
The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’ - ctoth
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-googles-dont-be-evil.html
======
droopyEyelids
When you think about the power Google has, Don't be Evil is still a real value
of theirs, and we should be grateful.

Most people won't even let themselves imagine what could be done with Google
if evil was an option. How many hours would it take to compile a list of
everyone who searches for incest porn and correlate that with 'people who are
judges'. Considering that the incest fetish runs as high as 10% such
information could be used to perform a bloodless coup. Call the legal system
nullified, and lobbyists obsolete.

And that is just one facet of the simplest way Google could be used for evil
(blackmail). There are infinite ways Google's information asymmetry could be
exploited, and most of them would be completely invisible and 100% effective.

Thats why I'm glad we have Sergey and Larry running under the banner of "Don't
be Evil." It shows that even from the beginning they realized they were going
to wield terrible power, and they were a bit honest with that fact.

~~~
kevinalexbrown
_and we should be grateful._

What? I don't believe Google is evil, but at the same time, I'm not "grateful"
that they're not evil any more than I'm grateful that a driver isn't evil and
doesn't run me over. Yes, I'm glad, but I don't feel like she's going beyond
what she owes me.

This perspective is subtly dangerous, because it takes the consumer out of the
decision-making process. When we see Google as an amorphous blob of power
we're grateful to, we've already conceded the right to set the terms of the
marketplaces we engage in.

Individuals _should_ be concerned about the state of the marketplaces they
frequent. There are great reasons for simple rules and regulations. Except for
the ideal case, individual incentives differ with the incentives of those the
market serves.

For clarity, I love markets. The market is the most powerful tool society has
ever developed. But a lot of the benefits of a very free market are lessened
when the number of suppliers is small. In truth, how many companies do what
Google does, even on a specific product other than gmail? A handful of search
engines?

The point at which google is doing us a favor by not being evil, instead of
merely abiding by the law, is the point at which our expectations should be
updated.

~~~
msrpotus
Exactly right. They've made a choice but it's a choice that they benefit from
by getting people to use their products. It's not something they're doing
purely out of the goodness of their hearts the way an anonymous donation would
be (that would be something to be grateful for).

~~~
rz2k
By their nature, almost all economic transactions in a free market system are
mutually beneficial to both parties or the transaction wouldn't take place.
That does not mean that many companies do not make short-sighted decisions
that harm themselves, their industry, and customers over the long term.

Here is a small list of examples which might serve as examples where decisions
eventually hurt the company itself rather than only customers:

\- early refusals to sell music, movies or television shows online

\- highly inconvenient DRM strategies

\- "closed software is more secure", and other non transparent practices

\- cost cutting measures by manufacturers that reduce a product's durability
in ways that are not obvious in the store

Google could monetize the information they can mine from their users more
aggressively. They could also more actively depart from standards, such as by
removing IMAP access to Gmail or requiring some proprietary plugin for
Youtube. We'd be worse off, and Google would lose a lot of users and ad-
viewing eyeballs. That still doesn't mean that it is a given that they would
make these decisions. Facebook seems to have little reluctance when it comes
to changing user agreements in non-obvious ways for the purpose monetizing
their data, I switched from Yahoo mail to Gmail eight or nine years just
because of IMAP, and Microsoft tried to push Silverlight for video content.

Even in the case of a cooperative game where mutually beneficial choices can
be determined, that outcome is not always the result. What's wrong with being
grateful that Google (at least some of the time) has apparently chosen such
strategies? Claims that their benefit is somehow at the expense of users
confuses the situation with noncooperative games, and suggests that Google
would be better off not making the decisions that have benefited users, too.

~~~
klez
> requiring some proprietary plugin for Youtube

You mean something like Flash Player?

Yes, I know, they are transitioning to html5, but not for everything.

------
Svip
I am never in full agreement with Julian Assange, but Google has in recent
years, shown their disapproval of privacy. Eric Schmidt's 'if you have nothing
to hide' ideal expresses quite clearly - to me - the fundamental problem in
his - and by extension, Google's - view on data and users.

But I must confess, that Julian Assange seem to be rather well spoken. And
language wise - at least - it was a rather joy to read. Seemingly unlike the
book he was reviewing.

~~~
cletus
This particular misconception of Eric's words really annoys me because it's
blatant misrepresentation. What's more, the press (who area always looking to
create controversy in the interests of page views), only mentions half the
quote. Full quote [1]:

> I think judgment matters. If you have something that you don’t want anyone
> to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. But if you
> really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines,
> including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it’s
> important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the
> Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to
> the authorities

Google is subject to the laws where it operates. Just this week a judge
compelled Google to comply with warrantless searches (ie National Security
Letters) [2]

Any sane person should.

For anything you do online you should ask yourself this "what would your
reaction be if this were made public?" The gist of Eric's quote is that what
you may consider "private" just isn't due to changing company policies (eg
Facebook's continued privacy snafus), bugs, the courts and the legislature.

There is a good lesson in this. Just go to bing.com/social and search for
"cheat exam" or similarly embarrassing terms to see why treating the Internet
as public is a very good idea.

Disclaimer: I am a Google engineer but the views expressed are my own and
don't represent my employer.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Schmidt#Privacy>

[2]: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57587003-38/judge-
orders-g...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57587003-38/judge-orders-
google-to-comply-with-fbis-secret-nsl-demands/)

~~~
pseut
I don't see how it's a misrepresentation. Schmidt could have left out, "If you
have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be
doing it in the first place" without changing the substance of the rest of the
message.

Has he issued a clarification elsewhere that contradicts the parent's
interpretation? He could, easily.

~~~
mayanksinghal
> changing the substance of the rest of the message

It most definitely changes the substance. From Google being the perpetuator of
the said privacy problem, it becomes a participant that is legally bound to
participate by YOUR legal system.

Disclaimer: Googler.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
And what about the quote two paragraphs down where in 2012, after knowing
about how the previous sentence was interpreted, he again said, "if you don’t
have anything to hide, you have nothing to fear"?

~~~
DannyBee
My recollection of this is that he was clearly joking at the time, but you are
talking about a guy who gives the same speeches and talks hundreds of times a
year, and it only takes _one time_ for someone to take stuff out of context
and present it badly.

I think if you met Eric you'd realize he's just another hacker who ended up
becoming a CEO. If he was posting here, he would be indistinguishable from
most people in terms of his views, concerns, etc.

~~~
pseut
That's fine, and it may very well be the case. But I don't think that the rest
of the quotation is so profoundly different that just posting the first
sentence misrepresents the quote.

It sounds like you're saying that the first part of the quotation doesn't
accurately describe Schmidt's views on privacy. I don't know him, but, sure,
most people have more than one sentence's worth of opinion on most issues. :)

------
jinfiesto
For anyone who doesn't know, the title of this article is a reference to
Hannah Arendt, a political theorist who made her career covering the trial of
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. She coined the phrase 'The Banality of
Evil.' This was in reference to the idea that people will follow the orders of
authority figures even if they conflict with personal beliefs.

~~~
DanielRibeiro
pg has written about some Milgram Experiment[1] on _The Perils of Obedience_
[2] which actually seems to comfirm this idea _that people will follow the
orders of authority figures even if they conflict with personal beliefs_.

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=W147ybOdgpE)

[2] <http://www.paulgraham.com/perils.html>

~~~
smsm42
I suspect if the authority figure says "Our motto is don't be evil, so do as I
say and it's not evil since we do no evil", compliance would be even better.

------
skore
It just struck me while reading this and I'm probably just reiterating
something that was better put by somebody smarter than me, but:

The correct response to "Why do you care so much about privacy? Do you have
something to hide?" is: "From whom?".

If you define privacy from the wrong end, you end up with the wrong
conclusions. The important question isn't "What do you feel comfortable
sharing?", but "How come so many parties have curious interests in what I'm
sharing?".

Of course, if you are google, phrasing the question as "think about what you
want to share" makes it so that in answering the question, people basically
follow a path that is profitable to you. With that, they focus your suspicions
on the wrong end of the conundrum.

Yes of course, you should be careful about what you do anywhere in public and
yes of course people have lessons to learn with the internet. But it's not as
if humans are completely removed from the basic concept. In Medieval Times,
people didn't run naked across the market thinking nobody would see them.
Treating people as though the most important thing was to educate them about
not posting naked pictures of themselves online (or whatever makes a better
example for "you shouldn't be doing it in the first place") means
infantilising them.

No. The question is: _Who_ is so curious about what I do online. Cui bono!?

Google most definitely profits from hyperfocussing people on themselves. Just
like websites do SEO to present themselves in their best way to the search
engines, we now want humans who make themselves presentable, easy to index
entries in the databases of our society.

------
Aqueous
I agree with some bits, and Julian Assange is a compelling writer, but he is
too cynical. It's surprising that someone who would embrace the democratizing
power of consumer technology by way of Wikileaks would be so skeptical of the
exportation of that very same technology. It turns everyone into both a
producer and consumer of information, including (and especially) him. It
establishes a more perfect marketplace of ideas and is therefore the enemy of
authoritarianism and closure.

~~~
saurabhnanda
I think you missed the point. The "pure" technology has democratizing effects,
but as soon as you mix government with technology you get "controlled
technology" or "regulated technology" of sorts. Which is very, very dangerous
from a personal freedom standpoint.

In today's world, how much does your government know about you (or _can_ get
to know about you) via digital / technological means v/s the other way around?

~~~
Aqueous
Point taken, but in many cases the exact same information available to the
government is available to all of my friends and every random Joe. Most of my
web and email communications, like those of many people, are protected by RSA
encryption and the last I knew no government has yet enough computational
power to efficiently break RSA. They can subpoena Google to get my emails but
they could do that 10 years ago, too. Whereas before there was total
information asymmetry between the government and its people (the government
knew far more about the people than the people knew about each other or the
government) the Internet has more or less obliterated that asymmetry. The
government can take measures like installing backdoors (and of course I agree
that this shouldn't happen) but overwhelmingly the tide is pointing in one
direction: towards informational equality. In those cases where there is a
serious attempt by the government to regain its foothold over our information,
it's not consumer technology that's the problem it is legislative overreach.

~~~
trotsky
If you think the internet has obliterated informational asymmetry you reallty
haven't thought much about the issue - the internet and IT has literally
revolutionized surveillance, transforming the states ability to keep tabs on
an extremely limited set of high value targets into one where nearly every
citizen is surveilled by state emchanisms many times per day. The Inyernet
certainly doesn't give the public the ability to analyze all of the telephone
calls out of the state department or anywhere close, just as one simple
example.

------
msg
Assange and Stallman overlap on a lot of this content really. Stallman is
about liberating technology and Assange is about liberating information.

I think it's clear that this is the future Google wants. If they occasionally
have to hand over documents to the government, that's just the price of
optimizing the lattes for the rest of us. If you don't like personal
information lying in the hands of third party corporations and powerful
officials, you have a first world problem.

What I am waiting for is a foundation focused on privacy. Our digital lives
should be no one's rummage sale. The foundation would create software to make
social networking truly controllable and private. No ability to read my
private messages, no mandate to make money from me, no personalization, no
backdoors.

------
greenyoda
Note: This is a review of a book by Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen,
written by Julian Assange of WikiLeaks.

~~~
kmfrk
Hacker News's favourite technology pundit wrote another great book review:
[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113272/eric-schmidt-
and-j...](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113272/eric-schmidt-and-jared-
cohenthe-new-digital-ages-futurist-schlock).

~~~
contingencies
This largely echoes Assange's views on the book, in longer form.

 _The good news is that, thanks in part to this superficial and megalomaniacal
book, the company’s mammoth intellectual ambitions will be preserved for
posterity to study in a cautionary way. The virtual world of Google’s
imagination might not be real, but the glib arrogance of its executives
definitely is._

------
pdog
Previously, Julian Assange met with Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen. Schmidt and
Cohen had requested the meeting to discuss ideas for their book, "The New
Digital Age".

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5574589>

------
kmfrk
I clearly get the impression that Eric Schmidt and Sheryl Sandberg are
grooming themselves for public office.

If people think their influence doesn't extend beyond "the technology
industry", consider what it would mean if they ran successfully (and didn't
pull a Meg Whitman).

------
mark_l_watson
I watched the interview video with Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen on the NYT
site this morning and then read some of the reviews of their book on Amazon.
Apparently the book is heavy on foreign policy with little advice on preparing
for the future in a business sense.

As much as I sometimes enjoy free services from Google, FB, Twitter, etc. I
also think that people like Julian Assange and Richard Stallman have an
important message and warning for maintaining some control over personal data
and our computing infrastructure.

In the video interview Eric Schmidt makes a point that they want people to
opt-in for 'Google total information awareness' (I am using that term, he
didn't). I make an informed decision on what information I will share but most
of my non-tech friends (who are representative of the general public) do not.

Part of me likes a smaller world via the Internet, communicating with people
with similar technical interests no matter where they live, and G+ and Twitter
are great for this. On the other hand, I would also like to see a local
network, possible centered around my town's library, that is effectively local
to the small town I live in. The technology (encrypted VPN) is straightforward
for implementing private group communication.

------
just2n
I'm being forced to look at ads that I don't want to see which contain
products that I neither want nor need. And this is being perpetuated as "the
business model of the internet" by Google, creating an excuse to pervasively
(often perversely) invade privacy, you know, "so the ads are more relevant."

How do we classify that? Is it not evil? Given the basic premise, I can't
imagine anyone classifying it anything but.

------
cromwellian
Should be titled the Banality of Google Strawmen for the often repeated
conspiracy theories of Google working with the NSA.

Assange, who was on the cypherpunks list (as I was in the late 80s/early 90s),
should know better when he writes something like "The advance of information
technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people
and shifts the world toward authoritarianism. This is the principal thesis in
my book, 'Cypherpunks.'"

He clearly was present for the Clipper chip fiasco which showed the state's
fears over cryptography in the hands of private citizens, and the central
tenet of cypherpunks was a belief that modern, unbreakable, cryptography could
defang the state's ability to invade privacy. Back then, the big debate among
'punks was stuff like untraceable assassination markets using BitCoin-like
distributed money in which police and the state were powerless. Anarcho-
capitalists were salivating over how in the future people would be able to
share and communicate with no intervention.

Point being, if you want privacy guarantees, truly want certainty, the
technology exists to secure it. He was in fact, part of a movement aimed at
providing the software to do it and make it easier for the average person. His
experience on WikiLeaks shows how one can keep secrets from the state, even
the US Government.

How one goes from the idea that cryptography presents the opportunity for
undefeatable privacy, anonymity, confidentiality, etc no matter how much the
state is against it, to, voluntary use of Google is the death of privacy, I
don't get.

Now, I never believed that cryptography alone could overcome the state, but a
lot of cypherpunks did. But there was a huge intersection between cypherpunks
and libertarians, who would take the view that people have the right to trade
their personal information and that there is nothing evil or bad about
organizations offering to make that trade.

I also think people are too fixated on Google, when VISA/Mastercard, your
Bank, your phone carrier, and your ISP have much longer, more comprehensive,
and detailed records on your behavior that the police can, and have, been
monitoring far longer and with less oversight. Remember Carnivore? Do you
trust Comcast? I trust Google more to fight for privacy of my data against the
government, than any of those organizations. After 9/11 AT&T practically
rolled over for the US government. When a crime happens, the police can
subpoena your email, but the reality is, they obtain your phone and financial
records first. Google's stock price would go to $0 if there was a serious
breach of trust, the company is built on that. AT&T or Comcast are not built
on love of their products.

Google's "Don't Be Evil" motto is not about perfection, it is a value, a
gradient, that you strive for. As Assange alludes to, Google culture is made
of a mixture Silicon Valley graduate student culture, the hacker ethos, etc.
The company chock full of 10,000+ people who believe or have internalized
these values to some extent, whether you believe they are deluded cultists, or
naive, that's how folks feel. There's simply no way Googlers would tolerate
something like secretly sending user data to the NSA, it would be too hard to
prevent internal employees from revolting. As an employee, I'd rather Google
lose money and stock price and have the government shut them down, than send a
firehose feed to the NSA.

~~~
codev
> There's simply no way Googlers would tolerate something like secretly
> sending user data to the NSA

It doesn't matter if employees would tolerate it: phone company employees
wouldn't tolerate it either but the cell phone and location records of every
American were too much for the authorities to resist - the great majority of
phone company employees have no idea about the data that is handed over to
government.

Google has a very deliberate policy of building a comprehensive record of
searches, websites visited, comments, articles, private documents written,
people collaborated with and communications - all linked to your real name and
phone number. It doesn't matter that employees wouldn't tolerate giving it
out, sooner or later some governments will pass laws giving them access to the
data. The fact that Google is building the records is enough.

Google employees already object - look at Vint Cerf's confusion when asked
about the real names policy.

To paraphrase Chris Morris: But who's to say a government with an
authoritarian streak in a time of national crisis will pass a law giving the
secret services access to those records?

~~~
cromwellian
The point is, Google as a company opposes giving the data, it fights it tooth
and nail. It does not have a policy of cuddling up to governments to curry
favor by handing over data, and most of the NSA conspiracy theories are
completely unfounded.

Sure, the government can use kangaroo courts and send goons to get the data,
but there is nothing special about Google in this regard. They can also send
G-Men to get your bank accounts, school records, health records, telephone
records, safeway history, DMV records, IRS tax records, credit card accounts,
library or blockbuster rentals, and tons of vital information about your
behavior that Google does not have.

Nothing has changed, so if you want to stop this from happening, demand better
government. Sitting around whining about Google, and then when push comes to
shove, not doing your duty as a citizen, is not going to change anything.

If Google disappeared tomorrow, you'd face the same privacy issues, because
simply living in a civilization creates a public paper trail, it is
unavoidable. All that's different is that it's digital now, and we're
networked.

Chances are you make phone calls over unencrypted mobile. The NSA could, at
their perogative, intercept and transcribe every phone conversation you have.
They don't even need Google. People need to fight to restore civil libertarian
protections by rolling back the Patriot Act, NSLs, NDAA, and other stuff
that's happened since 9/11. Trying to demonize Google will be ineffectual to
the root cause.

My point about Google culture is that any attempt to put a Carnivore-style tap
on a Google data center would run a very high risk of whistleblowers making it
public. AT&T isn't exactly known for their Googley culture, but Mark Klein
blew the whistle on the NSA/SBC/AT&T firehose tap
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A>

~~~
codev
> The point is, Google as a company opposes giving the data

That's great and much better than some of the other tech companies who
silently hand it over.

However Google doesn't oppose collecting the data, it doesn't seem to worry
about the implications of that for oppressive regimes or future radical laws
enacted after the next big terrorist attack. Are there real objections within
the company to the real name policy? Is it addressed by management?

Demanding better government is, of course, important. I spend a lot of time
and money doing it - working with citizen lobbying groups, contacting my
representatives and attending meetings. But you can't demand better government
and ignore how one of the biggest corporate collectors of personal data is
acting, and changing.

"A single unified beautiful product" - linked to your real identity (to set a
positive tone "like when a restaurant doesn't allow people who aren't wearing
shirts to enter") - and one that doesn't interoperate with other products
because they're "milking off of just one company for their own benefit".

That seems to be the core of Google these days and it's very different from
the company many Googlers joined.

------
joering2
I submitted this good IMHO read couple days ago [1]. Whats interesting is that
at that time, Google Chrome was not displaying "website ahread contains
malware". but now it does. Can someone confirm that there is a malware indeed?

[http://www.dailytech.com/Googles+Eric+Schmidt+Dont+Be+Evil+w...](http://www.dailytech.com/Googles+Eric+Schmidt+Dont+Be+Evil+was+Stupid/article31544.htm)

------
fuddle
Also this is great interview between the authors of the book and Julian
Assange:

<http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt.html>

------
Eliezer
I was summarizing MIRI's reasoning about how to ethically build Friendly AI as
"Don't be a jerk" before I even heard what Google's motto was. I think it's a
perfectly good motto and an inspiring one.

------
guard-of-terra
The problem of various "revolutions" is that we no longer have great leaders.
There are influental leaders, but none truly great ones. Just like with music
bands, we no longer have The Beatles or The Queen.

I struggle to name three great present-time politicians.

In the absense of great politicians, any post-revolution cabinet degrades into
tyranny of mediocrity or fails to work at all.

~~~
mindcrime
_The problem of various "revolutions" is that we no longer have great leaders.
There are influental leaders, but none truly great ones._

Good. We don't need "Great leaders", in the sense of how most people use that
term (that is, political leaders). We just need people to be free to do what
they do best - live, love, learn, play, grow, work, build, create and dream
without arbitrary restrictions and constraints imposed through force.

Having "leaders" who "lead" by being influential, outspoken, visionary, etc.
is another thing. I'd call somebody like Elon Musk a "leader" in this regard,
but he isn't forcing anybody to do anything.

I'm not a big fan of Nick Saban, but back when he was coach of the NFL's Miami
Dolphins he was asked once about needing more leaders on defense. He said
something like "We are looking for wolves, not sheep. We want every player on
defense to be a leader, not somebody who's looking for a sheepdog to guide
them around and lead them." That, to me, gets to the heart of the matter: We
should _all_ be leaders in our way.

 _I struggle to name three great present-time politicians._

That's OK, I struggle to name a single "great politician", ever. In fact, I
consider the term to be an oxymoron.

~~~
chongli
>"We are looking for wolves, not sheep. We want every player on defense to be
a leader, not somebody who's looking for a sheepdog to guide them around and
lead them."

All the more ironic when one actually understands the social structure of wolf
packs.

~~~
mindcrime
All metaphors are flawed! :-)

------
Heliosmaster
Props to the tribute to Hannah Arendt in the title

~~~
doe88
Thanks for pointing this reference, I didn't know it.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of_evil>

------
suredo
To me, Google is becoming more evil since Google+... but more importantly
since the removal of the + and - operators for Google searches.

------
grandalf
I'm curious if anyone _agrees_ with Assange's point about the silly emphasis
on Terrorism, Iran, and carefully chosen groups of 3rd world people who can be
rescued, but _disagrees_ with his larger points about the book and Google.

My guess would be that most of those criticizing Assange in this thread
support US policy on terrorism, Israel, Wikileaks, illegal spying, drones,
etc. Most Americans (in both major parties) support government policies on
these issues, and so HN readership is unlikely to differ much.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
I strongly disagree.

 _Most Americans_ are indifferent and/or oblivious to most government foreign
policy. Yes, 9/11 was a big deal in this country, and so most Americans
support a "war" on terrorism.

But the rest of it is totally off the typical American's radar. I'd venture
that a _majority_ of Americans couldn't find Israel on an unlabelled world
map. Nor could they articulate US policy for/against Israel.

Same with Wikileaks, illegal spying, drones, etc. A _majority_ of Americans
don't know anything about those, nor do they support (or oppose) government
policies on those issues.

I think that HN readership is atypical of "most Americans". IMO.

------
bascule
A company whose incentives are aligned with its consumers truly has the power
to not "be evil". Google was not that company. It doesn't mean that company is
impossible.

~~~
quadrangle
The way to align interests with the consumers is to be consumer-owned, i.e. a
cooperative. Reality is that all businesses have a huge range of complex
interests.

------
saurabhnanda
Just like national security is kept out of purview of all "Right to
Information" acts, what will it take to make some personal information either
legally, or technically, untrackable by the government?

What will it take civil contractors to install backdoors inside government IT
systems to regularly let the voting public know what their government is
really discussing/emailing.

------
dreamdu5t
Julian Assange is an idiot. He blames the victim. Google is a problem for
privacy!? The US government is! Nobody forces you to use Google, and Google
isn't the organization secretly gathering information with secret warrants.
That's the US government, who is forcing Google (and any company in their way)
to do their bidding.

Why not focus attention on the actual bad guys: The NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the
White House, and the entire fucking national security committee.

~~~
phaer
Because Google's (and other) gadgets are the sugar coating for surveillance.
Nobody would voluntarily wear a government-mandated gps-tracker with a remote-
controllable microphone, but most people (including myself) are readily buying
them from Google which enables governments to access a lot of interesting data
with far less outrage as if they would access is directly.

I am not following closely, but Mr. Assange does seem to have some public
criticism of the organizations you mentioned.

~~~
dreamdu5t
Right. So instead of directing our ire at the government which is using the
gps-tracker with remote-controllable microphone to spy on you, we should be
angry at Google because the government happens to use them to accomplish this
end? If Google closed up shop tomorrow, the government would not stop doing
this!

I'm sorry but in no way does Google deserve scrutiny over the FBI/CIA/DoJ.

------
PaulHoule
A few years back there was a pizza and Mediterranean restaurant run by a bunch
of Egyptian immigrants in my town.

They continuously ran middle eastern TV on a few sets, and I'd be watching
music video programs that gave phone numbers that people in Iraq, Kuwait, and
other Arabic zone countries could send text messages to to vote for music
videos.

My wife and I concluded that anybody who's been suckered into voting for their
favorite music videos wasn't going to be a Jihadist, in fact, such a person
would be harmless to anyone.

After Boston, however, I am not so sure.

------
antihero
I hate you I hate you I hate you, you fucking rapist piece of shit. But this
article is fucking amazing. But you are a rapist scumbag. Fuck you Julian
Assange, you could have been so fucking brilliant but you are a fucking rapist
and FUCK YOU

~~~
foobarqux
You do know that neither of the alleged victims accused him of rape, right?

