What precipitated this outburst (or rant, if you prefer) was an article in the German Web publication Spiegel Online International, with an October 30, 2008 article “Data Mining You to Death: Does Google Know Too Much?” The article describes how the small town of Molfsee is putting up a fight against Google’s sending out a fleet of cars equipped with roof-mounted cameras.
While there were some objections voiced when Street View first appeared, they were mostly from privacy organizations and irate individuals who were captured in compromised condition. Google responded by blurring faces and vehicle registration plates and by allowing folks to request the deletion of specific photographs. Typically this is too little, too late, with the cat already out of the bag.
It may seem curious that Germany is taking such a strong position, potentially at a national level, as indicated in the article. Curious, that is, until (as an attorney friend specializing in privacy points out) one realizes that the modern privacy movement, as represented most visibly in Europe, developed substantially in response to the privacy violations of Nazi Germany.
As described in the Spiegel Online article, Google has its privacy person, or head of data protection,, in the form of Peter Fleischer, who is “Global Privacy Counsel.” He works from a discrete building in Paris with no Google identifiers on it. It would seem that Google is much more interested in protecting its own privacy than that of the rest of the world. Mr. Fleischer’s mantra is reported as “We have to find a reasonable balance.” But, right now, that “balance ” is very much in Google’s favor at the expense of the rest of us. This is certainly an area in much need of change that we can believe in. Perhaps the recommendations between the new Administration and the Brain Trust can flow in both directions.
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> As we all know, Google’s motto is (was?) “Do no harm”
We don’t all know that, because Google’s motto is (and was) “Don’t be evil” (see http://investor.google.com/conduct.html) which is not the same thing.