[Cryptography] Depending on Google to protect your anonymity?!

John Gilmore gnu at toad.com
Thu Jun 8 16:37:26 EDT 2017


> Textual steganography is a bit worrisome, but I guess you could run it
> through Google translate twice to obfuscate. Not ideal.

Did you think that Google wasn't storing copies of all the documents
that you ask it to translate?  And tying them to the cookies and IP
addresses and other activities of that same Internet user?  Google
isn't Santa Claus, though they seem to have convinced the public they
are.  Whenever they offer a free service, it's for a reason, and the
reason is usually to track everything you do and then monetize that.

NSA has some incredibly damn intrusive laws that they've rammed or
blackmailed through Congress.  But even NSA could never get a law
passed that would require the level of detailed tracking that Google
has managed to create, merely by offering "free" stuff to webmasters
(fonts, captchas, searches, analytics, ...) and to users (browsers,
searches, shopping, translation, hosting, email, ...).

I can't wait til I find the secret way into the Google archives for
detective agencies.  How much would it cost to be watching every
interaction a given user has with Google, all day, all week long?  The
Feds can require this with a subpoena or warrant.  I want to be able
to buy it, too.  It's a serious approximation of David Brin's
"Transparent Society".  What websites is a merger-and-acquisition
lawyer visiting in this hour?  What draft contracts are my competitors
editing on Google Docs today?  What are all the emails to and from
interesting_person at gmail.com about?  What Youtube videos is the Queen
of England watching?  Oh, and what documents are low level State
Department employees translating this week via that "free" Google
Translate service?

	John


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