Hi Ron,

I really wonder how much “scrutiny” this practice is getting. How much scrutiny is ANY practice, program or policy of consequence receiving in America today?

While it’s unsettling to consider what most users don’t know (or don’t care to know) about Google which is a matter of public record, it’s what we CAN’T KNOW about Google which is orders of magnitude more troubling.

From the documentary “Google—The Power of a Search Engine”…

“Google scans every mail sent by its users and stores the data. Users are informed of this when they sign up with Gmail, but NOT those who reply to a Gmail…and anyone who installs Google Desktop to search their own computers is giving away even more secrets… This means that Google can precisely monitor what you have on your computer, how many files you’ve downloaded (and maybe have forgotten to pay for)–or how many people you’ve sent emails to.”

Elsewhere (although you’d have to be a Google insider to know this for sure) I’ve seen and read that it stores this information INDEFINITELY. Given today’s technology and cost-per-unit-storage this is easily within the realm of feasibility.

Google is a highly secretive company which knows (or CAN know) virtually everything of significance about the “private” lives of its users, while we’re not privy to even the most basic internal machinations of Google–most significantly HOW the data they’ve collected on us are being used and disseminated. What’s behind their algorithms and code? We’ll probably never know–and that’s the problem.

Consider the power and influence exercised by a company which offers a search engine: the first few pages of hits comprise all the information most people will ever encounter regarding their query, and the ones at the top of the very first page are the ones most likely to be read, and carry the most weight.

Aside from the hardware technology and intellectual property which comprise Google and the products it promotes there’s also an increasingly lax climate of governmental oversight in reining in companies like Google, LexisNexis and Microsoft–for obvious reasons…

As with Blackwater–the “Private Security (i.e. MERCENARY) Firm” now operating with absolute impunity in Iraq and Afghanistan–accountability is being conveniently circumvented on behalf of Big Business to the mutual benefit of its partner in crime: Big Government. While there is still a pretense of “laws, on the books” which explicitly prohibit the government from collecting and collating data on private citizens in the absence of compelling evidence that they are engaged in criminal activity: 1) it’s politically less risky to “outsource” such tasks to a private third-party (even though such attempted end-runs around the Constitution are just as illegal); and, 2) it’s less expensive to use such an established third-party since its systems are already in place and have proven effective. Also, such companies are driven by a profit incentive not available to government bureaucracies. (Such advantages notwithstanding, domestic spying programs have nevertheless been in operation since the end of WWII: COINTELPRO; TALON; CHAOS; the NSA’s recent, warrantless acquisition of millions of private phone records, etc.–but the use of private companies as agents offers at least one level of “distance” from potentially illegal acts.)

The average person appears not to comprehend the rapidly escalating attrition of our civil liberties, Constitutional rights and what’s left of our democracy. Part of the reason is the equally rapid escalation in media consolidation over the past twenty-some years facilitated by deregulation of the Communications industry relative to print and broadcast media. (People can’t consider what they don’t know about, and the evening news ain’t about to bring such matters to their attention.) Now “net neutrality” is in jeopardy from the same increasingly monolithic, homogenous quarter.

A few anecdotes illustrate this attrition…

A supermarket patron who sued the store after injuring himself slipping on a slick of spilled yogurt found himself answering for his own purchasing habits when the defense offered evidence that the plaintiff was in the habit of buying a liter of vodka a week, based on his savings card records. The defense intimated (since there was no proof of the theory) that a drinking problem might have been the proximate cause of the defendant’s injuries. Whether you endorse such an intimation or not the point is that even the most seemingly benign piece of data can end up having implications far beyond the ability (or at least, inclination) of the average person to imagine them.

Twenty-some-odd years ago police needed something called “probable cause” (required by the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights) to detain someone for questioning. Examples of “PC” are: seeing someone fleeing from the scene of a fire carrying a book of matches and a gasoline can, observing someone with a crowbar in a closed industrial park at three o’clock in the morning, or watching an automobile swerving back and forth from one lane to another on the highway. It was a violation of an individual’s Constitutional rights to stop, search and question a person “just to see what’s what” since, to do so, is characteristic of a Police State. (“Show me your papers!”)

One New Year’s Eve this PC requirement went out the window when State and Municipal law enforcement agencies were allowed to conduct random roadside stops to check for drunk drivers. It’s important to understand the difference between a cop pulling over a driver who is “prima facie” DUI because the officer observed him weaving down the road, and a dragnet randomly stopping vehicles being driven by people who show no signs of intoxication: If the police can detain you in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever–what CAN’T they detain you for?

Still–since it meant saving the lives of scores of innocent people during a day which statistically had the highest number of highway fatalities I wasn’t really opposed to this “minor infringement” on our rights. The problem is that this program was later expanded to other days (beyond January 1st) and other purposes (besides just checking for drunk drivers).

While random roadside checks–on any ol’ day of the year–for insurance verification and mechanical violations (and whatever else the constables might find as they’re peering into your vehicle) are (with deference to any budding John Yoo- or Alberto Gonzales-types who may be reading this) UNEQUIVOCALLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL, there are even more outrageous examples of the overreach of authority…

Not so very long ago, in order to make a prima facie case for solicitation of prostitution an arresting officer needed evidence of two things: that the suspect proposed 1) to engage in a specific sex act, for 2) a specific amount of money…and both of these “contractual terms” had to be proposed by the alleged perpetrator himself (or herself). Nowadays, police stings conducted in most major cities across the country use undercover “decoy” officers to bust would-be Johns BY INITIATING THE CONTACT THEMSELVES and offering to perform sexual services for a fee. All the subject has to do is say “okay” and he’s busted! And while admittedly “entrapment” was once the last-ditch mantra of choice for every knucklehead caught red-handed in the act, such stings are outrageously blatant entrapment–plain and simple.

I don’t know what it’s like where you live but within the last couple of years the city I’m in has installed three or four video cameras at every major intersection in town. And next year all fifty states will be required to issue “Real ID” cards (as driver’s licenses) containing RFID chips which can be read right through your clothes, wallet or purse (at a distance), and soon these chips will be everywhere–and on everything.

In a Windows Secrets newsletter I received yesterday an article entitled “You’ll get a new Windows Update, like it or not” reads in part…

“Windows Secrets first disclosed on Sept. 13, 2007, that Microsoft had been silently downloading Windows Update (WU) executable components on users’ computers – even when the users’ auto-update settings required advance permission… This time, Microsoft is being more up-front about its forthcoming refresh of Windows Update… But the Redmond company hasn’t changed the wording of the Control Panel settings that appear to prevent Windows Update from performing silent downloads – but don’t.”

Do you really want to live in an oligarchic future where the Corporatocracy knows everything about you and controls “virtually” every aspect of your life? Where manipulation of the individual has become so complete and ubiquitous that even your gratitude toward an increasingly narrow range of options will have been manufactured for you?

When television companies started superimposing their logos and “dancing baloney” advertisements on your TV screens a few years ago (for those of you who remember a time before that) there was nothing altruistic about this new assault on your sensibilities. When corporations fired their human switchboard operators and replaced them with damnable automated systems, forcing you to navigate a gauntlet of not-infrequently inapplicable menu options followed by inordinately long wait times (sometimes only to be relegated to a dial tone) this was NOT “for your convenience”…it was to fatten these companies’ bottom lines. When many of the same corporations outsourced their Customer Service and Technical Support centers under the ruse of “keeping costs down for the consumer” they were in fact doing it to enlarge their own bank accounts. When previously unhindered newsletters and webpages are suddenly rife with balloon advertisements that pop up like mines in a minefield as you pass your mouse pointer over linked keywords, making it annoyingly difficult to read the text below them–this is not to “help you” locate goods and services you might want…it’s the site operator making money for himself. When the vaunted “National Do Not Call Registry” ultimately failed to suppress the annoying phone calls it was supposed to stop (or to provide any meaningful recourse against violators) it’s because: 1) it was, in its inception, another do-nothing governmental bureaucracy; and, 2) the government has a vested interest in NOT suppressing taxable commerce, no matter how it arises. And while the price of a barrel of oil may be at an all time high, the oil companies are concurrently reporting record quarterly earnings instead of “sharing the burden” with their hapless customers. And when NBC “uninvited” Dennis Kucinich from participating in that debate in Las Vegas (even though the airwaves are ostensibly public property and the American people had a RIGHT to hear him debate), and the Press in general unanimously marginalizes a candidate like Ron Paul, it’s because The System (and there really IS one) has already decided what kind of government “we” will have after the 2008 election–there being substantively little difference between Obama and McCain, since either will effectively perpetuate the policies and political trajectory of the current administration.

Google’s motto is “Don’t be evil.”

Do you think such mottos are sufficient to keep huge corporations (and even huger governments) on the straight-and-narrow? Or do you think, as the old saying goes, that ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY?

Does that answer your question, Ron?