HardOCP News
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Want to know how Google keeps your data safe? Douglas Merrill, Googles Vice President of Engineering, has posted an article on that very subject on the companys official blog.
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How Google Keeps Your Information Secure
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They resisted in most occasions, but in the end seemed to hand information over.
Not exactly true. Google was the only company to resit the DoJ in their requesting search info and had what could be considered mostly a victory in doing so. They were ordered to release 50,000 of their indexed URL's however the judge struck down any search terms or user info.
RoffleCopter
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Not if the NSA has anything to do with it.
Ugh, I suspect we will see more of this spin as they continue to try and get google desktop and toolbar bundled in more and more products. I jsut got done cleaning up a few hosed machines and decrapifying some new machines for family and friends, and I must ahve uninstalled google stuff about 8 or 9 times. They ask why, and in absence of "your application is intrusive and annoying and I simply don't want that kind of product" as an option, I check "privacy concerns," as it is the closest thing to saying that I don't find this sort of product desirable.
But as tho their bullet points
Philosophy - I generally believe that they do design security in from the get go. Without proper security, their magic black box is less valuable to THEM. It does not mean that security ahs anything to do with keeping your infromation private, just within a pipeline that generates revenue for them rather than to simply give it away to someone clever without it being a lot of work.
Technology - Smacks a bit of security through obscurity, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they have some folks on the cutting edge of the hacking scene on their side, and are craeting their own toolsets to have the newest and shiniest rather than simply to obfuscate their security methods.
Process - basically, if you read between the lines your info is only as private as required by law, cost reduction, and their lawyers' advice. If they start archiving medical records, I'm sure they'll keep their practices in line with the laws regarding that when they do.
People - By all accounts people like working at google. Disgruntled employees are probably the number one security risk, so yeah that's good.
However, NONE of this addresses the fact that there is a likely a difference between what the law considers private, google considers private, and the user considers private. Google doesn't care what hte user thinks ingeneral, and provide little in the way of recourse for opting out of their data aggregation if you don't want to be there. they don't care about your privacy, they care about your ability to sue them or press charges. That is distinctly different from caring about privacy.
I trust them not to leave data sitting there for just anyone to grab if they consider it of value. However, if it does have any value, I expect money will buy access to that data as long as google's lawyers can be reasonably sure they can't be sued for it. That will always temper my enthusiasm to entrust google or any company like them with anything more than I have to to function in the real world.
But as tho their bullet points
Philosophy - I generally believe that they do design security in from the get go. Without proper security, their magic black box is less valuable to THEM. It does not mean that security ahs anything to do with keeping your infromation private, just within a pipeline that generates revenue for them rather than to simply give it away to someone clever without it being a lot of work.
Technology - Smacks a bit of security through obscurity, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they have some folks on the cutting edge of the hacking scene on their side, and are craeting their own toolsets to have the newest and shiniest rather than simply to obfuscate their security methods.
Process - basically, if you read between the lines your info is only as private as required by law, cost reduction, and their lawyers' advice. If they start archiving medical records, I'm sure they'll keep their practices in line with the laws regarding that when they do.
People - By all accounts people like working at google. Disgruntled employees are probably the number one security risk, so yeah that's good.
However, NONE of this addresses the fact that there is a likely a difference between what the law considers private, google considers private, and the user considers private. Google doesn't care what hte user thinks ingeneral, and provide little in the way of recourse for opting out of their data aggregation if you don't want to be there. they don't care about your privacy, they care about your ability to sue them or press charges. That is distinctly different from caring about privacy.
I trust them not to leave data sitting there for just anyone to grab if they consider it of value. However, if it does have any value, I expect money will buy access to that data as long as google's lawyers can be reasonably sure they can't be sued for it. That will always temper my enthusiasm to entrust google or any company like them with anything more than I have to to function in the real world.
Although i do agree with you on most point, i think you left out the PR side of things as well. True they are in the business of selling data and advertising access to you, i dont think they are or will be at the point where if they are reasonably sure they cant be sued they have a price tag on it. They have spent quite a bit building their image, and i think that alot of those "side" services arent entirely about generating revenue, but rather attracting and maintianing userbase. Any major PR snafu would be about as bad for them as being sued. I think they will try to very carefully walk the fine line between making money and reasonably protecting your privacy for this reason.