Google CEO Schmidt Predicts End of Online Anonymity 591
Andorin writes "A tweet from the EFF pointed me to a short article detailing part of Eric Schmidt's speech to the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe on August 4. According to Schmidt, true transparency and anonymity on the Internet will become a thing of the past because of the need to combat criminal and 'anti-social' behavior. 'Governments will demand it,' he says, referring to full accountability and a 'name service for people,' possibly hinting towards mandatory Internet passports. The CEO of Google also made a couple of somewhat creepy references to the availability of information: 'If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go ... show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos!'"
Re:No, I don't (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No, I don't (Score:5, Informative)
Just because you don't have a Facebook profile doesn't mean that people can't upload compromising pictures of you to Facebook. Furthermore, you can still be tagged by name in photos even if there's no profile to link to.
Re:No, I don't (Score:5, Informative)
Do you live in a big city with street cameras? Ever had a driver's license or other photo ID? Ever been to an airport or government building? There are photos of you all over the place.
Re:Worrying (Score:4, Informative)
It's blasé. For goodness' sake, read a book!
Re:but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Man who makes money from tracking web activity. (Score:5, Informative)
It is one of the reasons they will give.
Anti-Social Behavior Order [wikipedia.org]. Governments consider it their business to deal with all behavior.
Re:No, I don't (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, it started way before G. W. Bush. Bill Clinton had CARNIVORE. Nixon wiretapped radical groups without a warrant (which was the impetus for FISA). The Olmstead case of 1928 was when government wiretapping was declared constitutional- which was well before G. W. was even born.
Re:Worrying (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Creepy (Score:1, Informative)
Yeah, he's really bad when you take random quotes totally out of context to purposefully misinterpret them! The horror!
Meanwhile Facebook is actively trying to force your private information public, and Google is warning that we need to do more to preserve anonymity, and has made no attempts to force my private information to be public. I know which one I trust more.
Re:No, I don't (Score:3, Informative)
The entire thing, it looks like facebook has you hook line and sinker. Even if your settings are set to private.. you trust facebook not to "share" this information with "trusted" partners? I certainly dont trust facebook after
Facebook has tried to force people's private information public
Re:Fuck the doomed (Score:3, Informative)
I do sometimes wonder...
Speaking as a former sysop of a THG [wikipedia.org] dist site and member of iCE [wikipedia.org], you can wonder no longer: it was.
I would gladly give up my high speed internet and go back to 9600 baud if it meant we could be free from all these goddamned fucking idiots.
Re:No, I don't (Score:4, Informative)
You're free to pay a fine to the government if you don't want any health care. You knew that, right?
High taxation and a crippling debt reduces freedom. Bailing out certain companies and not others is government control of the economy. Cronyism is not freedom.
In my state, we can choose which company we buy our electricity from. That came from a net REDUCTION in government regulation (the incumbent power company had to allow access to its lines in exchange for removing a cap). I can also choose which company I buy buy fuel oil from. If I don't want to use oil, I can switch to gas or an electrical system that's powered by a utility or by solar or wind technologies. So what progressive gave me these rights, again? It's only government that REMOVES my right to do these things: by state-mandated monopolies, subsidies that artificially lower or raise prices, and local zoning and state regulations that discourage the use of alternative energy or certain kinds of alternative energy.
Maybe it's time you started realizing that having every facet of our lives regulated by the government is not the normal way of things, and that we're not supposed to be happy about our "liberal" society because the government decided to throw us a few scraps. Try reading about the enlightenment and social contracts.
Re:No, I don't (Score:3, Informative)
Yes actually... I have a right to get healthcare, if I want it. Mandatory takes away that right of choice. I can choose to not have healthcare and die in a ditch if I want. Mandatory is the opposite of personal freedom.
You can still go die in a ditch. In fact, I encourage you to. There are a vanishingly small amount of people who choose to exercise their freedom to die in a ditch. There are millions of Americans who have gained the freedom to buy healthcare. This is a net win for freedom.
I don't know about you, but I can leave my employer at any time and go to another one. Nobody is forcing me to take their money for my work.
Good for you. There are millions of Americans who are not as lucky as you. When the economy shrinks, there's just no work for some people, no matter how qualified.
Why should we (as taxpayers) have to bailout companies that don't know how to run their own operations efficiently?
We should not. This is exactly why we need financial reform. To prevent the crashes that force us to do bail outs. The financial crisis is a great example of how too little regulation reduces all of our freedom.
Re:No, I don't (Score:3, Informative)
Real rights are universal, meaning there is on logical contradiction if all people exercise the right.
Like, oh, the right to universal health care? The right of workers to organize? The right to not be defrauded by our financial institutions? None of these bear any contradictions if everyone exercises these rights. In fact, if everyone demanded these rights they would be much stronger.