Google needs to know who is knocking, so they can pull up your voice file and your preferences so they can do all their Googlish tricks for you.And it is true that the government (NSA) does want to know who is talking as they do sort through "the internet" constantly looking for threats to national security.
"true transparency and no anonymity" is the way forward for the internet": "In a world of asynchronous threats it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it."
Google also caught shite for saying bluntly that "On the internet, you have no real expectation of privacy, ever."
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OK, so Google tells it blunt when asked -- the government does want to know who is speaking at all times and NSA has rigged the game so that they always can listen in on you wherever you are, and your IP address is only one of many many things that mean "On the internet, you have no real expectation of privacy, ever".
The NSA can listen in on you all the time since your phone has a mic and a speaker that are always on.
So you start wearing your new wearable ear rings to bed, does this affect your privacy any? Sure it does, NSA might be listening or recording you to figure out what "Oh my God --- Oh my God --- Harder, harder, I'm going to go soon" means.
Google requires you to have an active gmail account to sign into any of their services. Apple requires you to have an Apple ID to even start your device up. MS required you to have and list an active e-mail address (shows how just long it has been since I was a main stream Windozian, don't it).
Other than responding to questions and saying the blunt unvarnished truth, what about this makes Google the "great evil" ???
Surely they've done something more nefarious that telling the blunt truth when asked a question by a reporter?
Come on .... trot it on out, what did the 'dubious duo' actually go do that was evil incarnate?
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Let's see. things I know about that people will cite eventually ...They copied all the out of copy rite books in the English world and Guggenheim'd and Librivox'd them all, every singe stinkin' one of them.
https://librivox.org/ Wanna listen to a good book while you are driving?
They drove down every single street and photographed and mapped them all, and they also mapped every single active wifi signal and tied them down to a map location. They also logged into every unsecured public wifi router and tagged them as well so you can ask your phone "Hey Google, where is the nearest wifi hotspot?" and get an real answer.
These acts if done by the Government might seem a little Big Brotherish to some, but Google provides data like this to people as part of search services so for them to be collecting it isn't all that surprising.
Well, yes it was at the time because they were 3/4 done with it before people even noticed they were doing it at all.
Google has surprised people several times by doing things THAT ARE NOT ILLEGAL OR RESTRICTED and having done them so quickly and quietly such that the fait accompli was in the public domain before anyone could do anything about it.
Google Earth was showing me mowing my grass on my riding lawn mower with my shirt off and making it available to everyone on line -- this was amazing enough to me but the folks swimming nekid and the women bouncing nekid on their hubbies crotch on the poolside lounge furniture in their back yards got a little upset about it sometimes.
So Google put a fuzz filter on that last deepest magnification level so you can't see me or them clearly. Big deal. It is old news now.
Is Google's great evil that they are information collectors and dispersers par excellence ?
Is "the great evil" that knowledge is available and free for anyone ?
Privacy -- show where Google has knowingly dispersed some non-public knowledge and let's talk about those particular privacy destroying episodes.
FOR THE FUN OF IT Ask Google how many times you (your full name) have been arrested. (public record, you know)
Didn't know that you had lived in Washington State, now did you?Folks are just now questioning what a cloud of Google balloons floating around all the time could do -- beyond carrying fast free internet to every corner of the world that is.
A crowd of them unmanned delivery drones flying everywhere over everything, all them robot cars and trucks making delivery runs and doing that cheap taxi service stuff, how about them for keeping tabs upon you?
Google is suspected of a lot of things, but let's just talk about the ones that bother you the most.
Verslagen brings up a good point -- only the honest joes need to worry about having no secrecy on line. The dishonest joes who use bounce sites and filter sites and hardware scramblers and stuff each already have a file at NSA as "persons of interest" and are tracked all the time automatically using their own "protections" to keep track of them .....