Your privacy is our priority

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In my opinion it's a bit cheap to put all the blame on Microsoft in these issues. If you read their usage policies you'll see that they never made it a secret that if law enforcement agencies would request or demand their assistance (for example by sharing information about your behaviour on their environments) then they would comply with that.

And keep in mind that I'm not necessarily talking recent times here. When I started to use SkyDrive a bit more some years ago I started by studying the usage and privacy policies; and that "law enforcement abiding" statement was already present.

So quite frankly I think people are barking up the wrong tree. Don't blame Microsoft for abiding with the US government; blame the US government for their obsession with becoming the worlds biggest big brother.
 
For some reason, this makes me think Polynesian fable of the octopus and the rat. Some may be more familiar with it as the fable of the scorpion and the turtle.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
It's Microsoft's turn. The online magazines had their run with Google. Not that it mattered anyway.
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Indeed. We seem to be more tolerant of our Google overlords. It is fashionable to despise Microsoft. Both Google and Microsoft have an equally cavalier attitude towards end user rights. George Orwell called it years ago.
 
hitest said:
Indeed. We seem to be more tolerant of our Google overlords. It is fashionable to despise Microsoft.
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Microsoft has a track record. While Google trips over things occasionally, the intent is not to destroy others as Microsoft did.

Both Google and Microsoft have an equally cavalier attitude towards end user rights.
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To the contrary, for over a decade Google has stood up to requests from the government for user data and still publishes what they can about government/police requests. They even went to court to block giving away such information a few years back.

What many consider an 'invasion of privacy' is just Google being a marketing company and trying to align advertisers with customers along with making their product more usable and useful. Advertisers have been doing that since time immemorial. There's nothing new here.

I used to be on the advertising board for a national restaurant chain and worked in radio/TV for 10 years. Trying to dig up information on 'users' is a constant.
 
Somehow I can only stand back and watch in awe as all this mess of spying and spying on spies starts to shift and untangle.

Kosh said:
The avalance has started. It is to late for the pebbles to vote.
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This will hit a lot more companies untill it is over, and none of them has any choice of what is going to happen, when it will happen and who will belive what. Too many people have their own "cover my own backplane" stash of information, and now the piles of compromat* are starting to shift. I would not be suprised at all when the first sue balls are thrown around, someone will start to open this closet and start pointing out how much worse all others are. It's not that someone can be considered innocent, in these areas the probability is more towards not being found out about than innocent. Google goes to court because it is cheaper than to bend over, and then loosing all the trust they have and the revenue associated with that. It's PR, and I would also not be suprised if it is understood as such by all parties involved.

Only time will tell.

compromat: n, matter to compromize someone, enable blackmail, ... slang word used in certain non-public three-letter companies.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Microsoft has a track record. While Google trips over things occasionally, the intent is not to destroy others as Microsoft did.
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Although I fully agree with your comments on Microsoft I don't agree that Google is all that nice either. In my opinion they're simply a lot better in covering their tracks, and when things get dirty they can be relentless too.

Not sure if you followed it (I only glimpsed at it) but at some time there came a rather huge uproar from dozens of Android developers who saw in their stats that their applications had been sold for an x amount of times, but Google didn't pay up.

Many started sending e-mails to Google but to no avail.

And that led to a pretty large thread in the Android developers forum where several dozens developers started complaining. The thread went on for several pages at least.

To which Google eventually responded by locking down the thread, claiming that it was disruptive and advised all displeased participants to sent Google an e-mail with their complaints. Even though one of the major complaints in that thread was that Google never responded to e-mail.

And a few months more later that thread was completely gone.

So quite frankly I don't think that Google is all that nice, in my opinion they're simply a lot more clever (sometimes bordering at being devious in my opinion) than Microsoft ever was.
 
ShelLuser said:
In my opinion they're simply a lot better in covering their tracks, and when things get dirty they can be relentless too.

Not sure if you followed it (I only glimpsed at it) but at some time there came a rather huge uproar from dozens of Android developers who saw in their stats that their applications had been sold for an x amount of times, but Google didn't pay up.
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Don't know how that applies to the privacy topic we're on but I also remember seeing that but don't recall how it turned out.
So quite frankly I don't think that Google is all that nice, in my opinion they're simply a lot more clever (sometimes bordering at being devious in my opinion) than Microsoft ever was.
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Microsoft put large businesses out of business, were put under US Federal oversight for 12 years, almost broken up, and fined almost $2 billion in the EU. I haven't heard of anything remotely similar happening to Google.
 
J65nko said:
Since a few days I have been using ixquick.com as search engine.
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Some also use DuckDuckGo but the problem is search results are abysmal compared to Google. I'd rather have better results, plus the excellent products Google gives me for free, than worry that they know my IP or what I search for. Nobody's looking at that. My life goes on and nobody's knocking on my door. I'm happy.
 
[Re: Uproar of Android developers]

drhowarddrfine said:
Don't know how that applies to the privacy topic we're on but I also remember seeing that but don't recall how it turned out.
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You're right that it is a slight detour but still somewhat related I think. As to the developers: to my understanding they formed a union but you hear surprisingly little about it.

Which is basically a bit where I'm going at; how sure can you be that what you're hearing is actually the truth? When money talks... Although I'll be the first to say that my idea maybe plain out paranoia, could very well be, I also wouldn't be surprised in the very least if Google was working on a reputation of fighting the government only to appear more trustworthy on that issue.

Even though they have no problems sharing contents of your (anonymised?) e-mails for marketing purposes they'll still protect your information from the government?

Each to his own, but that doesn't quite add up for me.

drhowarddrfine said:
Microsoft put large businesses out of business, were put under US Federal oversight for 12 years, almost broken up, and fined almost $2 billion in the EU. I haven't heard of anything remotely similar happening to Google.
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As said, I agree with you about Microsoft, it's a given. But just because Google is taking it out on smaller players (like for example those Android developers) doesn't make things less bad in my opinion.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Some also use DuckDuckGo but the problem is search results are abysmal compared to Google.
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I'm inclined to agree, although I have to say that DuckDuckGo search results are getting better all the time. Even when searching in my native language (let alone English), I don't need Google a whole lot anymore. DuckDuckGo really appears to be improving IMO.
 
That's another thing. While the latest fad is the NSA, everybody else is doing the same thing. France got caught up in it earlier this week and, Friday, a list of more player countries was published.
 
Correct. They all do it, and that is not the problem. I heard it summarized like this, which I find pretty much nails it down:
unknown said:
This is like the gym teacher doing your wife. You know, your friends know, half the city knows. But then someone says something about it in public. NOW you have to act.
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That someone has an ear in my phone line is nothing new to me. I have relatives who had to deal with the Stasi, others were Stasi, still others, were they still alive now, could tell you things about the Gestapo. There are examples of this all over the history of mankind. Saying that it is all legal is untrue. Maybe it is legal for the NSA to listen to anything they want, as long as they do not break any law where they do it. And the second part is what is important. Eveybody is doing it, and everybody is breaking the bloody laws. No matter who does it, GCHQ, BND, DGSE, GRU, WTF - they can say all they want they operate within their laws. They also need to operate inside the laws of the country others are in. And if you get caught, guess what? You are just a criminal. But that is the cost of doing business for those. Trying to bully or weasel your way out of this is what pisses people off.

What also bugs me is those who say "I got nothing to hide". Are you sure? Are you 100% positive sure, Mr. Buttle? What you may want to hide is not decided by you but by someone else, and it is not decided now but maybe in some years time. Prior to 1933, not many thought that giving your religion to the census would someday come to haunt you. It seems like McCarthy is forgotten too soon.
 
To me, it's not the "I have nothing to hide" argument as much as "No one listening cares". If anyone really cared about what I'm doing, there won't be any stopping them.

Most of this so-called "listening" or "spying" is just getting caught in a dragnet. 99.9999% of us are not being targeted by anyone in the government. I say, "in the government" cause that's what everyone is talking about. As far as checking on what you say on social stuff and your boss finding out, that's a different issue.
 
With such "dragnets", it'll be no problem digging up something naughty/bad about a person to blackmail them into submission. Most western countries also have principles about their citizens being innocent until proven guilty. With surveillance such as this, that principle is turned upside down; The government have decided you're guilty in having the capacity of doing something illegal, and as such, is now monitoring you in case you actually do something illegal.

It's principally horrible at best. It's something which will happen in one form or another no matter what we do, but it's still worth fighting against. If we accept it, there's no knowing what they'll feel comfortable doing next.
 
That's assuming the government will use the information to do that but, unless you're a target, they won't, but getting caught in a dragnet does not mean they have decided anything about you cause they aren't looking for you in the first place.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
That's assuming the government will use the information to do that but, unless you're a target, they won't, but getting caught in a dragnet does not mean they have decided anything about you cause they aren't looking for you in the first place.
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You may not be doing anything bad in the eyes of the current government. But what about the government(s) which rule in 10 years? 20?
 
And when looking at the UK it can get even more bizarre: when in doubt let's lock them up anyway.

Now, I know The Register often likes to bring some news a little more spicier than it actually is, but it still does show a nasty tendency in my opinion.

The eavesdropping isn't a problem by itself; the main problem is how that information is being used. And people are often forgetting is that it's oh so easy to place something out of context, and that can completely change its meaning.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
That's assuming the government will use the information to do that but, unless you're a target, they won't, but getting caught in a dragnet does not mean they have decided anything about you cause they aren't looking for you in the first place.
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A basic security rule is to assume that if a capability exists, it will be used.
 
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