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Mr. Vint Cerf and friends and colleagues should also read another
recent (May 22, 2012) NYT article <br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/technology/google-privacy-inquiries-get-little-cooperation.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/23/technology/google-privacy-inquiries-get-little-cooperation.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all</a><br>
<br>
***<br>
some excerpts<br>
(Germany)<br>
....After months of negotiation, Johannes Caspar, a German data
protection official, forced Google to show him exactly what its
Street View cars had been collecting from potentially millions of
his fellow citizens. Snippets of e-mails, photographs, passwords,
chat messages, postings on Web sites and social networks — all sorts
of private Internet communications — were casually scooped up as the
specially equipped cars photographed the world’s streets. ... “It
was one of the biggest violations of data protection laws that we
had ever seen,” Mr. Caspar recently recalled about that long-sought
viewing in late 2010. “We were very angry.”<br>
(in USA)<br>
Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s attorney general at the time,
announced in late June 2010 that he and attorneys general from more
than 30 other states had begun an investigation. Like the Europeans,
they asked for the data. For months.... “Google resisted providing
more information, even in the face of its acknowledgment that the
collection was a mistake,” Mr. Blumenthal recalled in a recent
interview. <b>Google argued that its data scooping was legal in
the United States.</b> <b>But it told regulators it could not
show them the data it collected,</b> because to do so might be
breaking privacy and wiretapping laws.<br>
<br>
... Citizens in several states filed suits against Google, saying
the company had violated federal wiretapping laws through Street
View. These suits were consolidated into a class action in San
Francisco.... <b>Google moved for dismissal, arguing that because
it had picked up information only from unencrypted networks, it
had not broken the law. </b>In a significant loss, a federal
judge said what the company was doing might be more akin to tapping
a phone and allowed the suit to proceed.<br>
****<br>
<br>
The 'father of the Internet' should wonder how his current role as
an 'evangelist', relates to this kind of work of his employer ... In
the article forwarded by Nick, he says " .... Such proposals raise
the prospect of policies that enable government controls but greatly
diminish the<b> “permissionless innovation” </b>that underlies
extraordinary Internet-based economic growth to say nothing of <b>trampling
human rights.</b> " <br>
<br>
Here it is the<b> permissionless innovation</b> that is <b>trampling
human rights....</b><br>
<br>
The civil society statement to UNCSTD
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.itforchange.net/civil_society_statement_on_democratic_internet">http://www.itforchange.net/civil_society_statement_on_democratic_internet</a>)
is clear about both dangers - the danger of<b> statist control
leading to repression,</b> (what Vint Cerf is discussing), as
well as the<b> danger at the global level from the actions of USG
and US based corporates,</b> which this NYT article speaks of... <br>
<br>
Both need to be resisted by civil society .... the status quo leaves
us vulnerable to abuses on both counts, and new innovative <b>and
democratic</b> structures and processes are much required... which
also the statement to UNCSTD discusses...<br>
<br>
regards,<br>
Guru<br>
<br>
<br>
On Friday 25 May 2012 11:06 AM, Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:<br>
<span style="white-space: pre;">> Dear friends and colleagues,<br>
> <br>
> I thought you would appreciate knowing that an OpEd by Vint
Cerf as <br>
> above titled was printed today in the New York Times (and I
believe <br>
> the IHT).<br>
> <br>
>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/opinion/keep-the-internet-open.html?_r=1">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/opinion/keep-the-internet-open.html?_r=1</a><br>
></span><br>
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