Patriot Act Haunts Google Service

The Globe and Mail has an interesting piece taking a look at Google's latest headache, the US Government. Many people are suddenly deciding to spurn Google's services and applications because it opens up potential avenues of surveillance. "Some other organizations are banning Google's innovative tools outright to avoid the prospect of U.S. spooks combing through their data. Security experts say many firms are only just starting to realize the risks they assume by embracing Web-based collaborative tools hosted by a U.S. company, a problem even more acute in Canada where federal privacy rules are at odds with U.S. security measures."

Not good enough

[Naughty Bob (1004174)]

Spurning these services will mark you out for further surveillance straight away.

Have they never read Crime and Punishment?

Re:Not good enough

[by Anonymous Coward]

I would, but I am afraid to check it out from the library and get added to the terrorist watch list.

Re:Not good enough

[CodeBuster (516420)]

It is sad, but that is precisely what used to happen in the old days of the Soviet Union except then it was the list of "enemies of the people". One might reasonably ask what the "wrong book" is doing in the library if checking it out gets one's name put onto the list of "enemies of the people" but such questions are invariably ignored in pursuit of "the enemies of the people". The punishment continued even after one had served time in the form of a wolf ticket [wikipedia.org] and being sent to the 101st kilometer [wikipedia.org]. It is scary to think that certain types of ex-criminals are effectively getting the same treatment today in the United States.

Re:Not good enough

[fugue (4373)]

The "wrong book" is in the library in order to fish for enemies of the people. Sort of how Bush was on the ballot to fish for people who should never be allowed to reproduce. Only someone forgot an important detail somewhere along the way.

Re:Not good enough

[TommydCat (791543)]

This guy [google.com] spurned the services and look what happens to him!

Re:Not good enough

[GodfatherofSoul (174979)]

A government agent in an unmarked car drove up and handed him a wad of cash? Sign me up!

Re:Not good enough

[grcumb (781340)]

Spurning these services will mark you out for further surveillance straight away.

'Mark you out?' The fact of the matter is, everything we transmit outside of the firewall is subject to surveillance these days. And most companies have no clue how much of their data is crossing the firewall every day.

I don't know why people are getting their knickers in a knot over Google, when the main problem lies with the US backbone carriers, who - with only one known exception - have opened their networks to constant and widespread monitoring by US security agencies. Google at very least had the guts to fight a public legal battle with the Feds over release of even sanitised data.

The story here may be the danger to companies when they bring these companies inside the firewall, but again, refusing to trust Google is a funny place to start enforcing data integrity. The plain and simple fact is that the greatest threat of corporate data leaks is from staff who, whether through sins of omission or commission, carry sensitive data on laptops, thumb drives, CDs without any protections whatsoever.

I'd like to believe that data protection regimes are so advanced in these companies that the potential threat posed by Google and other online services is the main concern, but I find that impossible to do. I have to conclude, therefore that this is nothing more than a tiny kernel of truth wrapped in chocolatey FUD-ness that PHBs and corporate counsel love so much.

Re:Not good enough

[grcumb (781340)]

I was simply saying that boycotting something most people do raises a question mark against you as surely as more obvious, 'incriminating' behaviour. At least, it would if I was in charge.

Point taken.

... And I'm really glad you're not in charge. 8^)

Re:Not good enough

[theonetruekeebler (60888)]

Qwest. And shortly afterwards the U.S. government started finding excuses to (a) cancel existing contracts with Qwest, (b) declare them ineligible to for future no-bid contracts, and (c) preventing them from bidding on other contracts. Qwest alleges that hundreds of millions of dollars were routed around them to telcos more willing to play along. Good summary here [washingtonpost.com].

Re:I Propose

[protolith (619345)]

I propose Google Subpoena Gpoena - A searchable database of all of the gov't data requests and all associated legal documents, especially what is being requested and why.

The snooping would be greatly curtailed if there was no anonymity for a snooping govt. If every request was made naked in front of the teeming millions only the most vital info requests would occur.

Request for serches from machine No 000.000.000.0000 in relation to ongoing criminal investigation associated with charges of ... ... ... ... would seem legit.

Request for all machines that searched for "TSA" , "Liquid" , and "explosive" for ongoing terrorist investigation would suddenly seem quite dubious without better specifics.

This could work

[fv (95460)]

I agree that exposing the extent of this could definitely help. When I received multiple FBI subpoenas in 2004 for Insecure.Org [insecure.org] web logs, I notified Nmap users [seclists.org] and it was posted to various web sites, including Slashdot [slashdot.org].

After all of that press four years ago, the subpoenas stopped and I haven't received another one since. Maybe it is just a coincidence, but I'm happy about it nonetheless.

In other Nmap news, version 4.60 was just released [seclists.org]. You might want to download it with Tor though, just to be on the safe side in case the subpoenas resume :).

-Fyodor

Time for google.ca?

[argent (18001)]

Time for Google to move to Vancouver?

Only terrorists host files abroad!

[Digestromath (1190577)]

In this day and age, anyone who 'hides' thier data beyond the reach of America's patriotic government data mining operations is a cut and clear terrorist! Whether it be in some dank and dusty cave in the mountains of Afghanistan, or a climate controlled secure facility in Canada.

Uncle Sam says "Do your part, keep data in America!"

When you host abroad, your hosting with Osama!

Privacy is for the unpatriotic!

Re:Only terrorists host files abroad!

[dgatwood (11270)]

I hope the person who modded this insightful understands that this is irony. I hope that this is irony. If either of those two hopes turn out to be unfounded, I will likely lose what little faith I have remaining in humanity....

Re:Only terrorists host files abroad!

[Metasquares (555685)]

Tangential, but I find that small groups of people can restore faith in humanity, while it generally takes the actions and behaviors of large groups to dash it.

Re:Time for google.ca?

[Ogive17 (691899)]

I think the bigger issue is how much information google is actually storing. I don't care if Canada's government respects the individual's privacy more.. the temptation is there for future abuse.

I'm not one that usually gets paranoid and I hate conspiracy theories.. but google worries me. Even if they never do anything wrong as a company, it just takes one person with bad intentions to make all that information public.

There is something wrong with a company that wants to be everything to everyone. (look at Microsoft)

Re:Time for google.ca?

[Sancho (17056)]

Since the article is about collaboration tools (like Google Docs and mail), I certainly hope that Google is storing the relevant information!

As for other information (such as who is searching for what), well they're probably not storing significantly more than Yahoo or MSN. Google's just one of the more popular targets because they're pretty highly visible.

The Patriot act says that, under certain circumstances, a service provider may not notify its customers that they've released their records. That's one of the biggest issues here--companies want to know if their documents are being viewed.

Re:Time for google.ca?

[jo42 (227475)]

Someone should tell the US Gooberment that all their Crackberry©(tm) e-mail traffic goes through a data center in Canada, eh? See how fast The Bushies and Their Henchmen annex The Great White North, eh?

Re:Time for google.ca?

[Gonoff (88518)]

annex The Great White North

Be very careful! Look what happened the last time the US fell out with Canada! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington [wikipedia.org]

Don't keep logs

[Threni (635302)]

There's no reason why Google (et al) need keep logs of who's doing what. Websites keep logs largely to trace attacks, don't they? Can't they have a standard EFF-approved `we keep logs for 24 hours` policy, after which time they're removed permanently?

Re:Don't keep logs

[vux984 (928602)]

There's no reason why Google (et al) need keep logs of who's doing what.

Ok, how naive are you?

Websites keep logs largely to trace attacks, don't they?

That's one element of it, but for most sites its a minor element. Most sites keep logs to trace where users are going, how they are using the site, etc.

Most site-admins are interested in where users are going on the site, how they get their, where they leave, how they arrive, how long they spend on each page, etc. They want to know which pages are popular, they want to know at which stage people usually abandon their shopping cart, etc, etc.

They generally want to make the site more effective, and logs (and analysis of those logs) are a primary tool.

Google, of course, being an ADVERTISNG company first and foremost, is further interested in logs in order to generate profiles, to attach your surfing habits to demographics. They want to know how old your are, what your interests are, how much you make, your ethnicity, level of education, etc. Now, getting that from one site would be nearly impossible. But when you consider that every site that has 'ads by google' on it, is doing its best to track you, they actually CAN get a lot of that information with a high degree of accuracy.

These logs are valuable. If they develop a new algorithm to extract new information they can run it against their logs and pull out that additional information.

And with google its not just -logs-, its content. Google apps like gmail, groups, documents, maps, store your content. So now they have your content (your email messages, your text documents and spreadhseets + a good chunk of your browsing history, possibly including what you've bought online... or at least what you've added to shopping carts, etc.

Google isn't in business to provide you with free useful applications. The value to google of google docs and gmail is to be able to data mine the content to generate profile information.

Can't they have a standard EFF-approved `we keep logs for 24 hours` policy, after which time they're removed permanently?

Even if they -would- delete your logs after 24 hours (They won't without a huge fight.) that still doesn't address the issue of google hosting (and data mining) your content, not to mention the risk they might turn it over to the us government if they ask.

Re:Don't keep logs

[AHuxley (892839)]

Its the NSA at the choke points of google's wonderful optical roll out that should have most of you thinking a bit harder.
Google wants to play nice in Asia, the NSA upgrades in Hawaii.

http://cryptome.org/google/kunia-us.htm [cryptome.org]

Re:Don't keep logs

[innerweb (721995)]

Ack... Proofread your posts!!!

Look for legislation with a rider that excuses Google from any legal liabilities for information sharing with government caretakers.

Though, I would prefer the wording of my first post.

InnerWrb

Not just Canada...

[uid7306m (830787)]

Yup. In the UK, here, the Data Protection Act makes it legally dubious to put anyone else's data onto Google. Here, there's a responsibilty to protect personal data.

PGP

[Rinisari (521266)]

Perfect time to consider PGP.

http://firegpg.tuxfamily.org/ [tuxfamily.org]

Re:PGP

[26199 (577806)]

That would be when nasty laws that allow law enforcement to demand cryptographic keys come into play.

These days encryption just makes you a target. Clearly the way forward is steganography :)

Re:PGP

[Digi-John (692918)]

yes, sTeganogRaphy seems like a good idea to me... perhaps we coUld even embed SecreTs iN Our messages ON slashdot or somEthing...

Re:PGP

[CRCulver (715279)]

It's sad that a decade ago the use of PGP--or at least the possession of a PGP key--was de rigeur among nerds, and now it seems that few nerds know much about encryption. Even if you don't want to harangue all your friends about using it with you, you could at least put a public key on your website and on keyserver so that people have the choice of sending you encrypted correspondence.

Tragically PGP is too hard to use

[sjbe (173966)]

Perfect time to consider PGP.

When you can figure out a way to make public key encryption so easy even my mother can use it I'll be happy to try. I'd love to use it but the person on the other end of the message has to be willing to try too. I haven't found anyone I correspond with yet willing to jump through the hoops required. Maybe you've had better luck than I have.

Never mind the fact that almost no one except serious geeks have even heard of, much less actually understands, public key encryption.

Re:Tragically PGP is too hard to use

[Zatar (131299)]

It's not just hard to use, it's also ugly as hell. I thought about starting to use PGP again recently and just using it for digital signatures makes my email nearly unreadable never mind using actual encryption. Here's a nice one-line email:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hey dude, how's it going?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFH6CrifPJd VEzW7qwRAs8fAKCSg8j qWO8zfHpIrNKJ zBtrHF54UwCfQWhO
lGZk7Ys4hl e1OqxyEuHn1EY=
=izSS
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

If I sent this it a non-geek they'd probably go WTF? and tell me my email program is broken.

It would need to be transparently integrated into all popular email programs so that no one actually needs to see the code in their inbox. An argument could be made that in the long run PGP has actually made the problem worse by allowing email vendors to punt on the concept of encryption and just tell users "if you want encryption use PGP" instead of having to develop an integrated solution that actually works well enough for mass adoption.

Privacy is an illusion

[rbanzai (596355)]

The war over privacy in the U.S. was fought during the last eight years and common people lost. Nothing is secure. No information is out of reach of any government agency that decides it wants it, and there are no legal protections. Laws are in place now to make sure that our old image of privacy can never be restored, no matter what the current presidential candidates might claim. They don't us t have that privacy back because it does not serve their purpose.

The war was fought. We lost. I don't blame people from other nations for being concerned but if they haven't already lost privacy where they live they soon will, and it isn't coming back.

Facebook

[conner_bw (120497)]

Quick, everyone join Facebook [commongrou...nsense.org] in protest!

"Patriot" act

[iamacat (583406)]

What is so patriotic about passing laws that will eventually put US companies out of business in the era of hosted applications while terrorists will simply move their sites abroad?

Re:"Patriot" act

[Fjandr (66656)]

I think the problem is assuming that Congresscritters are patriotic on the whole or that they have any thoughts outside of ensuring their own re-election.

All they have to do is shout "Think of the children" or "We need this to fight terrorism" and the majority who have no interest in delving into the consequences of any given action will line up behind them like good little citizens.

Re:"Patriot" act

[Sperbels (1008585)]

All they have to do is shout "Think of the children" or "We need this to fight terrorism" and the majority who have no interest in delving into the consequences of any given action will line up behind them like good little citizens.

That'll only work for so long. Then they'll need a new boogey man to scare the shit out of everyone. It's almost amusing sometimes to watch old movies to see how our nation's top boogey man evolves... right now I'm thinking of Back to the Future. During that era, the boogey men were Libyans. They used to be Russians, and Germans/Japanese before that, and now it's Al Qaida. Is there ever a time when we don't single out someone as the enemy and use them as an excuse to gain more control of the domestic population? I guess I just hate freedom...don't listen to me.

Re:"Patriot" act

[Fjandr (66656)]

I quite agree. If there is no enemy, one will be invented. Like stereotypes, there's always some truth involved in making a particular group "the enemy," but that's just to make it plausible among the masses. No critical thought required to accept that some new group is Public Enemy #1.

Unbelieveable!

[Flakeloaf (321975)]

You mean, if I enter personal information on a free web server run by some organization whose business model is the harvesting and sale of personal information, that my personal information might not be kept private?

Horror of horrors.

Re:Unbelieveable!

[JustinOpinion (1246824)]

Just in case you're serious (or someone else suffers from the misconception embodied in your post):

The issue here is not with users voluntarily using Google services (search, gmail, etc.). Rather it is with companies who want to outsource their data needs to Google. In addition to the visible public products that Google has, it also offers corporate solutions: for instance if a company wants to outsource their email system, or have Google run search and collaborative software for use inside the company.

Google is trying hard to make these new kinds of products work. But unfortunately U.S. laws mean that any data that ends up on Google servers can be snooped by U.S. authorities. Many companies don't like the idea that the U.S. government will have such broad access to their data. In many countries where strong privacy laws exist (Canada, U.K., etc.), allowing the data to be managed by a U.S. company would then actually be illegal--since the company couldn't guarantee integrity or privacy of the data.

The end result of this is that Google is at disadvantage in the global marketplace because of the over-reaching U.S. laws. Google isn't the only one, of course: I'm sure U.S. companies have been losing lots of contracts because international businesses are wary of storing or moving data through U.S. systems since it is now well-known that such systems are not immune to U.S. government monitoring or interference.

How did google get singled out?

[joeflies (529536)]

ever look at the kind of data stored in an online CRM, like salesforce.com? complete sales records, every email to every client, all the product defect issues. Maybe the SEC and the IRS may decide to look at raw data and not wait for the auditor report to come back.

Corporate Espionage?

[SuperBanana (662181)]

Many people are suddenly deciding to spurn Google's services and applications because it opens up potential avenues of surveillance.

Um, how about corporate espionage? Nothing, absolutely nothing, stops Google from harvesting everything they can get their hands on- and they have the storage systems and human expertise to do it.

Case and point: I emailed a link to a wiki I had just set up to 3 people, two of whom had Gmail accounts. A spider from Google hit the page hours before anyone else did, hitting the wiki just after I emailed the link out. There were no public links to the site, and no referral URL.

So, let's see: processing your email to show you relevant ads? Check. Processing email to feed URLs to their spider? Check. What else does Google do with your email? Wouldn't it be the greatest tool in their quivver- the "God Google"? Sit down with HipWebShit.com, then an hour after the meeting and see a)How many people search/click on links for HipWebShit b)Who from HipWebShit.com has sent gmail users email (and what it says...), c)Who is talking about HipWebShit from/to a Gmail account period (ie general "valley buz"?

Hint: why do you think Google has so many PhDs? It starts getting creepy when you realize that Google seems to work very hard to keep their employees inside the google campus as much as possible, how secretive their operations are (seriously, nobody can compete with them anymore- it's not like they're guarding the henhouse for competition reasons) and how cult-like the atmosphere is...

Re:Corporate Espionage?

[hxnwix (652290)]

It starts getting creepy when you realize that Google seems to work very hard to keep their employees inside the google campus as much as possible, how secretive their operations are (seriously, nobody can compete with them anymore- it's not like they're guarding the henhouse for competition reasons) and how cult-like the atmosphere is

More sympathetically: if you keep the workers at work, they work more. However, I can't discount your view completely. Perhaps they really are preparing their worker bees for the transfer to the comet hale bop UFO, and if you are correct, they'd want to hold those workers close to their incorporeal breast so that word of this lunacy doesn't spread beyond the compound confines.

I emailed a link to a wiki I had just set up to 3 people, two of whom had Gmail accounts. A spider from Google hit the page...

Oh my gord. They sent a digital arachnid!?

Hint: why do you think Google has so many PhDs?

I don't know. Because they're employing Dr. Evil(s)?

Re:Corporate Espionage?

[PS3Penguin (1048518)]

Or .. its how the gmail anit-smap system tries to find and filter out spam / virus links by tasting what links are sent to gmail recipients and looking for known exploits / spam / etc. Sorry if that was tin-foil-hatted enough :)

database =! security

[globaljustin (574257)]

the Mountain View, Calif.-based company will not discuss how often government agencies demand access to its customers' information or whether content on its new Web-based collaborative tools has been the subject of any reviews under the Patriot Act

Google isn't doing nearly enough to keeps its users informed about privacy issues. A press release saying "We're doing everything we can" isn't nearly good enough from the company that wants to organize all the world's information.

If anything, the federal law enforcement should be watching Google to ensure they aren't violating their user's privacy.

Part of me is hopeful that eventually the misguided people in government who think you can fight terrorism with a database will learn and change. Not everyone in the government is as evil as Bush/Rove/Cheney. If databases stopped terrorism, we wouldn't have had 9/11...at least one person on each of the 9/11 planes was on the terrorist watch list (in the database).

No rule of law with data hosted in the US

[farbles (672915)]

The trouble here is not Google, it is the fact there is no longer the rule of law with regards to data hosted in the United States. When the government can take any information they like from a server hosted in their country with no warrant, no notification, no nothing, then it's not law, it's criminal activity no matter who does it.

Here in Canada this has been a big deal now for the last couple of years. I've been at many IT meetings where tracking down what was hosted on US-based servers and removing it back to Canada has been on the agenda. We're not perfect here but we do have PIPEDA [privcom.gc.ca], the protection of privacy act, binding our ISPs. You need access to data, convince a judge and get a warrant. That's the rule of law.

That this US government data free-for-all has not been a big deal to American sysadmins has been a source of more than a little concern and confusion to us here north of the border. As long as there remains an Emperor in the White House rather than a President I guess there will be no movement on this.

Erased White House email, backups, and hard drives without penalty despite a legal court order? That's some government you guys have running there. You might want to do something about it.

Ir surpasses understanding...

[John Hasler (414242)]

...why anyone would entrust any data of any importance at all, secret or not, to free services provided by an advertising agency. I can see using it to plan your frat party or organize Little League games, but using it for business?

Are they just NOW figuring that out?

[erroneus (253617)]

I'm rather surprised more aggressive measures to circumvent US communications and all other paths of commerce and communications haven't been attempted. Wanna do warrantless wiretaps on foreigners? Fine. Watch the foreigners build new lines of communications that do not connect to the U.S. Wanna log, fingerprint, probe and scan all foreigners who happen to fly over or through the U.S.? Fine. Watch the foreigners start to build airports in Mexico and Canada to avoid U.S. soil. Wanna monitor and observe all foreign commerce through U.S. banks? You get the idea.

At some point, the rest of the world will tire of these policies and take step to make the U.S. less relevant.

Huh???

[LWATCDR (28044)]

While I am not one of the Google faithful I must say that your criticism is at best miss placed.
Google has fought when the US government wanted them to turn over customer records in the past. They do not seem to cooperate with the US government anymore than is required by law. Anytime you use a hosted service you loose some privacy. Once the data leaves your systems you have lost some privacy and control.

If you want to scream at Google for not living up to there "Don't be evil" line. I suggest that there following US laws it far less evil than their good relationship with China.

Re:Don't be evil?

[mOdQuArK! (87332)]

Can you imagine what Google could really do if they were utterly unscrupulous about manipulating the political process in their favor?

Every politician who crossed them would have every possible scandal associated with them come up on the front search page whenever somebody was looking for info about them. Politicians who did what Google told them to would have all their scandals banished to the 300th page.

Muck-raking reporters would be mysteriously signed up for Google Alerts on Google-hostile politicians, and might "mysteriously" receive private documents from the hard drives of those politicians & their interns who happen to be running the "Google Desktop" toolbar.

Or some hacker might "discover" how to get the search histories of selected politicians, and suddenly the politician has to explain why he keeps searching for child porn photos.

Re:VIRUS ALERT

[by Anonymous Coward]

This has a spoofed link whose structure identical to this post http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=496946&cid=22837250 [slashdot.org] which, when clicked on, downloads a virus, brings up dozens of pages in Firefox in seconds and tries to use mailto: BEWARE curious people.

Re:Conspiracy

[db32 (862117)]

I can debunk this one easily.

Google works as advertised and works well.

You name one government service that has ever worked as advertised or worked well.

Clearly, Google is too productive and effective to be a government thing.