News

Posted in Menacing Monopoly, War on Privacy

Google wants its software running your home appliances, not just portable gadgets

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Talk about a privacy-less future…

At its I/O developer conference on Tuesday, Google showed a sneak preview of its Android@Home project, which will extend the Android platform into household objects. That means some day in the future, you could control home appliances—your dishwasher, the heating system, the lights in your house—using your Android device as a remote control.

“Think of your phone as the nucleus that this all started with,” said Google engineering director Joe Britt in an interview. “We’re opening the platform up to everyone to do whatever they can imagine.”

There’s something to be said for the ability to turn on your parked car’s air conditioning before you get to it. But, practically, what’s the point of having a dishwasher or washing machine that can be wirelessly controlled? Without place settings or clothes to clean, there’s nothing for the devices to do. And the technology doesn’t yet exist for such appliances to load themselves. For that, we’d need human-like robots.

There’s obviously more potential when it comes to heating, cooling, and lighting. But controlling the utilities in a house from somewhere else in the world has serious privacy and security implications. Implications that have not been addressed, will not be easy to address, and don’t actually even make sense for Google to address. If Google took privacy seriously and didn’t capture data for its own use, it wouldn’t be able to profit. It would be moving the goalposts forward technologically, but it wouldn’t be making money. Spying is Google’s business model. It underpins search and advertising (Search/Analytics/Adsense), Gmail, Chrome and Android, and pretty much every other product it offers.

Google’s practice of collecting data and never deleting it is becoming a bigger and bigger problem that governments are not addressing. There’s been some action taken in the European Union, but almost none in the United States, where Google is based. It’s time for that to change before Google becomes any more powerful than it already is.

Posted in Menacing Monopoly

FSF reminds us that Google’s Gmail utilizes proprietary JavaScript

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

The Free Software Foundation (FSF), the leading organization working to protect the rights of Internet users and defend free software, posted a reminder for its members and supporters today about Google’s double standard when it comes to free software. Google may provide hosting for open source projects and contribute to the development of some free software, but the software that powers its own offerings is not free.

That includes the JavaScript that runs Gmail.

Because of the incredibly high percentage of Gmail-using free software supporters, we’re taking action to raise awareness about how to use Gmail without using proprietary software. We’ll also be working on longer term solutions, but the most immediate positive step to take is to stop running the proprietary programs.

Many people suggest that you shouldn’t use Gmail at all, because it means losing control over your data and privacy. We agree that this is a very important factor for you to consider when choosing how you will handle your email.

We are among those who suggest that Gmail shouldn’t be used at all due to privacy and security concerns. The fact that Gmail’s web interface is comprised of proprietary software is just another good reason not to do business with the Monster of Mountain View.

Posted in Menacing Monopoly

HubPages CEO: Google has a big, fat double standard

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Paul Edmundson, the chief executive officer of HubPages, says a recent internal initiative to toughen Google’s search algorithm (nicknamed Panda) has punished legitimate sites with user-generated content (like the one he runs) as well as dubious content farms, while sparing Google’s own properties:

Google’s recent “Panda” update intentionally upends this ecosystem; it doesn’t just lower the rankings of individual pages that the algorithm deems “low quality” (however that may be defined by Google) but, as Google has said publicly, “low-quality [page] content [on the domain] can impact an entire domain.” This means that high-quality content hosted on open publishing platforms like HubPages and YouTube can be negatively impacted in their search rankings simply by hosting contributions of various quality on a single site.

HubPages has seen a negative impact from this change, but so far YouTube has not (Search Metrics Winners). One presumes Google isn’t treating its own affiliated sites differently than any other site, but YouTube’s open publishing environment makes low-quality content as prevalent as on any other moderated open publishing platform. Google shows over 13 million indexed videos on YouTube for lose weight (known spammy area) and over 10 million for forex (another spammy area). Apparently, Google’s Panda update has been punitive only to platforms other than Google’s.

Surprise, surprise… Google treats its own properties differently than it treats others. This has actually been going on for years, but Google is rarely taken to task for it. Most of the complaints that have been made about the practice have come from Google’s competition. As Google has entered an increasing number of markets over the years, it now has a great many competitors in many different areas.

Google’s practices wouldn’t be so detrimental if it wasn’t so close to being a monopoly. Sadly, it has become synonymous with the idea of search, even though it is hardly the best or most intuitive search engine out there, let alone privacy-aware.

Posted in Legal Troubles, War on Privacy

Class action lawsuit filed against Google over Android tracking

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

About time:

Following a class-action suit brought by two Tampa men targeting Apple over alleged user tracking, Google is facing a similar class action lawsuit filed in Detroit on Wednesday.

The plaintiffs in the Detroit suit evidently have a case of buyer’s remorse.

Last week developers also revealed that Android devices keep a similar cache of cell tower and WiFi data, though Android limits the amount of data to 50 recently accessed cell towers and 200 recently accessed WiFi networks. Like iOS devices, a person would need to “root” (similar to “jailbreaking”) an Android device to get the data, but in contrast to iPhones this data isn’t synced to a computer.

More disconcerting, however, is the fact that Android devices collect “its location every few seconds and transmitted the data to Google at least several times an hour,” according to research by security expert Samy Kamkar. Google said it uses this data for a variety of uses, but unlike Apple, Android attaches a unique ID number to the data. While that ID number is effectively random and can’t be directly linked to a particular device or user, it is possible to analyze such data and correlate it to particular individuals using increasingly advanced “deanonymization” techniques.

Variety of uses, ha. That’s basically Google’s polite way of saying, we’re invading your privacy to monetize you because that’s the business model we think will make us billions.

Google is correct in one sense: People who are using Android are effectively “opting in” to Google’s surveillance regime. But the thing is, Google is not being upfront with people who are purchasing Android phones about the existence of the regime. Furthermore, what goes on inside of Google’s datacenters is a secret, so it’s hard to expose what Google is really up to.

Google claims to love open source. The reality is, Google only loves open source to the extent it can subjugate free software to expand its empire. Android and Chromium are just means to an end – the end being the ability to track millions of people.

Google does have several initiatives aimed at supporting open source projects, like Google Summer of Code. But Google’s business practices and policies are anything but open source. Google is a proprietary software company just like Apple or Microsoft.

The only difference is that Google is much, much better at being disarming towards people who support free software. (Microsoft has noticed this; it’s starting to copy Google’s tactics).

Just like Google Chrome, Android phones are loaded with proprietary spyware that phones home to Big Brother. Big surprise? Not to LGB, but not everyone scrutinizes Google as we do. Not everyone has the healthy skepticism that they should.

As of today, two concerned women from Detroit have joined the ranks of the skeptics. Good for them.

The initial pleadings are available from Archive.org in PDF format: Brown et al v. Google, Case #2:11-cv-11867.

Posted in Menacing Monopoly, War on Privacy

Google CFO: “Everybody that uses Chrome is a guaranteed locked-in user, in terms of having access to Google”

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Another week, another Freudian slip from a Google executive:

Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette noted that Chrome was being heavily invested in by the company because each user is a “locked-in”. “Everybody that uses Chrome is a guaranteed locked-in user, in terms of having access to Google,” was the actual quote.

LGB has said for years that the whole reason Google distributes Chrome is so it can more effectively spy on people. Google puts a lot of resources into constructing an appealing browser, based on open source software that they borrowed from KDE and other free software communities.

Then they put in their payload of spyware… which is proprietary (because if we could see how it works, we’d be able to see the extent of Google’s surveillance).

“Chrome OS” is all about taking the Chrome browser to the next level. If Google’s software is running the whole computer, everything a user does can be monitored by the Monster of Mountain View, and users can be quickly and easily exposed to new Google “services”. Pretty scary.

Towards the end of the call, a couple questions wondered if Google would be using Chrome as a way to alter search results or to introduce new products? This is a bit of a touchy subject since Google has been playing up Chrome as an “open” browser for the web (though technically it’s Chromium that is the open source version). None of the Google executives shot down these ideas and in fact, they played up these possibilities.

In other words, yes, Chrome could eventually be yet another way Google is following your movements online and using it to their advantage. Again, probably not the best way to answer those questions.

Not the best way to answer those questions? So they should be obfuscating their true plans and schemes? How can a tech journalist think that’s a good idea?

It’s good that they’re starting to be honest about their intentions, even if it’s for the wrong reasons. (Google’s execs seem to think the debate about privacy and security is over, despite the increasing attention they’re getting from governments and consumer watchdog groups).

Posted in Menacing Monopoly

Is Google spying on Twitter?

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Lately, Google has been witnessing a mini-exodus of some of its best and brightest to younger technology companies in Silicon Valley, particularly Twitter and Facebook, which are smaller and less bureaucratic. Google’s attempts to stop younger companies from poaching its personnel appear to gotten more desperate, according to this report:

In at least one of the cases Google is said to have made a counteroffer before the employee even told Google they were considering an offer from Twitter.

We previously reported that Google had set up a special group to respond to these situations quickly, sometimes overnight. But we’ve never heard of Google making counter offers prior to the actual offer from Facebook or Twitter being made.

Multiple sources close to Twitter have said that someone with access to Twitter’s most confidential information, such as who they are interviewing for key executive spots, may be leaking that information directly to Google. In this case, Google may have acted on that information too quickly. And people at Twitter, say these sources, are steaming mad.

Twitter has long made the mistake of relying on Google for essential things like content delivery and document storage. (Famously, a few years ago, Twitter’s Google Apps account was compromised and information in it published by TechCrunch, the same blog that ran the report excerpted above).

Twitter should become self-sufficient and sever all ties with Google. There’s no reason for it to be in bed with the Monster of Mountain View.

Posted in Menacing Monopoly

Want proof that Android isn’t truly open? Here you go!

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Once again, Google is trying to have it both ways:

During a keynote presentation at Google’s IO developer conference last year, Google VP of engineering Vic Gundotra proclaimed that the search giant created Android in order to bring freedom to the masses and avoid a “draconian future” in which one company controlled the mobile industry. Looking past the self-congratulatory rhetoric, Android’s poor track record on openness is becoming harder to ignore.

The company revealed Thursday that it will delay publication of the Android 3.0 source code for the foreseeable future—possibly for months. It’s not clear when (or if) the source code will be made available. The decision puts Android on a path towards a “draconian future” of its own, in which it is controlled by a single vendor—Google.

The article goes on to deliver a scathing indictment of Google’s track record.

It really is worth reading all of the way through.

Android, as it presently exists, is *already* controlled by a single vendor, Google. The only reason that Android isn’t completely proprietary is that Google built it on top of a free software kernel and free software libraries. Otherwise, it would be, like Apple’s iOS.

As the Ars Technica article above makes clear, Google doesn’t care about providing timely access to source code… a central tenet of the free software movement. Google is only interested in free software to the extent that it can use it to grow its own empire.

That’s why Google hates the AGPL (Affero General Public License). The AGPL requires that an entity running free software over a network make the source code of that software available; it is identical to the regular GNU General Public License except for this clause.

The AGPL was written to prevent companies like Google from taking free software, making improvements to it, and using the improved software to deliver services using the SAAS business model, but refusing to give back to the community by releasing the source code of the improvements.

Unfortunately, only a small percentage of free software is licensed under the AGPL – although usage has increased since 2007, when the Free Software License released Version 3 of the AGPL. For instance, StatusNet and Diaspora (free software projects that replicate Twitter and Facebook’s functionality in a federated fashion) are both licensed under the AGPL.

Posted in Menacing Monopoly

Google’s book scheme put on ice

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Finally, somebody is telling Google NO:

The company’s plan to digitize every book ever published and make them widely available was derailed on Tuesday when a federal judge in New York rejected a sweeping $125 million legal settlement the company had worked out with groups representing authors and publishers.

The decision throws into legal limbo one of the most ambitious undertakings in Google’s history, and it brings into sharp focus concerns about the company’s growing power over information. While the profit potential of the book project is not clear, the effort is one of the pet projects of Larry Page, the Google co-founder who is set to become its chief executive next month. And the project has wide support inside the company, whose corporate mission is to organize all of the world’s information.

Fortunately, wide opposition outside of the company helped persuade Judge Denny Chin that the proposed settlement was not in the public interest. A broad coalition, including librarians, college professors, The Justice Department, Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Consumer Watchdog all opposed the settlement.

Consumer Watchdog issued a statement hailing the decision:

“Google’s entire business model is to never ask permission, but to seek forgiveness if necessary,” said John M. Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project. “Judge Chin has ruled simply that you can’t take other people’s property and use it without asking.  This should send the message to the engineers at the Googleplex that the next time they want to use someone’s intellectual property, they need to ask permission.”

Simpson noted that Judge Chin also found the deal raised antitrust problems.  Consumer Watchdog was among the first to oppose the agreement on those grounds and urged the U.S. Justice Department to intervene. Justice argued against the deal.

The Monster of Mountain View likes to claim that it is just trying to expand access to knowledge. In reality, it’s trying to gain control over created works and use them to make money. Thank goodness this most recent attempt by Google to extend its monopoly position has been thwarted.

Posted in War on Privacy

France fines Google over Wi-Spy scandal

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Good news:

Google must pay a fine of €100,000 (US$142,000) for the unauthorized collection of information about the location of Wi-Fi hotspots in France by its Street View cars, France’s National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL) has ordered.

The cars, tasked with taking panoramic photos and 3D scans of buildings, and associating them with precise GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates for Google’s Street View service, also eavesdropped on Wi-Fi networks, recording their SSIDs (Service Set Identifiers) and MAC (Media Access Control) addresses, Google said last April, following an investigation by the data protection authority in Hamburg, Germany.

For too long now, the Monster of Mountain View and other big companies have faced no consequences or repercussions for their infringement of users’ privacy. Even people who don’t want to use Google products or services must take extra steps to prevent data about their activities from being collected by Google. That’s wrong. People shouldn’t have to spend hours figuring out how to “opt-out” of Google’s surveillance net. Surveillance should be prohibited without the explicit consent of the user.

Posted in Undependable Support

National Federation for the Blind: Google Apps not usable by visually impaired people

Posted on by Silicon Valley Sleuthhound

Yet another reason why schools and other institutions should avoid Google Apps:

The NFB is asking the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to probe whether New York University and Northwestern University are discriminating against blind employees and students through their use of Google Apps’ Education edition.

Specifically, the NFB alleges that Google Apps applications like Gmail, Calendar and Docs contain “significant accessibility barriers” for blind people using screen access technology, which converts the contents of the computer screen into synthesized speech or Braille.

“The NFB will not tolerate this unconscionable discrimination against blind students and faculty and callous indifference to the right of blind students to receive an equal education,” said Marc Maurer, the NFB’s president, in a statement.

The Monster of Mountain View has hoodwinked a number of universities into outsourcing their email and document storage to its datacenters. Tempted by the thought of having lower overhead and less maintenance to worry about, many administrators have accepted the offer without realizing the implications. And this is just one of the ramifications. Contrary to what Google says, Google Apps is not secure. Hackers have broken into corporate or institutional Google Apps accounts on a number of occasions. There was the well-publicized Twitter breach, and more recently, the HBGary Federal scandal. There have been others.

And, of course, there’s also consequences for user privacy. An academic institution that signs a pact with Google is basically surrendering its users’ privacy without their consent. Some institutions have, however, given students a choice of providers (meaning they can use a solution other than Google) and that is certainly appropriate. However, it appears there is no accessible alternative at New York and Northwestern Universities.