The Register reports:
Google’s roving Street View spycam may blur your face, but it’s got your number. The Street View service is under fire in Germany for scanning private WLAN networks, and recording users’ unique Mac (Media Access Control) addresses, as the car trundles along.
Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar says he’s “horrified” by the discovery.
Google has a product called Google Health that allows you to store all of your medical information with Google. Features:
Build online health profiles
You can enter your health conditions, medications, allergies, and lab results into your Google Health profile and you can name the profile anything you want. You can even create multiple profiles for family members or others you care for.Import medical records from hospitals and pharmacies
Choose from a list of Google Health partners to see if your hospital or pharmacy can send copies of your medical records or prescriptions to your Google Health profile. This way, you can save an accurate history of your medical conditions, medications, and test results all in one place.
What this means is that Google will have the ability to link your health records to all of the other data they have about you including:
If you don’t think Google is that creepy, see how Google already developed eavesdropping technology capable of listening to you through your computer’s microphone, and about how Google is even interested in your DNA. Google has an abysmal privacy record:
Minister Urges Germans to Opt Out of Google Street View
Germany’s consumer protection minister has long been critical of Google Street View, which displays panoramic pictures of towns, cities and individual homes. Now she has called the company’s information policy “unacceptable” and urged Germans to ask for their data to be removed from the service.
Google’s Street View service is controversial in Germany, where laws ensuring privacy and data protection are far stricter than in the United States. Now German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner has called on ordinary Germans to opt out of the service.
Aigner told SPIEGEL that ordinary Germans should file a formal objection to Google if they didn’t want to have pictures of their houses and gardens “be put on the Internet for all the world to see, as well as being linked to other data.”
I found a post on discourse.net about how police are trying to get deleted email from Google (Gmail).
Google has archived usenet newsgroup posts going back to the early 1980s. How long will Google store your deleted email?
Today the BBC has revealed a story about how Google wants to make a copy of your entire hard drive and store it on their servers. The Register also has some more information about it.
Do you trust search engines with all of your data? Don’t forget what happened in China.
In an article titled Google Copies Your Hard Drive – Government Smiles in Anticipation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation discusses some of the privacy issues related to the ability of the new Google Desktop software to remove data from your computer and store it on Google’s servers. The article also provides links to further reading about the subject.
Google may be building an alternate Internet system. The linked article discusses this "GoogleNet" and the possibility of a GoogleCube. Google is motivated to collect data about you because it allows the company to target advertising better.
As discussed in a recent article from the Associated Press, Google is not the only one who wants your personal data:
Google is fighting the Justice Department’s subpoena in a federal court battle that’s focusing more attention on the risks of personal information held by Internet companies being turned over to outside sources, including the government.
It’s happening in China. Coming to your country soon…
Internet giant Yahoo has been accused of supplying information to China which led to the jailing of a journalist for “divulging state secrets”.
Google Desktop now allows Google to store your personal files on Google’s servers. This means that Google now not only has the ability to track you with your email, Web searches, and other means, Google now has the ability to access to your personal files. The linked AP article discusses some of the privacy issues with allowing search companies access to so much personal data. Several Internet companies have already turned over information to the government, including Yahoo’s recent controversial decision to give personal information about one if its users to the Chinese government, resulting in a jail sentence for one of Yahoo’s customers.
