[governance] Rights and Privacy: Questioning Google's Privacy Reform

[Fouad Bajwa]

David, you will possibly agree that Google or any other company will
never let us know whether it agreed or not, their representatives only
say during such meetings that kindly forward us an email with your
request and we will put it through to the 'concerned'! So this
concerned is very well concerned with wether such violations may occur
or not and again, companies also reserve their privacy rights to
disclosure of such information so we are stuck in quick sand for that
matter!

I have also wondered on certain occasions as to what is the role of
being open and inclusive in terms of privacy and security issues
because don't openness or inclusiveness undermine the issue at hand or
do they actually facilitate privacy within the first place?

Best

Fouad

On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 1:12 PM, David Goldstein
<goldstein_david at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> Fouad,
>
> These requests happen in the developed world too, but the issue is did Google agree to help in this case? But it is a point that many of us in the developed world too often neglect.
>
> Regards,
> David
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Fouad Bajwa <fouadbajwa at gmail.com>
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com>
> Sent: Monday, 15 September, 2008 5:44:24 PM
> Subject: Re: [governance] Rights and Privacy: Questioning Google's Privacy Reform
>
> I would be a bit skeptical however regarding Google's practices in
> developing countries regarding privacy as most of the developing
> countries have no policies in place on privacy and this is a core
> threat to the privacy of their citizens.
>
> As I was once in an Information Security association meeting in
> Pakistan where the Google country consultant and the federal
> investigation authority chief were present and during that meeting
> some discussions took place where the investigation authority's chief
> requested the Google rep to request Google to share the information
> they required for solving cases related to cyber crime.
>
> Now a core issue here is that are there any generally accepted cyber
> crime and priacy practices and procedures that countries may endourse
> and practice at a global level and even a company like Google may have
> to abide to those generally accepted practices in the developing world
> countries.
>
> I have been very skeptical about some of the privacy discussions being
> oriented towards the western world/developed world forgetting that the
> developing world also constitutes a major portion of the internet user
> population and that their privacy also holds equal weight as to the
> privacy of those internet users that belong to the developed world.
>
> My confidence in any such company's privacy goals stands at a minimum
> because such companies have been sharing user's private data with
> law-enforcement agencies and even blocking blogs in some cases though
> will require some time to filter out evidence on the same.
>
> Fouad
>
> On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 12:06 PM, McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:
>> cc list trimmed.
>>
>> On Sun, Sep 14, 2008 at 11:15 AM, Jeffrey A. Williams
>> <jwkckid1 at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> All, and especially Vint,
>>>
>>>  I can't of course speak for the IGC, nor Google users, I am not one,
>>>
>>> but I am yet again having trouble believing anything Google officially
>>> says, or for that matter does, as well as having more and more trouble
>>> with their sense of right and wrong, and User Friendliness.
>>
>> If you are not a Google user, then why do you think you have any
>> standing to comment on their practices?
>>
>>>
>>>  Given that Privacy is a very special and most important right,
>>> as it is not separable from saftey/security, endangering others by
>>> having business practices and policies such as Googles TOS
>>
>> Individuals use web services of certain companies, if they have
>> concerns about those companies practices, then they should complain to
>> that company and/or NOT USE those services.
>>
>>>
>>> and this article below demonstrates gives me and our members
>>> much more than just pause, but grave concern as well for many
>>> obvious and not so obvious reasons, all of which Google executives
>>> should be well aware of and/or recognize fully, but either don't,
>>> or do, and could care less...
>>
>> If, according to their biz model they feel the need to keep data for a
>> period of time, and make users aware of this, then it seems to me that
>> they are full aware.  The facts of the story you cite below leads me
>> to think they do care.
>>
>>>
>>> See:
>>> A story questioning whether Google's recent commitment to anonymize
>>> IP logs faster is  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10038963-46.html
>>> really as good as it sounds.  We discussed
>>>  http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/09/1334251&tid=158
>>
>> It seems to me that this company is doing more for Internet growth in
>> the developing world than any other I can think of.  It's certainly
>> the case here in East Africa, with Apps, translation, google.org
>> support to SMEs, etc.  This is just the latest example:  http://www.o3
>> bnetworks.com
>>
>> We, as a caucus, should embrace this type of corporate social
>> responsibility, not criticize them for listening to the concerns of
>> privacy advocates, and acting upon those concerns.
>>
>> --
>> Cheers,
>>
>> McTim
>> mctim.blogspot.com (a Google service)
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