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Google’s Call for Global Privacy Standards
Pulled from here…
“The Washington Post has an article detailing Google’s request for international privacy standards. Google is taking this matter all the way to the U.N., arguing that a hodge-podge of privacy law unnecessarily burdens Internet-based companies while also failing to protect consumers.
This is a front for an attack AGAINST privacy. Think this problem through fully. The way I am experiencing this issue is this:
If we all have a uniform standard of “privacy” then that means we have no privacy. Because to unlock one standard is to fully expose all data forever. Period.
We’re supposed to sit here and listen to one of the world’s biggest and most powerful corporate entities in the history of the world complain about how HARD they have it? Fuck that. What bullshit! They just want us to roll over and give them everything without a struggle. And they do it under the guise that they are protecting you, the consumer, when really all they are shooting for is to make their job easier.
Monoculture is NOT sustainable. Never has been. Never was, no matter the application. We need to begin creating our own private internets. These will not be web domains, but web REALMS.
Steps for further research:
- Start looking back into the early days of the web, BBS’s, etc. That stuff was a lot more futuristic (as well as primitive) in its organization and it was ultimately railroaded. Why?
- Read the Federalist Papers. This is a perfect parallel to the issues we are about to face culturally.
- Get into “desktop publishing”. Print zines. Distribute them. Learn how “human internets” work in the real life as far as distribution of information, persuasive speech, etc.
- Look into subscription models for private internets. What kind of software would we need to instantiate and protect private internets? What kind of legal protection would we need? What about private currencies to pay for them (shared value communities)? Does Yahoo Tubes fit into this somehow?
September 17th, 2007 at 3:07 am
Tim,
I think the major problem is all the centralization, even at the network level. Why did I just email my roomate my resume when we are sitting on the same house on the same network, did it HAVE to pass through Gmail servers in CA? Why when I do a traceroute between my home network and college (1/2 mile away) does it have to pass through Qwest headquarters in Denver? (I am in WA)
Sites like Youtube, Google etc. are dangerous simply because they control content access in a way that dramatically effects the people who are now becoming addicted to them. (the first dose is free, and lasts a loooong time) But we are accepting them in the name of convenience.
So yes, we are losing our local Internets, both geographically and URL-wise. There are all kinds of things we can do to fight all this, but in the end it just boils to money. The real revolutionary change will be in stripping things down to their roots…zines and people, like you say, but more deeply in economics.
Now there is a point where you can trust the big magical “It” to keep you alive, and it will. But in our more common state we belief in something much absurd, that peices of paper with dead men’s faces on them have value. Its simply a matter of getting enough people to “that point” of faith and trust where an alternative to these pieces of paper can be created, and it will sustain its value until enough people get faith in it that you don’t have to worry any more. Collective human faith is our most underused resource.
September 17th, 2007 at 4:55 am
I think this is well-known corporate strategy. Similar shenanigans can apply in the business of engineering/safety standards. There they can be designed to fulfil the additional role of preventing market entry: the standard plays to the particular strengths of the existing players; anyone wanting to join in must climb the standards mountain.
September 17th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Yes, absolutely. You also have to look at governments in this regard as well: did enacting a Federal constitution amount to essentially the same effects? The part of the constitution that requires states to recognize one another’s laws is not dissimilar, as it has the effect - long term - of applying a standard…
September 17th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
[…] Great observation from Svenson, here: I think the major problem is all the centralization, even at the network level. Why did I just email my roomate my resume when we are sitting on the same house on the same network, did it HAVE to pass through Gmail servers in CA? Why when I do a traceroute between my home network and college (1/2 mile away) does it have to pass through Qwest headquarters in Denver? (I am in WA) […]
September 17th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Beautiful!
Or, it is our most abused and misunderstood!
What happens when we do that?
Simple question for people to frame this issue in their minds: who do you trust more, your friends or the government?
September 17th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
I don’t quite trust the John Titor stories but one of the things he claims happen in the future is that technology, and everything else, becomes local. That was one of the few things that sounded right when I heard about him on Coast to Coast a long time ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor
September 17th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
You know, the weird part is that I have been having dreams about all of this for at least five years, if not significantly longer. A lot of them are recorded on this site, but most of the ones I am thinking of have to do with future technology and political reorganization. I also outlined a lot of these ideas in a very rudimentary form in the first few chapters of a novel I began last year - pieces of which I plan to begin posting online.