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op ed All’s Fair in Online Privacy War?
When it comes to online privacy, there's a lot more to worry about than Gmail.Controversy over Google's new e-mail service, Gmail—the free e-mail service that allows users to store an unprecedented gigabyte's worth of mail on Google's mail servers—is raging. As some users have discovered, clicking on the tiny icon that reads "privacy policy" at the bottom of the Gmail home page reveals that "when you are logged into your Gmail account, Google will display targeted ads and other relevant information based on the content of the e-mail displayed." This means that advertisements will be placed in personal messages after Google's software has searched your Inbox for key words. For example, if you receive an e-mail about your friend’s vacation to the Bahamas, you might receive an ad about Caribbean vacation packages. On April 6, 2004, 31 privacy and civil liberties organizations wrote a collective letter urging Google to suspend Gmail and rethink its privacy policy. Chris Jay Hoofnagle—a co-signer of the letter and associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) —is astounded by the policy.
According to a November 3, 1999, BBC report, Echelon is a U.S. based "global spying network that can [in theory] eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet.” The U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand make up the five partners in crime behind Echelon. The original purpose of Echelon "was to protect national security," but how does feeling like someone is watching your every move make the average citizen feel secure? It doesn't. While the American and British governments have denied Echelon’s existence, Australian government officials spoke up, admitting “that the system spies on the international communications of its own and other countries' citizens.” As if that weren’t bad enough, under the U.S. Patriot Act, the government may now "spy on [the] web surfing of Americans,” including terms entered into search engines, by merely telling a judge anywhere in the U.S. that the spying could lead to information that is ‘relevant’ to an ongoing criminal investigation. With “nationwide roving wiretaps,” the FBI and CIA have the ability to go from “phone to phone, computer to computer” regardless of whether the phones or computers in question are being used by a suspect. And how about that thing called “spyware” that infects several people’s computers? Spyware is any program that is covertly loaded onto a user's computer (without her knowledge) to secretly gather information about the user's movements around the Web and pass that information on to advertisers. How does spyware get in your computer? Either as a software virus, as the result of installing a new program, or by clicking on an option in a pop-up window that, unknown to the user, loads the stealthy program. “Spyware” takes regular screen shots and logs your every keystroke. In which case, Gmail reading your mail is the least of your problems. Bottom line: If you're concerned with online privacy, or, rather, you're lack thereof, you might have to crack a book or two and do some outside research about online privacy. If you feel like you're being stripped naked in cyberspace, maybe it's time to log offline. Preston Gralla, technology expert and author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Internet Privacy and Security, says it’s still too early to decide
Moreover, says Nick McKinney, a systems engineer with computer science training who posted his opinion on Wired News’s “Rants and Raves,” Google would only be doing with Gmail what the company already does with its search engine. According to McKinney, Google uses the same text parsing engine, that he says interprets whatever a user types into the engine as an indication of what that user wants, in order to find targeted ads for every search performed by the engine. So, if people don't feel uncomfortable about getting targeted ads in their Google searches, why should they feel uncomfortable if their e-mail is being scanned in order to embed ads in their mails? Besides, aren't Google's targeted ads an attempt to better address both the advertisers’ and Internet users’ needs by delivering specific ads to people who have, in some way, expressed a possible interest in a specific product? Isn't this sort of advertising preferable to those maddening pop-ups and banners, not to mention the Net-clogging flood of spam already inundating our Inboxes? Roshan Abraham, a senior in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, thinks Gmail is a wonderful service, privacy policy and all. He said he was "wowed" by Gmail after recently opening an account with the free mail service. "There's a whole lot that Gmail does that I've never seen in any e-mail service before," he says. Aside from the abundant memory offered with Gmail, the address list creates itself as e-mails are sent out, he says. Also, Gmail's "conversations in context" function stacks related e-mails together as conversations. “Whereas I would click on a lone e-mail in my NYUhome inbox and have to search through 10 pages just to find the original e-mail it was responding to,” says Abraham, “conversations are clustered together in one single file. When you click on the conversation, you see the individual e-mails.” Hey, at least Gmail offers some e-mail perks in exchange for granting Google the right to go through e-mail. The federal government goes through e-mail without consent and offers no compensation. Besides, Abraham points out, Google's FAQs make it "perfectly clear that no human agents would be thumbing through my e-mails." Moreover, Abraham has yet to receive a targeted e-mail ad. “The beta version seems to want to assuage fears of privacy violations immediately," he says. Nonetheless, the lack of privacy on the Web is disconcerting. “There needs to be some kind of legislation governing what information can be legally gathered about you online," says Preston Gralla, "and how that
How can there be regulation of personal information on the Internet when the government, the entity that would have to approve any such restrictive legislation, is a core beneficiary of the personal information available online especially with the aid of Echelon and the Patriot Act. There is no right to privacy written into the U.S. constitution, a fact that may surprise some readers; thus, the government exploits that conspicuous omission in our civil liberties. It’s time to either give up on the notion of online privacy, eliminate the Internet altogether, or remake the United States government (instead of the Gmail privacy policy) so that we’re not living in a police state. Those passionate about overhauling the Gmail privacy policy should put their energy into the abolition of more significant threats to our privacy, such as Echelon. At least Gmail FAQ's tell it like it is, which is more than the fed's candor about Echelon and the Patriot Act. The temporary solution: Don’t use Gmail if you don’t want any further possibility of your personal information being shared. Politicians such as California Senator Liz Figueroa (D) complain that Gmail's policy is an inappropriate way to promote e-commerce and is such an invasion of personal space that it's “like having a massive billboard in the middle of your home," but Figueroa is forgetting that she is a part of in the U.S. government which, under the Patriot Act, doesn't even have to tell “people that their homes have been secretly searched." I'd rather have a billboard in the middle of my home than a bunch of FBI agents fingering through my personal belongings and breathing heavily on my phone extension. At least I'd know the billboard was there. Related Articles Financial Times article: Media code bans e-mail snooping World Privacy Forum letter to Google New York Times article on Gmail Blog Entry on Gmail Another Blog Entry on Gmail Vanessa Díaz is co-managing editor of ReadMe, issue 4.5. A junior majoring in Latin American studies and politics at New York University, she is also a freelance journalist. Her first-hand accounts of 9/11, filed from New York, appeared in the Riverside, California daily newspaper The Press Enterprise and were broadcast from the FM radio station, 99.1 KGGI, also based in Riverside. |
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| Recent comments by Bill Gates have stirred up a small backlash among copyright reformists |
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 08.21.2004 - 4:06 pm EDT"Roshan shares a personal anecdote about P2P software"
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