Google: Beyond Good and "Don't Be Evil"

in #news6 years ago


There is an uncomfortable willingness among privacy campaigners to discriminate against mass surveillance conducted by the state to the exclusion of similar surveillance conducted for profit by large corporations. Partially, this is a vestigial ethic from the Californian libertarian origins of online pro-privacy campaigning. Partially, it is a symptom of the superior public relations enjoyed by Silicon Valley technology corporations, and the fact that those corporations also provide the bulk of private funding for the flagship digital privacy advocacy groups, leading to a conflict of interest.

At the individual level, many of even the most committed privacy campaigners have an unacknowledged addiction to easy-to-use, privacy-destroying amenities like GMail, Facebook, and Apple products. As a result, privacy campaigners frequently overlook corporate surveillance abuses. When they do address the abuses of companies like Google, campaigners tend to appeal to the logic of the market, urging companies to make small concessions to user privacy in order to repair their approval ratings. There is the false assumption that market forces ensure that Silicon Valley is a natural government antagonist, and that it wants to be on the public's side — that profit-driven multinational corporations partake more of the spirit of democracy than government agencies.

Many privacy advocates justify a predominant focus on the abuses by the state on the basis that the state enjoys a monopoly on coercive force. For example, Edward Snowden was reported to have said that tech companies do not "put warheads on foreheads." See Barton Gellman, "Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission's accomplished," Washington Post, 23 December 2013.

This view downplays the fact that powerful corporations are part of the nexus of power around the state, and that they enjoy the ability to deploy its coercive power, just as the state often exerts its influence through the agency of powerful corporations. The movement to abolish privacy is twin-horned. Privacy advocates who focus exclusively on one of those horns will find themselves gored on the other.

Julian Assange, When Google Met Wikileaks

This quote can be found buried in the 68th footnote of the first chapter of When Google Met Wikileaks, Julian Assange's revelatory publication describing the hours-long interview which led to Assange discovering Google's incestuous relationship with the Council on Foreign Relations. Most would overlook it, but in flipping through the references to that chapter, the passage stood out for its concision. This is an argument made ad infinitum, in defense of decisions made by Google and Twitter and Facebook, these days: "They're a private company, and they can do as they please with their private servers." But as consumers and stakeholders in these companies, should we be permitting them to do so?

Unchecked, these companies are granted carte blanche to do for governments that which we'd never permit our governments to do: they gather and process data at scales an in manners unprecedented in history, they infringe upon our privacy so deeply that the abandonment of privacy to lengthy terms of service are now passively-foregone conclusions, and they execute censorship and narrative control through these mechanisms without a second thought to the ramifications of their decisions. The protections which the Constitution was meant to enforce against governments are now accomplished with ease, by the companies which make up the other three-fourths of the Council on Foreign Relations alongside those governments. Connected directly by neighboring seats on the Council, and government grants passed from one to the other to create the tools necessary to accomplish these violations of privacy and liberty, these massive Silicon Valley corporations have become extensions of government free of the oversight supposedly keeping the government in check.

Congressional hearings against them are inevitably farcical. The questions asked take no thought for Jack Dorsey or Cheryl Sandberg, whose prepared advertisements fit perfectly into the interrogatives presented to them; they remain completely unchallenged by the so-called representatives who were elected to legislate against such abuses of power. But why would they challenge their allies in abuse? It's only by way of these companies that the government can develop and enforce its coercive power over the people they purport to represent.

Make no mistake, these entities may be private corporations, but their existence represents a form of government not seen since widespread feudalism. They are government, in the purest agorist definition: supposedly-legitimate authorities above the common man, without whom people would succumb to irrational, immoral and uncivilized depravity. They are in bed with, and fulfilling the totalitarian wishes of, any and all governments that find themselves hamstrung by the damnable laws meant to protect the privacy and sovereignty of individuals. And just like government, that age-old gang of thieves and violent thugs adorned in the finest of robes, these corporations so intertwined with them must be treated like the thugs they are as well.

Let it never be forgotten that many at Google and Facebook are ardent supporters of the violent Antifa, and would see privacy destroyed for the sake of sending those ironically-named fascists to the doorsteps of individuals with whom those Google employees disagree. Google is an active component of military actions, by way of Project Maven and its ilk, and likewise an active component of oppressive regimes, by way of Project Dragonfly and its ilk. It has no qualms about improving the art of censorship for China, the accuracy of deadly weapons for Saudi Arabia, or the power of propaganda within their home country of the United States.

But so long as individuals grant them defense beneath the misconception that their role as a private company somehow excuses their totalitarian and nightmarishly utopian goals, we will remain within their control. Violent and manipulative coersion is a violation of one's natural rights whether it's done by a government, or done by by a private entity. A religious devotion to their supposed transcendence does not somehow make what they're doing any less abhorrent, and any less manipulative.



This article was originally published at: https://sevvie.ltd/censorship/google-beyond-good-and-dont-be-evil/
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here is the difference, if you don't like google, don't use it, I don't. Don't buy Apple products if you don't want them to have your information. With the government though using its services is not optional. Facebook could ban you or block your content if they don't like your speech, that's fine its their site and being kicked off won't hurt you. You have no right to Facebook and Facebook can't throw you in jail. That's the difference.

A lot of people could choose not to use facebook and then they would cease to exist or become the next Myspace, not so with the government.

That's not a difference. This is a mistake it appears a lot of people make: just because you choose not to use a product doesn't mean the government's cronyist subsidization suddenly stops. We're talking about companies that track everything. If you don't have a facebook account, you still have an identity with Facebook because they abstract it based on the existence of your phone number in other people's contact information, and the data that can be abstracted from the text messages you've sent to people who do have a facebook account. If you don't have a Google account, you still have a google tracking data footprint because Google's browser, Google's Analytics and AdWords APIs have fingerprinted your browser, your browsing habits, and so much more.

It is dangerous to make excuses for the arms of the government that you think deserve defense because they present themselves as private entities. Subsidy and contract brought them into power, and subsidy and contract demand the tools that make them ever-present even if you never touch their products. It has nothing to do with having right to Facebook -- Facebook has no right to YOU.

They can try and collect any information about me they like, it may or may not be accurate. I don't use Googles browser or search, never have, I don't give them any information. Say Facebook finds out my phone number, that's usually not too secret, used to be published in the phone book, so what?
so they sell it to some marketers who are not allowed to call me because I am on the do not call list and then they know my phone number! whoa man that's an Orwellian nightmare! The government does not need to buy my phone number from Facebook because they already have access to all of that information.
The maniacal end for these companies is to try to sell you shit, that's the information they really care about: what do you want to buy. Because that's the only information about you that is valuable to anyone, most of your searches and your selfies and all of that are useless to them, they want to find people who are looking to buy a new Jaguar so they can give them ads relevant to that. That is their end game.

"...most of your searches and your selfies and all of that are useless to them, they want to find people who are looking to buy a new Jaguar so they can give them ads relevant to that. That is their end game."

You aren't thinking of more profitable extractive mechanisms than honest (more or less) sales. Taxes, for example.

Consider that deep psychological profiling is conducted on vast reams of civilians via AI using the vast reams of selfies and other 'useless' information, and besides selling Jags, this can be used to convince you that Q is leading a covert team of white hats battling the deep state bankster cabal on behalf of President Trump.

Or, to tolerate bombing school buses full of Yemeni children with weapons made in, and provided by, the US.

Stretch your thinking a bit, and you may well recoil in horror at how Fakebook and Goolag might use the surveillance power denied government to execute the most heinous purposes to which government can stoop.

"this can be used to convince you that Q is leading a covert team of white hats battling the deep state bankster cabal on behalf of President Trump."

I suppose it could be, but of course there are no targeted Q ads are there? Have you been receiving Q mailers or junk mail or browser ads? No you haven't and not because you don't fit the profile, because there are no targeted Q ads because Q is not a product. Honestly I have no idea what Q is and neither do you. Perhaps at some point some clever marketer will decide to sell Q t shirts and then perhaps there would be such ads, because the guy would be making money of the shirts.

Well before the internet was very popular marketers already had incredibly detailed psychological profiles on everyone, they knew things like if you prefer a real stamp or a printed one, a blue envelope or a white one, cursive font or times new roman. Every little thing about you, they already knew people better then they know themselves.

A political candidate is a product and of course they will continue to try to use data about voters in order to try to market their candidate to them.

I don't really use facebook or google and claims that facebook ads can determine an election outcome seem exaggerated at this point as part of the Russian anti Trump media narrative.

Stretch your thinking a bit, and you may well recoil in horror at how Fakebook and Goolag might use the surveillance power denied government to execute the most heinous purposes to which government can stoop.

Which is? Haven't plenty of governments in the past already done that before the internet?

In East Germany for example they had vaults full of little strips of cloth. They had everyone's scent on file, for the dogs.

What surveillance powers are still denied government at this point?

"Perhaps at some point some clever marketer will decide to sell Q t shirts and then perhaps there would be such ads, because the guy would be making money of the shirts."

Actually already happened, BTW.

"...A political candidate is a product"

As are NGOs, parties, and all manner of institutions.

"What surveillance powers are still denied government at this point?"

Legally - lawfully - anything absent a warrant based on probable cause. Practically? None. Including far more potent weapons than your scent so the dogs can track you, such as your DNA.

While we don't need paranoia, denial is possibly worse. Surveillance potentiates oppression, and I'm agin' it.

I would say your cell phone, license plates and credit cards are way better for tracking you than your DNA, that would be pretty useless for trying to track someone. You could use it to confirm if someone had been somewhere but that is slow. The fugitive trackers love social media too, that tells them who might help you. Of course you could ditch your phone and credit cards and license plates, then you just need to dodge the facial recognition. Once the dogs are on your scent though, you are probably fucked.

There was a show on a couple of years ago where they had a bunch of real federal marshals and other experts using all the available technology to try to track a number of contestants who won the contest if they could evade arrest for a month and then get to a certain spot without getting caught. It's pretty wild to see all the tools they had at their disposal, someone did win the show though, they were pretty smart and lucky.

Obviously nothing good can come of a panopticon and it gets even more sketchy when the have AI to actually make that panopticon effective.

You're refusing to acknowledge that individuals will have panoptic surveillance, facial recognition, and AI to better deploy their use of it.

In fact, why don't you have these things today?

Whether you want it or not, these things are becoming more available to individuals, more advanced, cheaper, and hurt nefarious actors far more than good neighbors in good communities of good people.

Nothing good can come of these technologies as long as they are wielded by oppressors alone. They are existential threats to oppressors when all civilians have them.

This is exactly how tech makes government obsolete. Keep adding more tech to the list of power that will inure to individuals, and no longer only be used against them by institutions, and only denial will prevent you reaching the conclusion that freedom from oppression is inevitable.

"A lot of people could choose not to use facebook and then they would cease to exist or become the next Myspace, not so with the government."

I am confident you are completely wrong about this. We will ignore government and every form of coercive oppression, when we possess nominal security and manufacturing capability to do so safely.

It's just a matter of time and engineering.

I don't use Facebook, do you? Kids today are probably already using the next Facebook. Facebook doesn't really have anything but its users if it bans and pisses half of them off then some other site will arise to service them.
3d printing or whatever won't make it so you can ignore the government if by ignore the government you mean violate its laws. The thing about actual coercive oppression is that it's sort of hard to ignore, thus the coercion.
What do you feel is the most coercive oppression the US government practices?

"What do you feel is the most coercive oppression the US government practices?"

Whew! So many choices... I just can't decide. Perhaps the incessant danger of kidnapping, enslavement, or worse endemic to ubiquitous road pirates, although they're not officially part of the USG, merely agents of it's subsidiaries.

You fail to note the knock on effects that 3D printing, mesh networks, cryptocurrencies, modern security technology, aquaponics, and much, much more will produce as the concatenation of their affects increases.

When your home is secure from an armed assault by mechanized infantry - as is technologically possible today - just how will overlords enforce their edicts?

Government is obsolete. We're just waiting for dispersion of the tech to our hands.

Whew! So many choices... I just can't decide. Perhaps the incessant danger of kidnapping, enslavement, or worse endemic to ubiquitous road pirates, although they're not officially part of the USG, merely agents of it's subsidiaries.

What's funny is that all your hyperbolic paranoid fears that don't really happen actually are legitimate fears in places other than the US. If you follow the traffic laws then traffic cops won't usually bother you, when was the last time you were pulled over? I haven't been pulled over in years.

You fail to note the knock on effects that 3D printing, mesh networks, cryptocurrencies, modern security technology, aquaponics, and much, much more will produce as the concatenation of their affects increases.

"effects" None of those things make government obsolete. All the new technology will just create new things that will have to be regulated by the government. I have quite a bit of experience with aquaponics. Do you produce all of your own food with aquaponics?

When your home is secure from an armed assault by mechanized infantry - as is technologically possible today - just how will overlords enforce their edicts?

First of all it is not, but I would like to know how you think it is possible to be, but if you really could make your home secure from an armed assault by mechanized infantry they have all manner of air power that you are not secure from. You have to remember that technology costs money, you and I could build nice self sufficient compounds if we put a lot of time and money and effort in, those are things that the vast majority of people lack. But I don't want to live on a stupid compound or have to grow all of my own food, almost no one does and a lot of people who think they do would actually hate it if they had to in real life. Who are the "overloads" specifically? When was the last time they enforced their edicts on your with their mechanized infantry?

"...all your hyperbolic paranoid fears..."

I do not share certain information for reasons, and proof my concerns aren't any of the descriptors you used is amongst that information.

@larkenrose's most recent post should better respond to your query regarding traffic stops. Road pirates possess arbitrary power today, and that they haven't afflicted you with it is merely anecdotal evidence. We both know police are more deadly to US civilians than terrorists - or at least that's what the data shows.

"None of those things make government obsolete."

They will. All of them together, fully dispersed throughout the population of the world make involuntary oppression - government - impossible.

"First of all it is not, but I would like to know how you think it is possible to be, but if you really could make your home secure from an armed assault by mechanized infantry they have all manner of air power that you are not secure from. You have to remember that technology costs money..."

Is so. The tech is not widely understood, and is desperately repressed by those presently wielding power, but I am not alone in grasping that armies are technologically obsolete, and as the tech disperses will become less successful at projecting power until they are abandoned altogether. Air power is no different.

I am not referring to armed compounds, but tarpaper shacks, trailer parks, and condos. Neither will all the world fail to have these technologies, not only one particular individual. If you haven't experienced your neighbors assisting in your defense, you probably aren't offending your enemies enough.

I have. I am confident that communities benefiting from the increasing freedom that such technologies as I have mentioned, and availed of the security tech I have not specified for good reasons, will not permit their members being culled around them. This isn't speculative. It's the historical record. It's also my personal experience in the last 30 days.

Think for a minute. If armed troops aren't able to successfully deploy into your residence in such a place, are oppressive governments going to nuke you? There are costs to deploying troops, and government is only tenable as long as a nominal population supports it. One of the most expensive things about oppression is the cost in support.

Money is becoming obsolete. Scoff away, but I have less and less need of it daily. Why would I need money when I can make any product I desire out of resources that have no cost myself?

How will government regulate, tax, or enforce laws when they cannot deploy troops successfully to capture or kill dissenters? While all this tech isn't presently in your hands, or mine, or anybody's, what possibly could prevent it from eventually getting there?

Extinction, and nothing less.

Road pirates possess arbitrary power today, and that they haven't afflicted you with it is merely anecdotal evidence. We both know police are more deadly to US civilians than terrorists - or at least that's what the data shows.

We both know that anyone who would use that statistic is trying to mislead us, right? That's a BLM statistic to try to use peoples stupid outsized fear of terrorists to hype another fake ginned up fear. Their power is far from arbitrary, it is very very clearly defined. I note you didn't say the last time you were pulled over. Don't speed, use your turn signals don't swerve around and you won't be pulled over. If you are pulled over the police don't actually accept funds, they write tickets, if you didn't do whatever they say you did then go fight the ticket. Whoop de fucking do, worse case scenario you pay a ticket. In other countries you can be hijacked by real road pirates who rob and kill you. That's why it's hyperbole.

Do you grow all of your own food with aquaponics?

I would really like to know how I am supposed to make my home secure from mechanized infantry, just a hint? Its not very secure if disclosing it renders it ineffective.

"...another fake ginned up fear."

The number of Americans killed by police is not a BLM fiction.

"Their power is far from arbitrary, it is very very clearly defined"

Perhaps you have not been understanding what I have written about my experiences. I have seen illegal acts committed by such forces, know of others I did not personally witness, and have credible evidence of far more, and this since my beardless youth.

I note you didn't watch the @larkenrose video, as it would disprove your thesis that simply not violating the law precluded being pulled over, or that being pulled over was no threat to safety..

You also remain in denial that being hijacked by real road pirates in America happens daily. May it never happen to you as it has to me.

Regarding security technology emerging and recent, you can discover much with some searching and a bit of thought. I will mention some old and relatively unthreatening vectors that you can further research, like Henricus Loos, Jose Delgado, and the like.

Have fun!

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"...we will remain within their control."

Only as long as we choose to be, and that will be limited by the availability of preferable alternatives.

Thanks!

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