Text 12968, 171 rader
Skriven 2008-03-17 12:14:29 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
  Kommentar till text 12956 av Jeff Bowman (1:229/500)
Ärende: Google and Gmail
========================
Hello Jeff,

On Saturday March 15 2008 12:39, you wrote to me:

 Mv>> As they have to abide by the rules of the US. Why are you not
 Mv>> worried about what your own government can do with the user data
 Mv>> mined by the search engines?

 JB> Because, as misguided as the country may be at the moment, I know that
 JB> Americans are still protected under free speech laws.

Are they? What is that protection worth if it can be set aside by simply
labelling the suspect as a terrorist?

And maybe you trust the present government. But what about the leaders that
will rule in five or ten years? Can they be trusted? Mind you they will have
the data gathered by this government.

I see it in my own country too. The younger generation does not care while the
older generation worries about the government having far too much information
about the citizens. I was not there during WWII, but I did hear the horror
stories first hand from the people that were. I would have been a lot harder
for Hitler to deport so many Jews from The Netherlands had we not so
metaculously kept records. Our generation and the one before me is painfully
aware of what can happen when otherwise relatively harmless information falls
into the wrong hands... :-(

 JB> Now of course, Bush has pretty much revoked all rights to fair trial
 JB> and such if you're declared an "enemy combatant", so I have to trust
 JB> that our government wouldn't apply that label to someone willy-nilly
 JB> without having good reason.

Maybe you should not be so trustful....

 JB> Saying the president stinks for example I don't like the way our
 JB> government has gone with the ability to remove such rights and detain
 JB> people for questionable reasons, but again, I just have to trust that
 JB> it's not happening to common people every day for trivial things.

When I lived in South Africa in the mid seventees, there was the Anti Terrorist
Act. It allowed the government to arrest and detain people for 90 days with
charging them and keep them in total isolation. Without any duty to inform
their family. After the 90 days it could be extended for another 90 days. Ad
inifinitum. People just disappeared.

One would trust that it would not happen to common people for trivial things
would one. Nevertheless, people *did* disappear. And not just the obvious
cases. No, doctors, university professors, lawyers....

Then, in the seventees the whole world condemned South Africa for it. Now.. the
US does the same and you trust your government....

 JB> Therefore, I just don't worry about it. If they want to know what I've
 JB> been up to bad enough, they don't need Google to do it.  They'd just
 JB> illegally wiretap and search the home, then deal with the paperwork
 JB> later.

And how does that differ from what happened in South Africa in the seventees?

 JB>>> but that sucks pretty hard, and I lost some respect for them as a
 JB>>> result. Folks are sitting in prison now, or worse, because of it.

 Mv>> And you think that will never happen in the USA?

 JB> Over the same sorts of things that poeple get arrested for in China?
 JB> No, never.  I think we still have a long way to go before we turn into
 JB> that.

I hope you are right. But history has too many examples of the contrary...

 Mv>> I will not touch Gmail with a ten foot pole. Gmail stores your
 Mv>> e-mail "forever". On a server under US jurisdiction. They may
 Mv>> promise they will never turn it over to your government but how
 Mv>> can they hold that promise?

 JB> I believe you're possibly basing your information on the way Gmail
 JB> initially worked.

Seems so.

 JB> You can in fact delete your emails now, and I'm pretty sure they're
 JB> gone forever.  There's a button for it, because people complained
 JB> about how everything just sat in the trash forever. I think there may
 JB> have been a way to delete the emails all along if I recall correctly,
 JB> but it was nested in a menu.

Could be, I never looked at it. Like I said, did not want to touch it with a
ten foot pole.

 JB> Google wanted you to keep all those emails for content-appropriate
 JB> advertising initially.

I know the stated reasons. History is full of cases where the stated reasons
for collecting them in the first place differs from what is eventually done
with the data.

The original purpose of storing telephone call records was to help resolve
billing disputes....

 JB> Out of curiosity, what do you use for email?

My reader is outlook express and I make use of several e-mail servers. All
based in the EU.

 Mv>> For me, a non US citizen it is even worse. The US holds the
 Mv>> position that privacy of mail only applies to US citizens. Mail
 Mv>> originating from non US citizens can - and is - read without a
 Mv>> court order. Even if it is only in transit though the US.

 JB> As far as I'm concerned, anything and everything passing over the
 JB> internet is read without a court order.

Not here. I think...

 JB> And probably by more than just the US government.

99% percent of my e-mail is in Dutch and to and from people in The Netherlands.
99% percent of all Dutch people uses the e-mial server of their provider and
they are based on Dutch territory. That mail never leaves the country. At least
I have reasonable confidence it does not pass through servers based under US
jurisdiction.

 Mv>> Why would I be more worried about my own government than your
 Mv>> government?

 JB> Because your own government would be much more interested in what you
 JB> were doing there and actually be in a position to arrest you over
 JB> things than America would/could be.

My government does not have the equivalent of the Gitmo Hotel...

 Mv>> There is no internet filtering done here in my country. Not that I
 Mv>> know of anyway and if it is done it is illegal. There has been
 Mv>> some talk about blocking child porn sites, but that would be on
 Mv>> the DNS level and that can be easily circumvented by making use of
 Mv>> another DNS server like OpenDns.

 JB> Child porn sites should just be null-routed and killed globally
 JB> without monkeying with DNS on a country to country basis.

Really? And who would decide what is to be labelled "child porn"?

Things like that always look easy and straightforward at first sight. Who could
be against blocking child porn? But think a bit further...

 JB> There should be a universal group who is capable of investigating and
 JB> handling such things.

And of course you would not mind if that group was led by the president of Iran
would you?

 JB> Of course, one could argue that maybe that gives such a group too much
 JB> power, possibly letting them use it on unrelated sites,

Which of course is exactly what will happen. If the system is in place to
globally block sites at the push of a button why stop at child porn? Let us
block all hard porn. Who can be against that?

And while we are at it, block sites relating to drugs as well. Or abortion. Or
homosexuals. Or guns....

 JB> but I guess you have to put faith in people at some point.

History shows that there is great survival value in NOT trusting people at some
point.


Cheers, Michiel

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