NATION:

We are WAY beyond the point of no return, when it comes to data collection, the potential for abuse of privacay, or, dare I say outright oppression.

Our only buffer between complete exposure to corporations and the government, is ineptitude in tying all the collectable data together; and perhaps a thin and fading wafer of ethics. 

The private sector is light years ahead of most government agencies when it comes to profiling people using digital footprints: mobile devices, web, finances, GPS, etc. When we use these modern conveniences, we don’t just leave light traces of residue behind us.  In terms of data, we leave vast tracts of distinct wreckage. As a web analyst, I can tell you just how easy it is to turn seemingly anonymous data into personally identifiable, actionable intelligence, with very little effort.  Private companies, who can move much faster than a government bureaucracy, are quickly learing how to do this to their competetive advantages.  G-nome technology, mining vast amounts of genetic data for patterns that predict illness, is a prime example of this know-how. Google and others are applying the same concepts to advertising (segment us based on behavior, then target market), but those concepts can be applied for all kinds of nefarious purposes.

It is not enough for high-profile technologists and marketers, like Google executives, to explain that they put us all into general categories, and preserve our privacy based on a modicum of feined ethics.

Where there is potential for abuse, there will be abuse.  Where there is potential to weaponize technology for the sake of power, it will eventually be weaponized, and oppression will occur under the well-worn guise of “national security.”  It has happened, and will happen more.  Russell Tice, the NSA whistelblower who grew a conscience, is attesting to this now. 

How many network operation centers around the country have a special secure room for NSA access only?  Does Google have one, too? The FISA court is a facade.

There is little harm in this one little thing that Google is doing, now.  But the potential for massive abuse is of multiple orders of magnitude.  Legislators are impotent to prevent it because they are ignorant of technology, much the same way T.B. Pickens exposed their ignorance of the energy markets and technology.

It is helpful for our technology leaders like Google, and their peers, to remember that the research and writings of Albert Einstein facilitated the Manhattan Project.  Even though he was not directly part of the project, it would not have occurred for years, if not decades, if it weren’t for Einstein. But as he neared the end of his life, he expressed his regret several times, for his part in weaponizing the atom, nature’s most basic building block. His regret was not because of WWII or the use of the bomb on two Japanese cities, rather it was because of Einstein’s prescience and understanding of human nature.

This genie’s already out of the bottle.

P.S. You want truly scary stuff? Read Martin Lindstrom’s “Buyology,” about the combination of neuroscience and marketing. It will make the hair on the back your neck stand up.

CJ:

That’s a fair response to what I didn’t intend to be an airtight argument.  The way I wrote it, your comparison to someone who says “why not more fascism” is accurate.

Allow me to refine my argument.  I believe that privacy is a right in the same way that freedom to move around a city is a right.  And just as someone has the right to monitor you as you move around a city, companies have a right to monitor you as you move around the internet.

Taking that a step further, advertisers use their right to monitor who is in which locations to purchase ad space.  Gucci monitors who reads Vogue, Coke monitors who drives down the Sunset Strip, and BMW monitors who watches Bravo.  In all of these cases, users can opt (to lesser or greater degrees) out of being monitored. 

I hold the internet to the same standards.  Why should Google be blind to web surfers while Nike gleefully extracts data on newspaper subscribers?  What’s more, Google allows people to opt-out of this behavioral targeting program, as does Yahoo, AT&T, and most other providers.  And for those companies that don’t offer an opt-out, you are free to stop accepting cookies, just as you’re free to withhold personal information when signing up for a magazine subscription.

I believe Google is falling prey to the fact their “eye in the sky” is more visible, more tangible, and more salient than that of something like The New York Times.  But make no mistake: The New York Times knows the addresses to which its papers are delivered, layers that with median housing prices, combines that with user-provided information, and happily gives that data to advertisers. 

Given that, I believe people’s fight should either be with The Advertising Industry, or with no one.  To attack Google is to attack a big, obvious straw man.

First, a correction: Google’s announcement signals their entrance into behavioral targeting.  This is ad serving based on a user’s browsing behavior.  Contextual targeting is placing ads based on the contents of the web page, as they’ve been doing in GMail for years. 

Secondly, I fail to see the boogeyman in this announcement.  I, for one, would welcome fewer home mortgage dancers in my browser and more ads for products relevant to my lifestyle.  Internet advertising isn’t going away; why not at least have the ads relevant to my interests?

Clearly, people are uneasy due to privacy concerns.  I can only understand this to a point.  The sites we access are already logged by our ISP.  We receive dozens of cookies from various sites and companies that follow us around.  Nearly every site has tracking on it that, to lesser or greater degrees, creates a profile for you.  What’s the harm in Google’s staying competitive by doing something that everyone else is already doing?