GOOGLE AND FACEBOOK

Anonymous said...

Just a technical note...

Many if not most of the links in your blog are via Google. That is,

http://www.google.co.uk/...url=...

Apart from being unwieldy and ugly, they're also allowing Google to track all clicks by your readers.

That is, they know the IP of the person clicking on these links, not to mention much more specific cookie/browser information, permitting quite precise identification.

You're making it very easy for Google to keep detailed tabs on your readers.

My attitude is this information is none of Google's 'king business.

Google has been getting more and more invasive and nosy through the years:

1. they added the irritating "via-google" links;

2. they added bloated client-side Javascript doing who-knows-what;

3. they've been manipulating and even censoring search results for both financial reasons and what can only be surmised as "government" reasons; I suspect the odd honeytoken even.

To avoid these convoluted "via-google" links, you could use the Google Shell instead, www.goosh.org, and then just cut-and-paste.

Of course, Narus and Cisco devices tap into Internet core routers to snoop on traffic anyway as part of the Echelon system, but why make it easy for them. Especially now when the NSA is increasingly drinking from a fire hydrant. Ditto whatever your national NSA-equivalent is.


This is all a two-way street, of course.

If the Google-Facebook-NSA-GCHQ-etc machine got too big for its boots, their agents and employees could very easily be tracked, their ranks infiltrated.

Same applies to mobile telephony.

Take a pleasant stroll down to the nearest Network Operations Centre. Where is it? A friend of a friend knows. These people are not strangers: they're your old postdoc buddies from uni, a guy you play bridge with, a contract realtime embedded programmer you drink with, a third level support techie from your local ISP, a CV-padder on LinkedIn, a friend from national military service, some guy you bought a car from. They're everywhere.

The technical functionaries of surveillance and their acquaintances are just like you and me.

The wonders of reciprocity.

They'd know who's doing it, but so what.

---

"As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr Anderson."
According to the Financial Times

(http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0585597c-1435-11e1-85c7-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1eVj5BgMa)

"Facebook’s increasing insistence on the use of real names, along with a similar policy enforced by the rival Google+ service launched this year, could end up having profound consequences for life online, changing a world that has long been free and easy into a more controlled place...

"Google and Facebook both stand solidly behind the principle of bringing real identities to the web..."

This "robs children of the ability to remain anonymous, something that could make them more vulnerable to bullying, according to critics."

Google and YouTube have now become - ADVERTS, ADVERTS, ADVERTS, ADVERTS!

Fu Ying (not the Bilderberg one)

Anonymous comments:

Some interesting background on Google and their quest for full spectrum dominance over the planet's information:

http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

http://www.softwaresecretweapons.com/jspwiki/google’s-quest-for-artificial-intelligence

http://smallbiztrends.com/2008/08/google-data-mine.html

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=26004

Incidentally, Eric Schmidt (Google) and Mark Hughes (Facebook) were participants at the 2011 Bilderberg conference.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/16/bilderberg-2011-tipping-point

As an aside, I have to agree with the Guardian journalist about Fu Ying (傅莹).

Is it just me, or is she just unutterably lovely. Surely describing a Bilderberg participant as such must violate some physical law. Maybe I'm easily beguiled by Mongol women. Maybe I've just woken up in a different world.