In my original post about Google and privacy (Why You Shouldn’t Trust Google), I mentioned that one of the problems with a single company controlling so much data is that there is no way to know who may someday have access to that data.
For examples of undesirable entities who may someday have access to your entire life from cradle to the grave via Google’s massive databases, I will quote from my previous post:
All of [Google's] data is a big prize for whoever can gain access. What happens when Google sells? Or when Google partners or merges with companies that you don’t like (e.g., Rupert Murdoch). Or the political situation turns for the worse? Or people from other countries want that information? Everything you ever did online is in Google’s servers, ready to be data-mined by people with bad intentions.
Three days ago, the New York Times reported that Google’s servers have possibly been attacked by a foreign government which may have been looking for (among other things) the e-mail addresses of human rights activists — which exactly proves my point: once people decide to give all of their information about everything they do from the cradle to the grave to a single company (Google), there is no way to know who may someday have access to all of that data.
Here is an excerpt from the New York Times article:
A series of online attacks on Google and dozens of other American corporations have been traced to computers at two educational institutions in China, including one with close ties to the Chinese military, say people involved in the investigation.
They also said the attacks, aimed at stealing trade secrets and computer codes and capturing e-mail of Chinese human rights activists, may have begun as early as April, months earlier than previously believed. Google announced on Jan. 12 that it and other companies had been subjected to sophisticated attacks that probably came from China.
As I’ve said many times, Google’s idea of organizing all “the world’s information and [making] it universally accessible and useful,” sounds like a noble cause, but where Google has gone wrong is that they are organizing all of the worlds personal information and inadvertently making it accessible to unknown current or future entities who may or may not have good intentions. The very act of collecting that personal information is evil.
See also: Google Privacy: It’s Only Getting Worse
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