), one where I spent thousands of dollars a year for the last 10+ years, because they now won´t show you ANYTHING unless you allow google to watch and record.
I wrote to them to let them know that I wouldn’t be buying from them anymore as long as they require Google bots to run. No reply, despite me having been a good and loyal customer since they first started in the mailorder business 30+ years ago when they pretty much only sold brass.
Collect all the data on me you want. It won’t do any good. There is nothing Google or any other entity can do to get me to change my preferences in vehicles, food, drink, etc.
Ahh.... Gunner, can you rotate the doll 180 degrees?
At least its all just work stuff.
Informative
Thanks
I guess. I was never a big Microsoft fan, even though I readily saw how superior Outlook and Excel work. Everything else can be worked around, but those two have been crucial for me, and I am floundering.
But I will put on a happy face and survive. I work in IT and I have to help people with this stuff. They are going crazy, and I have to help where I can. I’ll do my best. Don’t like it, though.
A new tagline, after slight modification.
Bump
Ping for Android List.
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