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Google Spy Drones For Street View?
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter
Back in 2009, Google CEO and now Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, already under heavy fire for his company’s strategy to collect, store, and mine every shred of personal data out there, said on CNBC, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
It makes sense. Why worry about surveillance if you haven’t done anything wrong? This, in his unvarnished manner, is what he thinks about privacy. There is none. You don’t need it. You don’t want it. It’s not good for you. It just makes you appear guilty. It’s the philosophy under which police states operate.
Google has no compunction about reading emails of its Gmail users, browsing through user details in its social network services, tracking people throughout their searches, purchases, and reading patterns. It draws conclusions and combines it all with other data into a beautiful whole. For people with Android mobile devices, there is little Google doesn’t know.
Google isn’t the only data hog out there, and perhaps not even the one with the most intimate data – that would probably be Facebook – but it has some unique non-internet tools. Its Street View cars for example. They record visually what is going on in every neighborhood in the world – while also picking up wireless data from home or business networks. So when its new “privacy policy” took effect last year, it caused a lot of fretting. “Calling this a ‘privacy policy’ is Orwellian doublespeak,” lamented John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog. It should instead be called a “spy policy.” But the ruckus, like so many things, subsided after a few weeks.
But suddenly, Schmidt got all riled up about privacy issues of devices that Google doesn’t control through its software and that can access and record promising details of life: civilian drones. Including the toy-like “everyman” minidrones, such as multi-rotor helicopters. He wants them banned outright. And if they can’t be banned, he wants them regulated. To make his point, he dragged out an unfortunate example of a neighbor with an axe to grind:
“How would you feel if your neighbor went over and bought a commercial observation drone that they can launch from their back yard,” he said. “It just flies over your house all day. How would you feel about it?” He didn’t like that prospect. Not at all. “It’s got to be regulated,” he said, he whose company fights regulations wherever it encounters them. “It’s one thing for governments, who have some legitimacy in what they’re doing, but have other people doing it … It’s not going to happen.”
An unfortunate example because an insidious and at once funny Google moment of this type erupted in a village in France. A guy was urinating in his yard. We know he did; just then a Street View car drove by. Its camera, mounted on a rooftop post, could see over the closed gate and the perimeter enclosure and caught the hapless dude in flagrante delicto.
He didn’t know it at the time. And he didn’t know it when the scene appeared on Street View. His neighbors discovered the photo of him in his yard, relieving himself, face slightly blurred. It was only after he’d become the laughingstock of his village that he learned about it. Sure, in Schmidt’s surveillance-state words, he “shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
So the difference between a Street View car and a drone is one of degrees. One can only capture what’s visible from its elevated equipment; the other can fly. One is an essential part of its business model; the other should be banned? Why his sudden handwringing about privacy when it comes to drones? Especially since Google is plowing a fortune into cars that drive themselves – road-bound drones, so to speak. The next step would be devices that fly. The mapping and control software would by then be on the shelf.
In a couple of years, the FAA will take up the delicate matter of drones used by civilians and companies. Perhaps by then, Google Ventures will fund a company that is developing the latest and greatest unmanned multi-rotor helicopters the size of a briefcase to replace the awkward Street View cars. They’d take pictures of the insides of homes, to show what a neighborhood is really like, beyond the facades. Users would love it. Software will blur the faces of the people inside to guard their “privacy,” very helpful, as the hapless dude in France found out. And then Google will oppose vigorously any regulation that doesn’t suit it. Because Airborne Street View would be the next leap forward for Google – and Schmidt must already be fantasizing about it.
Here are some tricks I use to maintain privacy and security on the internet – written in my own manner so that even I can follow the instructions: Windows 7, Internet Explorer, Silverlight, Flash Player, & Java Privacy Settings and Cleanup.
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That is the very purpose of new laws and regulations in our system. Its not for reasons of justice, or public safety, or any of that other nonsense, it is to create a TWO TIER SYSTEM, where if you have money and a team of lawyers (one doesn't count, sorry) no rules apply to you, and if you don't, well, most certainly the rules do apply to you.
Insider trading, money laundering, financing the enemy (intelligence agencies are allowed), lying (OK if you are a politician), cheating, stealing (banks, esp. CB are allowed)...
Drone his ass with a whole bevy of 'em till he admits his privacy policies need to be fixed.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
mr shcmidt, i ask that you make all board meetings and corporate dealings availabe to the public in real time.
And now Google wants to outlaw 'personal' drones. And how can they do that when it is so easy to build one?
Simple...........get caught with one and get life in prison.
As if these dirtbags are worried about us little people. More like wouldn't be very hard to chase down your favorite deuchbag and blow their fucking head off last time I checked most of the airspace doesn't have barbwire fences.
It works both ways motherfuckers.
Makes me want to fly one over his yard.
and here is his yard
45 Cliff Rd, Nantucket, MA 0255441.290634 -70.105827
http://oi38.tinypic.com/2ufveip.jpg
OK, who is the evil, information sucking, giant vampire squid?
using IE, for anything is just insane. You may want to look at other alternatives. Also, flash and java.. are just trouble waiting to happen. At least you are trying..
Coming to your favorite Fusion Center near you!
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/IntelligenceCounterterrorism/fusion.htm
It's about knowing who to round up first.
"If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide."
Bull. Anyone that says that to you, you say, "Give me your wallet, I want to see what is in it." or "Let me wander through your house, I want to see your financial records and whatever might be in your bedroom drawers and closet."
Privacy is not about wrongdoing.
Sam, ya gotta' add "Thought Crimes"
Don't cha' know.
- Ned
We just need some programmers with compassion and vision, not greedy cocksuckers like Schmidt and Zuckerberg. We'll be eternally free and eternally young, also.
Where all the cars will park is another story.
I'm thinkin' you really just don't understand how the Beast works.
Does this mean I have to stop masturbating? Stop picking my nose? Stop nude sun bathing? Stop cross-dressing (this only applies to males, there is no such thing as a female cross-dresser)? Stop having sex entireley? Stop worshiping my demon god? Stop yelling at the TV?
what is the "TV" thing you're referring to?
Tied to the tracks and the train's just coming,
Strapped to the wing with the engine running,
You say that this wasn't in your plan,
Don't mess around with the television, man!
Tied to a chair, and the bomb is ticking,
This situation was not of your picking,
You say that this wasn't in your plan,
Don't mess around with the television, man.
I'm a hypnotizing nightmare, an arsenal of doom,
I kill conversation as I illuminate the room,
I'm a WMD,
I'm the kind of thing they ban,
I'm a babbling disaster,
I'm the television, man.
I'm a babbling nightmare, an arsenal of gloom,
I kill conversation as I illuminate the room,
I'm a WMD,
I'm the kind of thing they ban,
I'm a babbling disaster,
I'm the television, man.
You come to me like a moth to the flame,
It's love you need but I don't play that game,
You kept on coming, you should have ran,
I'm nobody's friend,
I'm the television, man.
I'll weave you a nightmare, a matrix of doom,
I kill conversation as I illuminate the room,
I'm a WMD,
I'm the kind of thing they ban,
I'm a babbling disaster,
I'm the television, man.
Its the television, man...
it's a box with a screen that shows demon gods
That was his point......
People are now begging to surrender their privacy. This is a quote from an AP article about heightened security in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing:
"They can give me a cavity search right now and I'd be perfectly happy," said Daniel Wood, a video producer from New York City who was waiting for a train.
"They can give me a cavity search right now and I'd be perfectly happy," said Daniel Wood, a video producer from New York City who was waiting for a train."
So, Mr. Wood is happy with cavity searches. That's comedy folks.
we europeans are currently engaged in a quiet legal/legislative war against Google, since it's practices contradict several of our national privacy principles
one reason why Google is pushing/lobbying hard for the great Transatlantic Trade Pact that is planned to join the tradezones of NAFTA and EU
I use https://abine.com/ to stop tracking.
Be sure, if you use it, to turn off those tracking you.
Luckily that guy in France caught pissing in the back yard was photographed dancing naked and spanking his monkey.
That should only be done at night when the moon is full.
is this the kind of thing you are speaking of?
http://bit.ly/13d4TKf
or this
http://bit.ly/Z17SBX