Scroogled (2007)

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-17-n72.html

by jacquesm • 14 years ago

108 26 14 years ago

blogoscoped.com

makeramen2• 14 years ago

can an editor add [2007] to the title please?

raganwald• 14 years ago

Is it new to you?

makeramen2• 14 years ago

It is new to me, and probably more relevant now than it was in 2007. If anything, noticing the date only amplifies Cory's apparent foresight at the time.

cperciva• 14 years ago

I'd like s/By/Written by/ too, since my first thought was that Cory Doctorow was scroogling people.

julien_p• 14 years ago

Previous discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3285671

tomelders• 14 years ago

That's enough to make me hack my Safari Binary and setup Duck Duck Go as my primary search.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

But the imaginary CIA collects your search queries right at your ISP. And they've broken SSL.

Drbble• 14 years ago

Imaginary? CIA tends to operate abroad. FBI see the main domestic spy agency.

Karunamon• 14 years ago

On one hand, Doctorow knows how to tell a pretty riveting tale.

On the other hand, this alarmism is just as absurd as it is on the ACLU's "zOMG pizza!" flash presentation.

joshstrange• 14 years ago

Old story but great message, I always send this to people that don't understand how important privacy on the internet really is

tomjen3• 14 years ago

It is not important. What is important is that the government never gets its hands on it. Google will just show you more accurate ads.

lhnn• 14 years ago

"Privacy on the Internet is not important"

"It's important government doesn't get their hands on private information"

Those don't go together. Government will get their hands on this stuff if it's stored by massive corps that collaborate with the government. Or, even if the corps don't collaborate, the ISPs will. The USA be settin' up Gigamons everywhere.

ramy_d2• 14 years ago

Who are you to make that kind of guarantee?

zackzackzack• 14 years ago

I wrote something a few days ago that was inspired by this: http://zacharymaril.com/blog/2012/02/17/who-will-regress-the...

josscrowcroft• 14 years ago

I liked this but the ending made no sense, felt like it should have been a few paragraphs longer? Pretty abrupt.

aorshan• 14 years ago

I've never read this before. I think the thing that scares me the most is how easily I can see some of these things happening.

trevin• 14 years ago

Here's an audiobook version of this: http://ia600307.us.archive.org/26/items/WithALittleHelpMp3s/...

ranit8• 14 years ago

Why would someone downvote this? Anyway, found a page for the whole podcast series. http://recall.archive.org/details/WithALittleHelpPodcasts

jrockway3• 14 years ago

People like to use this as a reason for being worried about the privacy policy change, but this story is about a government gone very wrong, not about some company targeting ads to you based on ads you've clicked. The problem here is that the government can go on warrantless fishing expeditions, not that Google remembers that you dressed up as a suicide bomber and did 'shrooms. The secondary problem is that the government has some problem with those things; I know of no law that prevents you from entering the United States because you were a suicide bomber for Halloween.

Yes, it's scary if an authoritarian regime with something against you knows everything you've ever done in your life. But the solution is not to stop living your life, it's to prevent the government from throwing away the Constitution.

incongruity2• 14 years ago

There's also a lesson in there about what happens when anyone gains the power that comes along with that much specific information about anyone and everyone.

That much valuable information attracts not only the government, but also the criminally motivated and those seeking power over others. All of it's scary – and we're willingly going along with it, at the moment, because it's useful for us, in the short-run.

jrockway3• 14 years ago

But this is nothing new. Remember Steve Jobs's FBI file that showed up here a week or so ago? The government visited all his contacts and compelled them to spill the details on what Jobs was really like. That's essentially the same scenario described in this story, and it's already happening every day. But not via Google search, via good old fashioned detective work.

GigabyteCoin• 14 years ago

Great writing as always.

My favorite line:

"Give it five years, [Google]’ll know how many turds were in the bowl before you flushed"

rdl• 14 years ago

The most implausible part of this story is that Google would care what Yahoo is doing. Other than that, totally plausible, which is a bit depressing.

Scroogled (2007)

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