Why Anti-Piracy Legislation Will Become Law

Pending anti-piracy legislation (Senate: PROTECT IP, House: SOPA) is very likely to become law in 2012.

See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post to learn why, and why it’s important.

Jobs’ Apple Standard vs. Page’s Google Standard

Given that Apple and Google are the #1 and #2 most valuable brands in the world and that Google has invaded all of Apple’s markets in the last few years as a new competitor, it is illuminating and instructive to compare and contrast the radically different visions, values, and standards, of Apple’s former leader Steve Jobs and Google’s current CEO Larry Page.

See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post: “Jobs’ Apple Standard vs. Page’s Google Standard” here.

 

Google 21st Century Robber Baron

See my Forbes post “Google 21st Century Robber Baron” which briefly tells the story of Google’s Robber Baron rap sheet, in advance of Google’s Wednesday Senate antitrust hearing.

The post is documented with 79 links to the supporting evidence.

The post also explains why Google’s Board of Directors have been AWOL while all this scofflaw behavior has been going on.

 

 

Satirical Preview of Google’s Senate Antitrust Testimony — Google’s Pinocchio Defense Part X

Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member, it is a real pleasure to be here today, and thank you again for not issuing that formal subpoena you had to threaten in order to compel us to testify.

Let me begin my testimony by taking this opportunity to divert the media’s attention from this hearing by making a series of Google public announcements that our news algorithms predict will bury news of today’s hearing on the second page of most search results.

• Yesterday, in a contest between the world’s fastest supercomputers, IBM’s “Watson” was defeated by Google’s “Knowitall” at Jeopardy, The Price is Right and the Wheel of Fortune.
• This week, the number of Google+ users surpassed Facebook as Google added 1.1 billion Google+ users “privately” without their permission in just the last month.
• Today, as a gesture of goodwill to the European Union, Google has agreed to buy Greece for €7.77 billion.
• Also today, Google’s “Knowitall” computer network became sentient and automatically renamed itself “Your Majesty.”

Now let me disarm the tension in this room by feigning humility and reciting some focus group-tested cliché mantras that our tracking algorithms tell us will be believed by 93.1459% of people in this relevant targeted audience: Don’t be evil; Google would never do anything to undermine the trust of users; Using Google is a choice; Competition is a click away; Not every website can come out at the top of the page; You can make money without doing evil; Google is not a monopoly; Big is not bad; We are for openness others for closedness; and We understand with success comes scrutiny.

That in a nutshell is our antitrust defense; so please move along, there is nothing to see here.

Before I go, I have been told by my Washington advisors it would be helpful if I feigned more humility and I apologized for what Google has been caught doing red-handed.

First, we are very sorry Google was forced by the DOJ to officially admit to knowingly committing criminal felonies over a period of several years in actively promoting illegal prescription drug imports into the U.S. and to having to pay a near record $500m in criminal fines to settle the matter. Honestly, we never intended to get caught.

Second, we are very very sorry that Federal Judge Chin and the DOJ opposed the Google Book Settlement because we illegally copied fifteen million books without the permission of, or payment to the copyright owners, and also attempted to corner the online market for orphan works. It never occurred to us that stealing was illegal.

Third, we are very, very, very, sorry for being forced to admit to deceptive privacy practices and to be on probation for twenty years in the FTC-Google Buzz privacy settlement. Google has always said one thing and done another, so we had no idea that misrepresentation on the Internet was considered a deceptive business practice. Who could have known that?

Fourth, we are very, very, very, very sorry, for being investigated by the FCC for effectively wiretapping tens of millions of Americans homes in the Google StreetView WiSpy scandal. We always thought that if an average person did not know how to encrypt their private information, passwords and email, they deserved to have their privacy violated.

Fifth, we are very, very, very, very, very sorry the DOJ had to threaten us with a Sherman Act monopolization case to stop us from colluding with Yahoo to corner the online advertising market in the proposed Google-Yahoo Ad Agreement in 2008. Frankly, we were surprised the DOJ could get so huffy about antitrust.

Sixth, we are very, very, very, very, very, very sorry the that discovery in the Viacom vs. Google copyright case showed Google knowingly infringed on hundreds of thousands of videos in order to corner the Internet video distribution market. At Google we call taking whatever content we want without permission “fair use” and “sharing,” not infringing or stealing.

Seventh, we are very, very, very, very, very, very, very sorry that in this difficult job market, the DOJ caught us colluding with five other companies, to restrain competition for highly-skilled employees to limit both the compensation and career opportunity of thousands of our employees. We are happy to report in this instance Google was not the only company caught breaking the law.

In conclusion, Google’s unique mission to organize the world’s information is not monopolistic. Our repeated clashes with law enforcement and the plethora of antitrust, criminal, privacy, property and other investigations of our company are just a big misunderstanding because Google’s ever-flowing innovations are so disruptive. Several years ago, Google’s founders chose a Tyrannosaurus-Rex as Google’s corporate mascot, and prominently installed a life size skeleton of a T-Rex at our Mountain View headquarters as a symbol of Google’s disruptive innovation. Every other dinosaur had to run faster and hide better because of the T-Rex’s constant disruptive innovation. Simply, where others see predation, Google sees innovation.

***

Google Antitrust Pinocchio Series:
Part IX: Google Locks-in Its One Click Away Defense
Part VIII: Google’s Deceptive One Click Away Defense
Part VII: Two fatal Flaws in Google’s Antitrust Defense
Part VI: Fact-Checking Google’s Antitrust Defense
Part V: “Google does not reap the benefits of significant network effects”
Part IV: Stress-Testing Google’s Top Ten Antitrust Defenses
Part III: “Google-AdMob: ‘Its too new to dominate'”
Part II: Google: Antitrust’s Pinocchio?
Part I: What is “One click away?

 

Google’s Rogue WiSpy Invasive Behavior Proliferates — Security is Google’s Achilles Heel — Part XIII

Evidence continues to mount that Google’s management and supervision of its Android operating system is out-of-control when it comes to protecting privacy and security.

• Google’s corporate ethos that it is better to “ask for forgiveness than permission” increasingly means Android has no privacy by design and hence less security for users by default.
• Requiring and respecting the need for permission and authorization is a bedrock truism of IT security — and the evidence below increasingly indicates that Google has a deep aversion to that IT security truism.

Consider the growing pattern of Google’s default design and behavior that maximizes collection of private information, which inherently puts users at greater security risk. 

First, and profoundly disturbing, is a new TechRepublic revelation in a post by security blogger Donovan Colbert.

In setting up his new Android-based tablet, Mr. Colbert discovered that the Android operating system by default, i.e. without permission, automatically collected and implemented encrytion key passcodes to automatically gain access to private networks without the permission of the user. In Mr. Colbert’s own words:

• “Google is not only storing a list of what hotspots you have visited, but any private encryption keys necessary to connect to those hotspots in the cloud.”
• “The idea that every Android device connects with that access point shares our private corporate access keys with Google is pretty unacceptable.”
• “Honestly if there is any data that shouldn’t be harvested, stored and synched automatically between devices, it is encryption keys, passcodes and passwords.” 

Second, we learned from WSJ privacy reporting that Google Android tracked users location a thousand times a day without the users’ meaningful permission.

• This Google no privacy by design revelation prompted congressional hearings, the scandal moniker “locationgate,” and new legislation from Senators Franken and Blumenthal.

Finally, how does this pattern involve the WiSpy scandal of Google being caught wardriving tens of millions of homes, in over thirty countries, for over three years, eavesdropping on unencrypted home WiFi routers and recording all signals including emails, and passwords.

As you may remember, Google said that systematic eavesdropping on citizens, was the mistake of one engineer, and not at all sanctioned by the company at large.

Here is Google’s 5-14-10 official story:

• “So how did this happen? Quite simply, it was a mistake. In 2006 an engineer working on an experimental WiFi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast WiFi data. A year later, when our mobile team started a project to collect basic WiFi network data like SSID information and MAC addresses using Google’s Street View cars, they included that code in their software—although the project leaders did not want, and had no intention of using, payload data.” 

However if Google was being forthright that it’s Android effort indeed did not want to by default to collect the maximum private information possible, why did Google mobile engineering manager Dave Burke tell the Guardian 1-29-08, the following that shows it was obviously Google’s policy to collect the most WiFi information possible…

• “If you’re going to concentrate on location you want every bit of data you can…”
• “…Cell ID is one location, the address of your Wi-Fi access point is another. The end result is that we want the user to have the best possible experience, and we’ll do whatever it takes to get it … to us they’re just network signals and we’re interested in all of them.

In sum, the pattern here is becoming more clear. Google’s corporate ethos is at work here: “ask for forgiveness not permission.” That ethos puts innovation, speed and efficiency, ahead of the privacy and security of users.

• The big takeaway here is that Google’s corporate priority is to collect the maximum amount of information by most any means, without meaningful permission or authorization, as fast as possible.
• This means that Google effectively has a “no privacy by design” approach to privacy, and that security is a lesser priority at Google

***

Previous parts of the “Security is Google’s Achilles Heel” Series:

• Part I: “Why security is Google’s Achilles heel”
• Part II: “Google values security much less than others do”
• Part III: “Google: “Security is part of our DNA” (Do Not Ask)
• Part IV: “Why Security is Google’s Achilles Heel”
• Part V: “Google Apps Security Chief is a magician/mentalist”
• Part VI: “Google-China: Implications for Cybersecurity”
• Part VII: “Did Google Over-React to China Cybersecurity Breach?”
• Part IX: “Google’s Titanic Security Flaws”
• Part X: : “A Google Android Botnet Problem”:
• Part XI: “Google’s Deep Aversion to Permission”
• Part XII: “Top Ten Reasons Google Has Culpability in the Gmail Data Breach”

For even more information, see the Security section of PrecursorBlog’s sister site: www.GoogleMonitor.com; or read the “Security is Google’s Achilles Heel chapter of my Book: Search & Destroy Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc. at www.SearchAndDestroyBook.com.