Gagging on Google

http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/04/gagging-on-google/

by quoderat • 17 years ago

9 12 17 years ago

blogs.ft.com

jhickner• 17 years ago

I kept hoping this was satire.

spectre• 17 years ago

You have to understand something to satire it. This guy obviously didn't understand.

Tichy3• 17 years ago

What did he not understand?

iamcalledrob• 17 years ago

I hope this guy never gets into politics...

/reads his bio on the right..

abrahamsen• 17 years ago

This is about the transparent society versus the surveillance society.

Google represents the transparent society. Tons of information that used to be public but impractical to collect is now available to ordinary citizens, who can use it for good or evil as they please. There are plenty of examples of both.

Financial Times is located in what is likely the most extreme example of a surveillance country in existence today. There are cameras everywhere, and the government collect detailed information about all citizens. Strict regulations exist to ensure that this information can only be used by the government, and there is an outrage only when these regulations are broken.

It is not surprising that these two views on the role of information in society clash. Information is power, and the question if this power should be centralized in the government, or spread out to the people. The risk of abuse is far greater for the later, but the consequences of abuse is far greater for the former.

Some may prefer a third way, an opaque society where public information won´t be collected, even though the technical means for doing so exists. I doubt that is feasible, it will probably result in another society where the collected information is only available to the few.

johnnybgoode• 17 years ago

Google is to privacy and respect for intellectual property rights what the Taliban are to women’s rights and civil liberties

I suspect I'm more "anti-Google" than most people here, but when the article starts out like that, even I have to just say "flamebait" and move on.

fauigerzigerk• 17 years ago

I am concerned about privacy issues with google and I'm trying to defend against them as good as I can, including not using google for everything.

But I'm scared outright by the people who might regulate them. Governments are pushing for much more far reaching and much more consequential invasion of privacy than would ever be in google's interest.

Buiter makes it appear as if evil commercial interests were the worst that could happen to us. Being spammed with dog food adverts is not nearly as bad as being charged with crimes you didn't commit by incompetent morally confused totalitarian law makers.

European governments are currently building a system of censorship and questionable evidence collection, partly to enforce laws against the very "crimes" that google allegedly commits. We're being subjected to grotesque disproportionate surveillance techniques by our governments in the interest of Mr. Buiter's own commercial interests as an author.

It's amazing how incredibly clueless even the most esteemed academics can be.

ghost11• 17 years ago

How amusing. A Briton thinks that a corporation is a danger to privacy, instead of his own government.

Gagging on Google

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