GOOGLE'S IMMORTAL COOKIE -- DATA MINING GONE WILD

Be vewy, vewy cawful!... He, He, He... Don't fall for the trap here. What this says about data mining is absolutely mind boggling. The standard knee-jerk reaction for newbies to this game would be to panic and start uninstalling everything Google. OK, that might protect you from one of maybe twenty serious back-doors into your PC that you don't know about. Removing Google will only slow you down with workarounds that are awkward and unfamiliar. You see, newbies
automatically assume that they're the ones under the microscope, as if every evesdrooping device was aimed at them personally. I have always just assumed that everything I ever did online was always monitored and adjusted my behavior accordingly for security and good judgment. We have touched on this theme before here. I avoid anything that slows me down at a time when quick reaction and efficiency (minimal energy expenditure) are required to dodge the falling trees of collapse. It's a time of crisis when rapid response and flexibility is essential; when survival of the transition period will go to the swiftest and most agile.

I'm not uninstalling Google anything. And I don't think you should either. If you start dodging one possible vulnerability without discriminating, pretty soon all you wind up doing is standing in place on an open field of fire, dodging bullets, and NOT moving forward. This is the world we live in. Frankly I have much less faith in the technology of the old paradigm than it does.

When we first made our "map" at FTW and in "Rubicon" we saw things three, four and five years in advance. That gave us a luxury of planning and thihnking. But now we are adding huge chunks to the map just days, weeks and months ahead of the time we must decide where to stand next. I figure that over the course of my career I've been right in about 80% of my predicitions. That means I have been wrong 20% of the time. Now, the steps we take in response to new developments will have progressively higher stakes. I take seriously the possibility that the things I say here, the recommendations I offer, the analyses that I make, might save eight and yet doom two. I know and understand how many out there trust me. Jenna most certainly does too.

A colleague wrote to me that he saw little chance of Cheney/Bush attempting anything on inauguration day. My point is that, because I wrote what I wrote, there is even less chance of it now. Has anyone seen that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed confession yet?... We must get swift!

MCR


(Posted with permission, Jim Baldauf)

1. Google's immortal cookie:

Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one.
If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."

3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.

4. Google won't say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whetherGoogle ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.

5. Google hires spooks:
Keyhole, Inc. was supported with funds from the CIA. They developed a database of spy-in-the-sky images from all over the world. Google acquired Keyhole in 2004, and would like to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk.

7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."

8. Google is not your friend:
By now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. Webmasters cannot avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming they want to increase traffic to their site. If they try to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, they may find themselves penalized by Google, and their traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time Google doesn't even answer email from webmasters.

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly- commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.
************************************************************************************

JO adds:

Somehow the thought that the man behind the curtain is in fact an omnipotent cookie doesn't evoke the same chills as other observations aired recently on this page. Ignorance in these matters is, if not bliss, at least respite.

SEC FOIA Secrecy Increased
India To Ink Largest Ever Defense Deal With US Soon
Washington to Force Moscow to Cancel S-300 Deal With Iran
US Warning of Strikes By India on Lashkar-e-Taiba
CIA Uses Viagra To Buy Off Afghan Warlords
Presentations from the ASPO Conference
Fish Gotta Swim; Bird Gotta Dance
He's got rhythm. Who could ask for anything more?