The information Google doesn't want you to organize: Column
Once the fact was out, the internet giant tried to get a judge to help them hide it again.
(Photo: Jefferson Graham, USAT)
Back in February, in a San Jose courtroom, a bombshell was dropped that could have been erased from the public record.
It turns out that Google, which bases its business on collecting and analyzing huge reams of data for advertising purposes, has been scanning users' emails even before users have a chance to open or read them, including email messages that are deleted without being opened. Google knows what's in your email before you do.
The revelation came in a now-settled legal dispute over Google's Gmail service. Dozens of the nation's largest newspapers and media companies fought to make sure that the case — and its wide-ranging implications for Internet users — received a full public airing. It has been an unfolding drama ever since, affecting what analysts estimate are 500 million Gmail users worldwide.
Google tried, and failed, to redact information about its email scanning process from a transcript of a public court hearing. Last month, the judge in the case ruled that portions of the transcript from that February hearing could not be redacted retroactively, since that would be tantamount to closing a public courtroom.
The company's attempt — akin to putting toothpaste back into a tube — was a reversal of its previous position in the lawsuit, a pledge that there would be a "fully public airing of the issues raised by plaintiffs' motion for class certification." The NSA recently used the very same tactic when it tried to secretly delete portions of a public court transcript in a lawsuit filed against its surveillance practices.
As a result, we now know much more about how Google collects personal information from users of Gmail and Google Apps and, in this case, how it plugged a critical gap in its data mining operation to sweep up even more of your information.
Here's what happened:
Back in 2010, Google was facing a vexing problem. It was losing out on a treasure trove of personal information from millions of Gmail users who were slipping through its chief analytical tool, known as "Content OneBox." Anytime they accessed their email through Outlook or on their iPhone, Google's data machine wasn't there to capture it all. So it needed a way to sidestep the problem.
Within a matter of months, the company shrewdly moved the Content OneBox from Gmail's storage area to the "delivery pipeline" — meaning that it could now scan messages before they were received. As the plaintiffs explained:
"Google made a choice. They said, you know what, when people are accessing emails by an iPhone, we are not able to get their information. When people aren't opening their emails or they are deleting them, we are not able to get their information. When people are using Google Apps accounts where ads are disabled, we are not able to get that information. When people are accessing Gmail through some other email provider, we are not able to get that information. So what they did is they took a device that was in existence already and operating just fine back in the storage area, and they moved it to the delivery pipeline."
This move has sweeping consequences, as Chris Hoofnagle, director of privacy programs at Berkeley's Center for Law & Technology, has described:
"Hiding ads while analyzing data takes advantage of a key deficit users have around internet services: users only perceive profiling if they receive ads. The content one box infrastructure would allow Google to understand the meaning of all of our communications: the identities of the people with whom we collaborate, the compounds of drugs we are testing, the next big thing we are inventing, etc. Imagine the creative product of all of Berkeley combined, scanned by a single company's 'free' email system."
Google's stated goal is to "organize the world's information," but they fought to avoid disclosing how and why they've done it. Now we know.
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Let there be no doubt; when I say that the world is being taken over by evil Illuminati/nwo/Nazionist spies and ultra rich elitists, meaning to control our every breath, know that it is not an exxageration...
This post was updated at 4:45 p.m. Thursday afternoon to reflect comment from the U.S. Army.
Military surveillance aircraft slated to be set aloft over suburban Baltimore this year were originally designed to carry video cameras capable of distinguishing between humans and wheeled vehicles from a distance of at least five kilometers, according to documents the Army has newly released to a privacy group.
But the documents, dated from 2009, contain such heavy redactions that it is unclear how precise the resolution was supposed to be for the video systems on the blimp-like aircraft, nor is it clear how often video capabilities have been deployed on them in other locations. The Army's North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which will oversee the surveillance system's three-year exercise in Maryland, said Thursday that it will not carry any video cameras during that time.
Uncertainty over the capabilities of the Army aircraft has caused concern among privacy advocates. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, based in Washington, said that the blimp-like aircraft could potentially be outfitted with powerful cameras and even with facial recognition systems capable of identifying individual people.
“There is a lot of potential for privacy abuse if a surveillance device can identify a human at five kilometers away,” said Julia Horwitz, the consumer protection counsel for the privacy group, which is fighting a legal battle for information about the surveillance aircraft. Five kilometers is about 3.1 miles.
The Army last year announced that it was bringing its JLENS system, short for Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, to be tethered on land owned by the Aberdeen Proving Ground. The exercise was scheduled to start in October, but is more likely now to begin in December, said Maj. Beth R. Smith, a spokeswoman for NORAD.
Army officials have previously said that the surveillance system is intended to spot missiles and other threats to national security, not monitor the activities of people living or traveling below along the busy I-95 corridor.
The JLENS system – which includes a pair of white, 243-foot-long balloons tethered to the ground -- can stay in the air continuously for up to 30 days and is designed to spot missiles from a distance of 340 miles. Its radar systems also can detect what security experts call “swarming boats,” the kind of small, agile watercraft that, when loaded with explosives, can threaten ships.
Yet the JLENS aircraft have raised privacy concerns, in part because Raytheon, which developed the program for the Army, has tested the surveillance system’s ability to use powerful, high-altitude cameras capable of seeing people and vehicles from many miles away. Those tests took place at a military facility in Utah.
The Army and Raytheon had previously declined requests from The Washington Post to reveal the video, infrared and other capabilities of JLENS. For a story in January, the Army told the Post that it has “no current plans” to mount the surveillance cameras tested by Raytheon on the JLENS deployment at Aberdeen Proving Ground, but the Army also declined to rule out using such systems or possibly sharing the resulting footage and other information with federal, state or local law enforcement officials.
Calls to the public information officer at Aberdeen Proving Ground were not returned Wednesday afternoon, when the Electronic Privacy Information Center first released information about the 2009 documents. But Thursday afternoon, after an initial version of this article was published, Smith said that plans for the JLENS system had changed since the publication of the 2009 documents furnished to the privacy group.
She said that "absolutely, 100 percent" that JLENS will not have video cameras during its time at Aberdeen Proving Ground. She said the plans for the system have grown firmer since the Army's comments in January. "There was a lot of ambiguity back then. Now the thing is on its way."
Smith also said that initial plans for the JLENS, as described in the 2009 documents, were changed because of concerns that video and infrared surveillance systems were deemed too heavy and unnecessary.
She criticized the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a fixture of the privacy community founded in 1994 by Georgetown University law professor Marc Rotenberg. "I don't really consider them the most reputable source of information," Smith said. "They do sensationalize things quite a bit."
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information Act request in November for information revealing the capabilities of JLENS and followed with a lawsuit in May, after the Army failed to produce any documents. A federal district court judge in Washington on Aug. 20 ordered the Army to release documents. The privacy group has received a first batch, from 2009. The Army must produce others before Oct. 10 under the ruling, and a legal fight likely will continue over the extent of the Army’s redactions.
Rotenberg, still president and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the group had merely acquired and publicized documents produced by the Army itself. "It may be the case that the Department of the Army is now backing off its original plan based on the public disclosure."
Horwitz said that the first batch of documents included extensive information on the weapons systems that the JLENS were supposed to have the ability to carry, including Hellfire missiles, but paragraphs related to surveillance capabilities were the most heavily redacted.
Smith said, however, the JLENS as ultimately built was not capable of carrying Hellfire missiles.
Editor; after all they have never lied to us before!