The Justice Department is defending the government's refusal to discuss—or even acknowledge the existence of—any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency. The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in federal d...
Google has already been collecting some of this information. But for the first time, it is combining data across its Web sites to stitch together a fuller portrait of users.
Consumers won’t be able to opt out of the changes, which take effect March 1. And experts say the policy shift will invite greater scrutiny from federal regulators of the company’s privacy and competitive practices...[Full Article]
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — In a top-secret lab in an undisclosed Bay Area location where robots run free, the future is being imagined.
It’s a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you’re eating. Your robot could go to the office while you stay home in your pajamas. And you could, perhaps, take an elevator to outer space.
These are just a few of the dreams being chased at Google X, the clandestine lab where Google is tackling a list of 100 shoot-for-the-stars ideas. In interviews, a dozen people discussed the list; some work at the lab or elsewhere at Google, and some have been briefed on the project. But none would speak for attribution because Google is so secretive about the effort that many employees do not even know the lab exists.
Although most of the ideas on the list are in the conceptual stage, nowhere near reality, two people briefed on the project said one product would be released by the end of the year, although they would not say what it was.
“They’re pretty far out in front right now,” said Rodney Brooks, a professor emeritus at M.I.T.’s computer science and artificial intelligence lab and founder of Heartland Robotics. “But Google’s not an ordinary company, so almost nothing applies.”...[Full Article]
Exclusive: Google's search engine is going to become your best friend; knowing what you want to discover before you ask. Emma Barnett meets Amit Singhal, the man making it happen.
...Despite having just announced a raft of impressive search innovations, which include being able to ask Google questions out loud and drop in any old holiday snap into the engine in order to find out forgotten details about a trip from long ago, Singhal wants more from “his relationship with his search engine”.
When I meet him at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, he explains excitedly: “Search still feels very one dimensional. You give us a query and we [Google] returns some results…It needs to be far more communicative. You need to be able to have a conversation with your search engine. I want my search engine to be the expert who knows me the best. It needs to know you so well that sometimes you don’t need to ask it the next question.”
That will sound ominous to plenty of people. Could an Orwellian, Big Brother-style menace be on the horizon, ushered in by this casually-dressed, laid-back scientist and his colleagues?...[Full Article]
Since Google launched its Google Earth feature in 2005, the company has become a worldwide leader in providing high-resolution satellite imagery. In 2010, Google Earth allowed the world to see the extent of the destruction in post-earthquake Haiti. This year, Google released similar images after Japan's deadly tsunami and earthquake. With just one click, Google can bring the world—and a better understanding of far-away events—to your computer.
There is one entire country, however, that Google Earth won't show you: Israel.
That's because, in 1997, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, one section of which is titled, "Prohibition on collection and release of detailed satellite imagery relating to Israel." The amendment, known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment, calls for a federal agency, the NOAA's Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs, to regulate the dissemination of zoomed-in images of Israel...[Full Article]
Apple Inc.'s iPhones and Google Inc.'s Android smartphones regularly transmit their locations back to Apple and Google, respectively, according to data and documents analyzed by The Wall Street Journal—intensifying concerns over privacy and the widening trade in personal data.
Google and Apple are gathering location information as part of their race to build massive databases capable of pinpointing people's locations via their cellphones. These databases could help them tap the $2.9 billion market for location-based services—expected to rise to $8.3 billion in 2014, according to research firm Gartner Inc.
In the case of Google, according to new research by security analyst Samy Kamkar, an HTC Android phone collected its location every few seconds and transmitted the data to Google at least several times an hour. It also transmitted the name, location and signal strength of any nearby Wi-Fi networks, as well as a unique phone identifier.
Google declined to comment on the findings...[Full Article]
On April 29, 2011 videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the Video Status page, so you can download videos that you want to save. If you don’t want to download your videos, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)
How do I download videos that I've uploaded?
On the Video Status page, click Download Video located on the right side of each of your videos in the "Actions" column.Once a video has been downloaded, an "Already Downloaded" message will appear. If you have many videos on Google Video, you may need to use the paging controls located on the bottom right of the page to access them all.
This download option will be available through May 13, 2011.
I've downloaded my videos. Now what do I do with these FLV files?
FLV files are videos that have been encoded in the Flash Video Format. You can upload your videos in FLV format to other video hosting sites like YouTube or Picassa Web Albums. If you would like to playback your videos on your computer and they don’t seem to be working, you might need to install an FLV player. In order to find an FLV player to install, try doing a Google search for [ FLV player ].
Google Video, the video hosting website which was a former rival of YouTube (before being bought over by Google), will stop hosting videos from April 29 this year. Google had stopped users from uploading new content of Google Videos since May 2009.
In a mail sent out to users who have uploaded content on the site, Google has asked them to download their content or move it over to YouTube.
Here is a copy of the letter being cirulated by Google:
Dear Google Video User,
Later this month, hosted video content on Google Video will no longer be available for playback. Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009 and now we’re removing the remaining hosted content. We’ve always maintained that the strength of Google Video is its ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.
On April 29, 2011, videos that have been uploaded to Google Video will no longer be available for playback. We’ve added a Download button to the video status page, so you can download any video content you want to save. If you don’t want to download your content, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)
We encourage you to move to your content to YouTube if you haven’t done so already. YouTube offers many video hosting options including the ability to share your videos privately or in an unlisted manner. To learn more go here.
Here’s how to download your videos:
Go to the Video Status page. To download a video to your computer, click the Download Video link located on the right side of each of your videos in the Actions column.
Once a video has been downloaded, “Already Downloaded” will appear next to the Download Video link.
If you have many videos on Google Video, you may need to use the paging controls located on the bottom right of the page to access them all.
Please note: This download option will be available through May 13, 2011.
Thank you for being a Google Video user.
Sincerely,
The Google Video Team
Google Video was launched back in 2005 but within no time YouTube came onto the scene and gave a completely new meaning to the 'going viral' terminology. It was eventually bought over by Google. The death of Google Video was inevitable after it stopped accepting uploads from users in May 2009. And let's face it, YouTube is synonymous with video hosting service.
Google is in the midst of planning an app that would identify a person's face in a photo, then pull their personal information--like Facebook Flickr, or even a cell phone number.
CNN reports Google has had the technology to do this for years--but is still hesitant about privacy issues. It's not just some quote "start-up" company with nothing to lose... (Video: Google)
"Google also is concerned about the legal implications of facial recognition. Even during trials among its own employees, Google has taken steps to ensure testers have explicitly agreed on record to try out the service."
...and while users have to give Google permission before it can pull such info-- Digital Quest points out that once agreement is given... it could be dangerous.
"Imagine a guy takes a picture of a woman in a bar and then he knows her address just because somewhere on the Web there is an association of her address with her photo."
And while the latest buzz is on Google's most recent announcement--it seems it's already been done. As Seen on Phone--a website dedicated to mobile news-- says a demo-Android app called Viewdle, may have just beat Google to the punch.
"What you're seeing here is a concept of facial recognition working as the video is being played, so you see the boxes are face to text, the name is a face-recognition, then we take that name, hook it up to a social network and are able to pull down status updates as they're happening. As you see in the video, the idea is that our algorithms are fast enough to run 100% local to the device."
Other face recognition technologies are being implemented in China right now. NTDTV explains the device can recognize up to 1400 faces and costs around $720.
"This is made possible by a device called the "Hanvon Face ID" that was developed in China. The device uses infer-red technology to scan a 3D image of a person's face, these images are then stored on the device's internal chip, so it doesn't have to be connected to an external server."
So...is Google too worried about privacy issues--or is this technology scary? Tell us in our comments section.
It was only a matter of time, and that time is fast approaching: Google is incubating a mobile app that will use facial recognition technology to identify people and access their personal info via photos snapped with a digital camera or mobile device. Privacy advocates, prepare for war.
For its part, Google is trying to get in front of the privacy argument that is undoubtedly coming (Google is getting pretty good at this by now) by assuring users that they will have to opt into such a service by checking a box. And the search giant is working on added layers of security and privacy to ensure that only those who want to be photographically found will be.
The idea is that Google’s massive search resources could be used to trawl social networks, online photo sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa, and the like to associate an individual’s face with his or her online presence. This, of course, could also include contact info like email addresses and phone numbers. It would at the very least identify a person by name, with which any reasonably tech-savvy person could track down contact information anyhow...[Full Article]
You're watching multisource technology video news analysis from Newsy.
BY ZHENG HWUANG CHIA
Tired of tagging the gazillion pictures from the weekend? Mark Zuckerberg feels you. ABC explains Facebook's new brainchild -- Tag Suggestions.
"Facebook adds facial recognition software. The new technology will make it easier to identify friends on the photos you upload. It works by matching new photos to others that have already been tagged, and suggests people that you may want to tag. The feature will begin rolling out next week."
Mashable tells us more.
"Facebook fills in the 'Who is this?' box with its suggestion — all you have to do is click the 'Save Tags' button to accept."
If you're a little freaked out by this new feature, don't worry-- you're not alone. An anchor from HLN is with you.
"Some people are loving this, but if you find this a little bit creepy, like I do, you can opt out of it."
And the Facebook blog says -- opting out is simple.
"If for any reason you don't want your name to be suggested, you will be able to disable suggested tags in your Privacy Settings. Just click 'Customize Settings' and 'Suggest photos of me to friends.' Your name will no longer be suggested in photo tags, though friends can still tag you manually."
So, what makes Facebook think it knows your friends better than you do? Well, Urlesque says apparently it knows, but it ain't telling how.
"The feature only makes suggestions when the algorithms have 'high confidence' in their accuracy, but Facebook hasn't released what percentage of confidence is required to make a suggestion. How exactly are we measuring confidence here?"
Commenters on India's TechTree say they're so concerned about the new function they're considering calling it quits with Facebook.
Comment 2: "Calling this creepy is a massive understatement. ... This is going to result in huge lapses in privacy and security of Facebook users. The wise thing is to quit Facebook now and join a safer social networking platform."
Finally - a Facebook executive tells CNET the feature actually enhances privacy, despite all the concerns to the contrary.
Chris Cox: ... Every time a tag is created, it means that there was a photo of you on the Internet that you didn't know about. ... Once you know that, you can remove the tag [or] write to the person, and say, 'I'm not that psyched about this photo."
So what do you think about the new feature?
Get more multisource technology video news analysis from Newsy.
Just over a month ago, Google announced that they were changing their algorithm in order to weaken the search engine rankings of sites they deem to be "content farmers."
Whereas most of Google's algorithm changes are barely noticeable, the current change that they have been working on since last January will affect 12% of U.S. searches.
There has been much debate about what "content farming" is, and Google has done little to offer a clear explanation, simply stating, "low quality" or "shallow" sites would be affected. This is similar to the vague definition of pornography -- you'll know it when you see it.
The problem with such a vague approach to what is a strictly defined algorithm is that it leaves too much room for a human interpretation. And as we have seen, Google has been exposed as having connections to U.S. intelligence agencies, which doesn't bode well for alternative news sites that aggregate anti-establishment stories from around the web. Given the other censorship threats facing the Internet, it seems those who might be critical of Internet control and real-time surveillance of average Americans are being targeted...
"Doodle-4-Google" is so much more than an art contest. Sure, the game, which received 33,000 entries last year, celebrates "the creativity of young people" by having them send in a drawing under the theme "What I’d like to do someday …" But, there's another component, as well. It also helps Google collect some very personal data on students K through 12. Along with the submission, the contest's initial Parent Consent Form asked for the child's city of birth (not current city, mind you), date of birth, the last four digits of the child's social security number, as well as complete contact info for the parents. Bob Bowdon, who directed The Cartel, a documentary about corruption in the public-school system explained the significance:
You see what Google knows and many parents don't know is that a person's city of birth and year of birth can be used to make a statistical guess about the first five digits of his/her social security number. Then, if you can somehow obtain those last four SSN digits explicitly — voila, you've unlocked countless troves of personal information from someone who didn't even understand that such a disclosure was happening.
If the information Google culled from the contest was linked with other databases to target ads, it could prove lucrative for the company, which enlists promotional help from schools by offering prize money. But Bowdon says he has no evidence that Google has used what it learned for marketing purposes. Not to mention the fact that statistical guessing seems more manpower intensive than the type of passive data collection Google usually prefers (oh, hey there, Street View camera). However, within 26 hours of alerting the FTC, Google updated its consent form eliminating the request for the last four digits of the kid's social security number but leaving in the question about birth city. Okay, class. Who wants to send in a doodle under the theme "Be sort of evil until someone figures it out"?
Update: A Google spokesperson reached out to Intel for comment, noting that this the fourth year of the contest and the first time that the company requested Social Security information.
This year we started accepting doodles from kids even if their school hadn't registered for the contest. To help us keep entries distinct and remove duplicate entries from any particular student, we asked parents for limited information, including the last 4 digits of a student's social security number. We later updated our forms when we recognized that we could sufficiently separate legitimate contest entries while requesting less information. To be clear, these last 4 digits were not entered into our records and will be safely discarded.
The city of birth helps us identify whether contestants are eligible for the contest, as winners must be either U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents of the U.S. The information isn't used for any other purpose.
As far as mega corporations in bed with the government go, Google sits somewhere close to the top of the tree. The company was seeded with CIA money and is literally an a corporate arm of the intelligence community.
The following ten facts highlight how much influence Google has, and how the company has seemingly abandoned its own corporate motto,“Don’t be evil”.
The company has established a close working relationship with the National Security Agency, the government spy force responsible for warrantless monitoring of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails in the wake of 9/11. Google is supplying the software, hardware and tech support to US intelligence agencies in the process of creating a vast closed source database for global spy networks to share information.
Google’s partnership with the intelligence network is not new. As we reported in late 2006, An ex-CIA agent Robert David Steele has claimed sources told him that CIA seed money helped get the company off the ground.
Recent disclosures under the Freedom Of Information Act have also revealed that the federal government has several contracts with social media outlets, including Youtube which is owned by Google. The contracts are said to waive rules on monitoring users and permit companies to track visitors to government web sites for advertising purposes.
#3 – Google is reported to have jointly invested with the CIA in an Internet monitoring project that scours Twitter accounts, blogs and websites for all sorts of information, and can also “predict the future”.
Google Ventures, the investment arm of Google, has injected a sum of up to $10 million, as has In-Q-Tel – which handles investments for the CIA and the wider intelligence network – into a company called Recorded Future.
The company describes its analytics as “the ultimate tool for open-source intelligence”.
#4 – The recent scandal involving the company’s street view roaming vehicles accessing the wi-fi details of internet users and mapping their online activities has also raised serious questions.
Google Earth and Street View are also being used by the government to spy on Americans in an effort to collect revenue and enforce ordinances on swimming pools without safety certificates, junk cars being stored without permission, unlicensed porches, and a myriad of other petty transgressions that the state is feeding off in complete violation of the Fourth Amendment to suck citizens dry of whatever income they have left after being looted of trillions of dollars in wealth that the state has transferred to foreign banks.
Google has admitted that its cars captured much more than just fragments of personal payload data.
#5 – Outgoing Google CEO Eric Schmidt, a regular special guest of the Bilderberg kingmakers, has on several occasions displayed a complete lack of respect for the right to privacy and the Fourth amendment.
In the past two years alone he has made the following statements in public:
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
People who don’t like Google’s Street View cars taking pictures of their homes and businesses “can just move.”
“I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.”
“We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”
“What we’re really doing is building an augmented version of humanity, building computers to help humans do the things they don’t do well better.“
“The Internet of things will augment your brain”
“Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it,”. Google implants, he added, probably crosses that line.
“Every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.”
“It was a joke,” Schmidt said of the statement. “It just wasn’t a very good one…The serious goal is just rememeber when you post something, the comptuers remember forever.”
“…the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”
“If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go.”
“In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you”.
Schmidt, who alarmingly sits on the White House Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, is a massive hypocrite. It is just fine with him for your personal information to be made public, however, when his own details were published online by tech news site CNET, Google blacklisted the website, which leads us nicely to our next point…
The Internet giant has also become the target of an anti-trust suit in the EU for allegedly demoting links to a website who did not pay for higher listings as its competitor had done.
#7 – Google is changing its algorithm to reduce the status of alternative media websites to “spammers” in an attempt to control the flow of information on the Internet. The company is planning to weaken the search-ability of websites it refers to as “content farms.”
In line with White House technology czarCass Sunstein’s stated agenda, Google also wishes to implement technology that “directs readers” to a stories with an “opposing’ view” from that of what they are currently reading.
Prisonplanet.com and Infowars.com were blacklisted from Google news in November and remain frozen out, ensuring that our stories no longer appear alongside the likes of CNN and Fox News in a frightening early salvo in the move towards a tiered Internet that favors large corporations while independent voices are strangled internet users.
Infowars.com alone now gets more traffic than MSNBC.com, a multi-billion dollar news operation funded by General Electric and the military-industrial complex. This type of blacklisting amounts to open censorship of highly sought after news and information.
Blocking our site from these listings is a discriminatory practice which prevents frequent news readers from stumbling upon Prison Planet articles while browsing. Ironically, it also prevents PrisonPlanet.com articles from being linked to #1 Google Search terms with which they are associated. Note: This is not the same as being blocked altogether from Google.com searches.
If independent news websites and their readers don’t stand together in unison to decry Google’s efforts to kill free speech on the Internet, the web as a last outpost for the tattered and torn First Amendment will be lost forever.
“Because the whole thing before the revolution was the most critical thing. Without Facebook, without Twitter, without Google, without You Tube, this would have never happened.” Ghonim told the media, insinuating that the search engine was responsible for an entire revolution.
#10 -Youtube recently implemented measures to allow its users to flag content that allegedly supports terrorism. Google claims to have instituted this policy after receiving complaints.
It is obvious where all of this is headed. Users will now flag any political material they may disagree with as “terrorist promotion”. Google’s YouTube will remove the videos and will then say the content was removed at the user’s request.
In the case of both Google and Facebook, three talented students in their 20's came out of obscurity to establish multi-billion dollar enterprises. Do you suppose they had some help?
BY SANDEEP PARWAGA (FOR HENRYMAKOW.COM)
There used to be a saying: ''No one makes a name for himself without giving something up''
As a youngster, I was awed by people who ''made it to the top'' by creating and innovating corporations, technologies, or simply establishing themselves through sports, music, entertainment, etc. thus becoming millionaires.
Now as I have grown older, I realize how illusory this paradigm really is. I came to the conclusion that if you want to reach the ''top',' you have to give up your soul.
Take Mark Zuckerberg for example. He is one of the most ''successful entrepreneurs'' in the last decade. Having made a fortune through his Facebook empire, he reaches more than 500 million people worldwide. It seems like a fairytale. A student creates a new interface to connect the people throughout the world. Well, it sounds great doesn't it? It would, if we were true.
Here is a good video that demonstrates that Facebook was indirectly funded by the CIA with the goal of learning and storing everything there is to know about you. Why? To monitor and ultimately control.
Again, the people have been totally duped by the Facebook-mania and can only see what they are told to see. As my friends say: ''It is to connect people and share information''. In the wake of the recent crisis in Egypt, we might add that Facebook has become not just a data-mining operation, but also a soft power proxy for crisis-creation.
Let's look at headlines that should cast no doubt about the true character of CIAbook:
US spies invest in internet monitoring technology - Quoted from this article: ''In an attempt to sift through the blizzard of information, the investment arm of the CIA, In-Q-Tel, has invested in a software firm that monitors social media.''
TIME Mag Person of the Year 2010 - This link is just a mere reminder of past history and the perversion of ''honoring''those who don't deserve it. Would you like to share this front cover with Hitler, Stalin, Kissinger, etc.? I sure wouldn't. Obviously Zuckerberg has done something ''great''. Just my 2 cents about this garbage.
GOOGLE
Google has come under scrutiny over its attempt to eliminate competing search engines and block ''controversial'' sites and people, but the biggest controversy came over its alleged ties to the CIA and NSA.
Google founders Sergey M. Brin and Lawrence E. Page are portrayed as average folks, Stanford University students, who teamed up to create a ''superior search engine''. Their attempt to do just that turned out to be so successful that they started to get funding from big players, for example Sun Microsystems. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin#Search_engine_development)
It can be assumed that the CIA and NSA funded them as well. As in the above example of Facebook, don't forget the Google scandal connected to China last year, where Google simply evaded censorship laws by moving to Hong Kong.
The CIA might have used Google as a soft power proxy in China as well for destabilization operations. Here are a few issues that made the news regarding Google:
I admit I have Facebook. I am not particularly happy about it, but it does facilitate being connected with friends from other places. I try to keep a low profile. Don't reveal anything or don't click on trivial buttons, for example the ''Likes''.
Use alternatives to make contact if you can, e.g. email or other messengers. If you have Facebook, you have probably realized how people have literally sold their lives over to it.
Every time I see people revealing things to the finest detail, they don't think about any consequences, or let's say, they are not smart enough to care. The scientific dictatorship has done a ''good'' job in brainwashing and manipulating the masses. Don't be fooled by the deceit. The mainstream media has been very reluctant to cover the disturbing Google/Facebook ties as it would expose important assets for the Big Brother machine and its secret use to destabilize.
Zuckerberg or the Google founders would never have gotten the publicity, wealth and success without a CIA or NSA connection. To elaborate on the opening quote, I assume they have been initiated into the Illuminati Order and sold their soul.
------------
Sandeep Parwaga is a 22 yr old Indian student who currently lives in the UK.
"The cost of reading the New York Times for free is being tracked. The cost of being on Facebook is being data-mined," Peter Eckersley, a senior staff technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Friday at a panel discussion on the intersection of technology and privacy...
Alternative news sites beware, Google is changing their algorithm to reduce your status to a spammer in an attempt to control the flow of information on the Internet.
Google has announced that it is fixing flaws in its algorithm that allows search results to be spammed, while also planning to weaken the search-ability of websites referred to as "content farms." Matt Cutts, head of Google's anti-spam team, writes:
As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content. (my emphasis)
The only clear reference from Google about problems occurring from "content farms" in regards to spamming search results is from China: "Last year Google faced a rash of webspam on Chinese domains in our index. Some spammers were purchasing large amounts of cheap .cn domains and stuffing them with misspellings and porn phrases." They claim this scheme led to "irrelevant" search results.
...In truth, though, it is a creepy, multi¬national company that spies on us, as I found out a week ago after I foolishly left my laptop in the back of a London taxi.
I made some disconcerting discoveries about Google that have left me deeply unhappy about the business practices of this most apparently ‘cuddly’ of corporate giants.
Like 190 million others, I had signed up for Google’s free service Gmail to write and receive emails.
This was a new development for me, replacing Microsoft Office Outlook, which was largely trouble-free but which I found cumbersome to use away from my home internet connection.
Various friends advised me to switch to Gmail, saying it was easy to use and accessible from anywhere. It was simple to set up an account, and at first I barely noticed the advertisements that pay for the service. There is space for eight adverts down the side of the screen on the Gmail page, plus another across the top.
I was bereft when I lost my laptop and absolutely overjoyed a few days later when the taxi driver emerged from the snowed-in wilds of Essex and returned it to me. I immediately emailed friends with the good news.
But within a second of the email being sent, a column of adverts had appeared down the right hand side of my Gmail screen. The adverts offered me the chance to ‘save hundreds’ on a new PC.
A shiver slid slowly down my spine. The adverts were being specifically targeted at me because of what I had written in a private email to a friend. Though I found the discovery deeply creepy, I carried on using Gmail, noticing all the time that I couldn’t write anything to anyone without Gmail offering me comments, suggestions and temptations.
This might just be tolerable when the email is innocuous. But it certainly was not when I recently emailed a lawyer about a difficult and sensitive problem and back came a host of offers advertising various lawyers and help with a legal compromise agreement.
I felt as if I were being stalked and the experience left me with a raft of questions. What does Google know about me? How dare they invade my privacy? And is there a hidden agenda?
A honey-voiced Google spokesman was quick to respond to my call and insisted the adverts were generated not by a human being, but by a computer programme that all servers use to scan emails looking for spam and viruses. And that no information was read or sold to advertisers.
That may be true, but Google does use the content of your emails for commercial gain. It scans your words and searches for key words in the same way it does when you use the Google search engine...
You Tube freezes Alex Jones Channel as web censorship accelerates in frightening early salvo of move towards tiered Internet system that favors large corporations while strangling independent voices
In a damning new lurch towards web censorship, Google’s news aggregator has blacklisted Prison Planet and Infowars despite the fact that both websites are internationally known and now attract more traffic than many mainstream media websites, while Google-owned You Tube has frozen the Alex Jones Channel based on a spurious complaint about showing Wikileaks footage that has been carried on hundreds of other You Tube channels for months.
After carrying our content for years, Google News last week purged Prison Planet and Infowars from its aggregator system, ensuring that our stories no longer appear alongside the likes of CNN and Fox News in a frightening early salvo in the move towards a tiered Internet that favors large corporations while independent voices are strangled.
Only smaller sites that re-post Prison Planet content have appeared in Google searches since early November, proving that the campaign is a deliberate effort on behalf of Google to restrict traffic to Alex Jones’ websites. Our stories have been linked almost every day on the Drudge Report for the past three weeks, as our readership figures soar past numerous corporate media websites that are carried by Google News. We are clearly a legitimate and internationally recognized news outlet and yet Google has blacklisted us because it disagrees with our political viewpoints.
In addition, Google-owned You Tube yesterday moved to freeze the popular Alex Jones Channel, which has well over 100,000 subscribers and has had over 75 million views. You Tube made a spurious claim that the channel had violated “community guidelines” by posting a segment from the infamous Wikileaks Apache footage, when the footage is in fact posted in greater length on hundreds of other You Tube channels, including Al Jazeera, Russia Today and CBS News.
Double standards: You Tube targets the Alex Jones Channel for showing a brief segment of a video that appears on hundreds of other You Tube channels, including CBS News and Russia Today.
When we responded to You Tube by pointing out that the Wikileaks footage in question appeared in multiple places elsewhere on You Tube in far greater length and detail, and that it was not vulgar or offensive but a real incident that was of clear public concern which was posted under fair use (USC Title 17, Section 106A-117), You Tube reacted by freezing uploading privileges for the account while also threatening to terminate it entirely.
You Tube is essentially sending a message that if you disagree with their decision, your claim won’t be considered, you will simply be punished to an even greater degree.
This is by no means the first time that Google and You Tube have engaged in open blacklisting of Alex Jones’ material.
Once Google’s fiercest critics have been silenced for good the company can then set about implementing its CIA-backed total information awareness program, which will scour Twitter accounts, blogs and websites for all sorts of information left by individual users, aiming to use this data to “predict the future” and completely direct and control people’s lives and behavior.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has announced that Google, in conjunction with the CIA, is set to become the ultimate Big Brother entity that “will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives” by constantly tracking their location via smart phones and telling them where to go and what to do.
There is also no doubt that Google is one of the corporations at the forefront of the government’s drive to use cybersecurity as a pretext for killing the free Internet, having previously worked with the NSA and the CIA.
There can be little doubt that this latest lurch in web censorship is part of the overall agenda to tighten the noose around independent news websites as they continue to outstrip the establishment media in terms of trustworthiness and reach.
Infowars.com alone now gets more traffic than MSNBC.com, a multi-billion dollar news operation funded by General Electric and the military-industrial complex.
The fact that millions are shunning the mainstream media and flocking to independent media outlets undoubtedly has the system running scared, exemplified by the recent rebellion against the TSA which was led by the Drudge Report.
The fact that the status quo is rapidly losing its power to influence the body politic and that this is shifting over to independent media not controlled by giant corporations has the establishment petrified, which is why they are doing everything possible to tighten the screws on websites like Prison Planet, Infowars, and Alex Jones content in general.
It is evident that the system revels in any chance to dampen the loud voice that Alex Jones, Infowars.com/PrisonPlanet.com and its supporters have raised on the Internet, effectively challenging the status quo and mainstream media spin on major news and events. With the easy passage of the web censorship bill, it is clear that what is happening now to Infowars.com and Alex Jones will soon happen to anyone without a politically-correct message, particularly when that message is capable of resonating throughout large parts of the globe.
With Homeland Security now openly seizing websites with no due course or opportunity for redress, the age of Internet censorship has now begun, with an iron curtain beginning to descend over free speech as the United States enacts policies more draconian than those of communist China.
If independent news websites and their readers don’t stand together in unison to decry Google’s efforts to kill free speech on the Internet, the web as a last outpost for the tattered and torn First Amendment will be lost forever.
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.
Google Inc.'s venture capital arm, Google Ventures, invested $3.2 million in a genetics startup run by Google CEO Sergey Brin's wife in November, bringing the Web search leader's total investments in 23andMe Inc. to $10.2 million...
...The startup offers genetic testing for people interested in what diseases they might be genetically predisposed to, or for people who want to learn more about their ancestry. The tests cost between $400 and $500.
[Webmaster - This is a great way for the government to collect DNA/genetic information from people who are giving it up voluntarily. Google and the U.S. government are joined at the hip. When people take these "tests", they may as well give the information directly to the government.]
Google announced the settlement of a privacy lawsuit Tuesday, and it notified users of their share of the deal: zip.
Last February, Google launched the Buzz service: a Twitter-like offering that lets Gmail users notify their contacts of their recent activity. Shortly after launch, many people were surprised to find that the service lumped all of their contacts together for such notifications -- even people users had written to but hadn't created specific contacts for. And in some cases, those lists were made public.
Many users were promptly displeased, enough so to file a class-action lawsuit. In the settlement, announced via an e-mail to Gmail users Tuesday, the company noted that it had quickly moved to address people's concerns but also announced an $8.5 million commitment to an independent fund that will promote privacy education and policy.
But that money isn't available to individual users, Google stressed...
The federal agency had been investigating the fact that Google collected communications, including passwords and e-mails, from people who used open Wi-Fi networks in their homes.
The data collections, which Google says were inadvertent, happened while Google was driving around taking pictures for the Street View function on Google Maps, the Mountain View, California, company said.
The FTC said Google has sufficiently addressed the problem...
page, so you can download videos that you want to save. If you don’t want to download your videos, you don’t need to do anything. (The Download feature will be disabled after May 13, 2011.)
