Daniel Versus Gooliath

[jawn_tech]

hog-tied in a diaper and flogged with raw sausage (come on, who doesn't?)

You too? Depends. Are we talking italian sausage, or polish sausage? Personally, I like spicy italian sausage.


The 'criminals only be afraid' mindset can be dangerous in some situations, true, but I still think searches can be debunked as evidence by any decent defense lawyer, if it actually came down to it. The airplane example could still be explained for what it truly was, someone looking for the carry-on do's and don'ts.

Worst case scenarios could happen, I agree. But if my luck is that bad that I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time, like having a fingerprint found in a place that I wasn't, and I happened to Google for something similar a week before, that's like having lighting strike me twice in the head -- I probably deserved it. But the thing that would be the most compelling for Brandt's position would be to report cases where Google searches were used against someone innocent. Heck, even someone guilty, I'd like to hear about it. It's just hard to follow the Chicken Little's "the sky is falling" story when there hasn't been any real news yet. It's still a 'what if', and I can't help but see it as a stretch of the imagination. The odds are better of someone getting lung cancer from smoking, than for an innocent to get nailed for Googling something funny, so perhaps the humanitarian thing would be to be a whistleblower on the tobacco companies for selling products that kill people. Meanwhile Google is helping me search more faster and more relevantly than Yahoo or MSN, and I'm not worried one bit about what they know about me.

Except when I'm searching for MILF...

[flood6]

Again, this is a "devil's advocate"-type response, but I think the "who cares what they do, I'm a 'good guy', only criminals should be afraid" is a dangerous position to take.

Let's follow this to its logical conclusion:

Don't speak to anyone about anything. Not your wife, or children, or siblings, or parents. Certainly not your neighbors or the taxi driver. Never write anything down anywhere. Never use the phone or email. Don't use ANY search engine to search for anything. Do not post anything in forums or blogs.

Remain in your house. Secluded. With the doors locked. Do not let anyone in the house. Do not let anyone contact you by any means whatsoever.

Yep. That might keep you safe.

But don't count on it.

I don't accept that as a logical conclusion. If it were, the alternative suggestion might be: Let someone videotape everyone in your town every second of your respective law-abiding lives. The video-tapers don't promise you that they will keep the tapes secure, they don't tell you why they are doing it, in fact most of the poor villagers don't even know they are being taped. Your bedroom, bathroom, while disciplining their children, while worshiping their God of choice, and while voting. But the kindly towns-folk aren't breaking the law, so who cares?

I don't find that suggestion any more realistic or acceptable than yours.

And jawn, you entirely missed the point: the enjoyment is completely derived from the fact that the sausage wielder is a large hairy man with umlauts in his name.

Added: I just wanted to add that I personally don't care if Google records what I search for. My original point was that I'm glad there are people who do care about it and are vocal. Not just on this, but on all privacy and civil-liberties related issues. I don't think I've ever agreed with anything the ACLU has ever done, but I find the fact that they exist to be comforting.

[Daniel Brandt]

There's another aspect to all of this. Google is able to harvest this search-term information, tied to IP number, which is about 90 percent reliably tied to country and often even to the city, in real time. To quote from this Wired Magazine piece, which describes a visit to Google:

The computer screen is divided horizontally. On the bottom, the Google queries, 10 visible at a time, stream up and, after 5 seconds, disappear. Each also carries the location of the questioner, often down to the city, but sometimes only the country, the Internet portal (e.g., AOL), or, when the source is untraceable, just question marks. To honor good manners, the program filters out obscene requests. Whether out of ignorance, faith, or belief in the safety of numbers, an estimated 52 million people around the world, 42 percent of all search engine users, entrust the site with some of their deepest, most vulnerable thoughts and desires.

Okay, you happen to be in Cairo, and you search for airline schedules, and a couple minutes later you wonder if it is okay to take your shaving kit aboard, so you search for "razors" and "airlines." Somewhere in the basement of the Pentagon, where they installed a fiber-optic feed to Google's real-time stream in 2007, under Bush's latest homeland security initiative (and hid it in the black budget so that Congress doesn't know that they allocated funds for it), a filtering program alerts an operator because it detected, geolocated, and correlated the two searches. The operator picks up the hot line to the CIA base in Cairo, and the Pentagon's International SWAT Team swoops down on your hotel room. You're taken to Guantanamo, where you are tortured without being charged (assuming you're a mere Canadian citizen and not a U.S. citizen, and you are of Arab extraction).

Science fiction? I hope it is, but I wouldn't bet that it can't happen two years from now.

[minstrel]

They could simply nuke your hotel too, Daniel. Do you think that's likely?

Seriously: If they were interested in doing all this stuff, Daniel Brandt would surely be at Guantanamo already. If we can believe you, you already know way too much about the FBI, the CIA, Bush, and every other individual and organization involved in your private einstellung to be allowed to continue to walk the streets.

Now, go home and lock your doors and hope they forget about you.

[Andilinks]

They could simply nuke your hotel too, Daniel. Do you think that's likely?

That's my point. To those in denial about this, wake up.

Those who flew planes into the WTC will incinerate US cities with nukes if they get them, we are at war.

In wartime rights are sacrificed for good reason, had they not New York may already be a radioactive crater. That would probably make those in Brandt's camp happy.

I'd rather be called an alarmist than wake up to the headline that a city has disappeared.

Andi

[minstrel]

I do understand your point, Andi, but it's the wrong one for this thread.

I certainly do not underestimate the dedication of Islamic terorists to the pursuit of their goals. I do agree that their goals, however farfetched they may seem, are very real to them and therefore present a very real danger to the west. Minds that can conceive the WTC attacks and public beheadings are not going to give up easily and are not going to be deterred by extreme violence or high death tolls.

But what has that got to do with Google?

Google is a search engine. Google's cookie is just a cookie. Let's not freak out about it and lock ourselves away for fear that the FBI, CIA, or <insert your pet government spy agency here> is tracking our online behavior in preapartion for sending us to some terrorist prison camp.

[Andilinks]

But what has that got to do with Google?

The very capabilities that Brandt would like to supress are those that would be most useful in tracking terrorists, who like the rest of use use Google. Whether these capabilities are actually being used is something that should be on a strictly "need to know" basis.

Our adversaries in this war are very much like the Japanese in WWII who had a maniacal and suicidal zeal to fight to the last person. Yes, there were plans for women and children to suicidally battle US invaders had the whole process not been cut short by the atomic bomb.

This is a similar fight, Saudi funded madrassas are poisoning the minds of thousands of potential suicide bombers.

Brandt is trying to thwart the collection of intelligence that would prevent suicide attacks. This is very relevant and very on point, though admittedly some have trouble perceiving this danger.

These snoozers would wait until a city lies in ruin before admitting there was danger.

Andi

[jawn_tech]

Okay, you happen to be in Cairo, and you search for airline schedules, and a couple minutes later you wonder if it is okay to take your shaving kit aboard, so you search for "razors" and "airlines." Somewhere in the basement of the Pentagon, where they installed a fiber-optic feed to Google's real-time stream in 2007, under Bush's latest homeland security initiative (and hid it in the black budget so that Congress doesn't know that they allocated funds for it), a filtering program alerts an operator because it detected, geolocated, and correlated the two searches. The operator picks up the hot line to the CIA base in Cairo, and the Pentagon's International SWAT Team swoops down on your hotel room. You're taken to Guantanamo, where you are tortured without being charged (assuming you're a mere Canadian citizen and not a U.S. citizen, and you are of Arab extraction).
Science fiction? I hope it is, but I wouldn't bet that it can't happen two years from now.

'Can' and 'likely' are quite different. One might think such efforts would be better placed on events that could be likely. I would have to differ on this presumption.

[minstrel]

Well I have no trouble perceiving the danger. I just don't see Google cookies as a primary defense against anything, nor eliminating Google cookies as seriously compromising anything other than effective searching, nor retaining them as any serious threat to civil liberty.

If you are relying on Google cookies to deter terrorism, you've got a long hard fight ahead of you.

[Andilinks]

David you are just taking too narrow a view of what Brandt is trying to accomplish. His goal is to weaken the collection of information generally, I think he needs to be resisted at every turn for the reasons I stated. Many, like yourself cannot see it. But then very few saw 9/11 on 9/10.

The extreme left has actually allied itself with the Islamo-fascists to help destroy capitalism. Well, they never were too bright and can't see that the infidel socialists will be the next in line and will be less able to mount a defense than the capitalists. As usual the capitalists will protect the dimwitted socialists again, and they will be ungrateful again.

Andi