Emily Lang
April 6, 2008
Discussion Report
Chapter 8: Search, Privacy, Government, and Evil
Introduction
Many people are startled to say the least about the fact that you can type a persons name
into Google and easily find out personal information about a person such as thier address,
telephone number, and even directions to their home. Interestingly enough, it is
completely legal to give out personal information on addresses, phone numbers, and even
connecting a phone number with an address (reverse directories), divorces, murders,
felonies, and misdemeanors. This information has always been available to the public.
However in the past it was way too much of a hassle to get such information (to get
information from a court you would have to dig through files) and this pretty much
prevented people from “knowing too much” about their neighbor. But with the
introduction of the Internet and more specifically Google, people can now find out
information on anyone they want to know about in a matter of seconds. A simple search
query of a persons name might tell you of their address, phone number, where they work,
all about their messy divorce, and much more. In today’s age it would not be uncommon
for an employer to Google his three top candidates for a job. Now “you are what the
index says you are.”
Search Me
The first full-blown privacy controversy and PR crisis for Google was over their new use
of AdWords technology to place certain advertisements alongside user’s emails in Gmail. M
any people found this new advertisement use “creepy” or “crossing the line.” The book
uses the “Apple Pie” analogy to explain why people were so offended by this new type of
email advertisement. If a daughter were to write an email to her mother asking for her
famous apple pie recipe using Gmail, when the mother reads the email, an add for a
famous bakery or a website with great recipes might show up beside the email. This gave
people the impression that Google was actually “reading” their emails, when in fact it
was simply “pasing text for matching” in its index. Figures like a certain California
senator even tried to introduce legislation to ban Gmail outright (even though this was
basically a publicity move on the part of the politician, it still got a lot a press and now a
version of this legislation is pending a House vote).
After the controversial beginnings of Gmail, next Googel introduced GDS (Google
Desktop Search). GDS is basically a program which indexes the entire hard drive of your
computer, much in the same way that it indexes the Web itself. Many people were
hesitant and worried by the internet-like design of the GDS index. Again, it seemed like
Google was getting a little bit too personal and also it seemed as if Google was putting
personal information out on the Web on its on server. However, in reality, your own
desktop information is only available to you.
With Google’s notorious slogan being “Don’t be Evil,” now both Gmail and GDS brings
up the question of what happens when your personal information falls into the “hands of
the wrong people, of even those with good intent but poor judgment?” Now all of the
sudden thousands of internet users are being forced to ask themselves the question of
whether or not they trust their internet service. Personal information and privacy quickly
became the hot topic of the internet.
Unreasonable Search?
The next issue related to privacy and the internet was the Patriot Act. Following 9/11 this
act revised several privacy and government surveillance related acts. It basically extended
federal authority to many new areas including the Internet. The governement now had the
right to search your private data communications (a new interpretation of the 4th
amendment). Now the Government also no longer needed a search warrant to search a
file on you. All they have to do is simply go to a company (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo,
AT&T, ect) and demand your information. The government can now tap a suspect’s
clickstream as well. In addition to this the Patriot Act also specifically “prohibits
companies from disclosing to anyone that the government has requested information
from that company, effectively drawing a curtain around our government’s actions.”
With controversial and invasive new government freedoms such as these, backlash (also
known as the Anit-Patriot Act were inevitable); however, few people guessed that they
would arise first in New York, the one place most effected by 9/11. Many people feared
the government would become frighteningly powerful under the Patriot Act and that this
act was a direct abuse of the Bill of Rights. As Lauren Weinstein puts it, “we need not
live in fear of an all-knowing Big Brother. Instead, we should live in fear of any entity
that possesses the ability to know whatever it wishes to know, should the need ever
arise.” With all of the skepticism in the air, Google basically forced to release a policy
statement in which it claimed “If Google decides that tracking and acting upon your
private information is in its best interest, it can, and it will.” However the leaders at
Google assured people that they had never been forced to give information to the
government. Under the Patriot Act though, this is precisely the answer that they would be
supposed to give even if they had given out information to the government in the past.
The China Question
might be the greatest down-fall of Google’s “Don’t be Evil” sunny do-good
reputation lies in the great China debate. As many people know, the Chinese government,
monitors the information that its people receive. Unlike in the United States, the
government can restrict certain books, songs, and even Web-sites from its people. The
Great Firewall of China, as many people call it, is basically a “technological
infrastructure that automatically filters out banned sites - political opposition sites in
Taiwan or Tibet, for example - from the walled garden of the Chinese Internet.” When
•What
Google was first introduced, China banned it. However, backlash and discontent among
the Chinese citizens caused the government to quickly restore the service within two
week. At this point Google claims it was not forced at all to make any concessions to
China for this reinstatement.
Next, Google launched a Chinese language version of Google news which China
immediately banned as well. However, this time, Google did not get off as easily. They
were forced to purge the offending sites from their index. Many people were confused as
to why Google now gave in to the Chinese government when before it had not. Also
many people thought that maybe if one big company took a big step and refused to do
business in China on Chinese government terms, maybe other companies would follow
suit and really begin to change and tear down the “Great Firewall of China.” Other people
argued that there was no need for Google to completely purge their index of the
offending cites and that they could simply show the link and then re-direct the page to a
Chinese government Website. However, in Google’s press release after all of this
confusion, they hint at why exactly they were forced to how down to the Chinese
government’s demands. They claimed that by including banned sites in the news index,
Google would create a “poor user experience.” Their statement indicated their important
new policy which stated that “simply showing these headlines would likely result in
Google News being blocked altogether in China.
After the release of this statement, it was pretty obvious that the Chine government had
really not been afraid of losing Google if they would not bow down to their demands and
Google could not afford to not do business in China as a major public company. In
addition to this, Google had also quietly invested in Baidu, the second most popular
Chinese search engine, and it didn’t want to hurt this deal, or any other future deals it
might want to make in China (Chinese government overlooks all major business
transactions).
Again, the Chine debate brings up a huge moral issue for the “Don’t be Evil” Google.
Although Sergey and Brin would have wanted to stand more firmly against the Chinese
government and not purge their index, they both realized that there company could not
survive without China and, as Brin put it, “not having Google at all would be a disservice
to all Chinese users.” Google now found itself as the “morality police for the global
economy.” The most important thing to Google was not the simple act of whether to do
business in China or not, “but the precedent that this act would set for Google, namely,
that the level of censorship before entry in specific markets will be negotiated on a caseby-case basis.” This decision is the type of decision that can and will affect literally
billions of lives and billions of dollars in the economy. The Chine debate taught Google
that with great success and great fortune comes great responsibility and great decisions.