[Sigia-l] Issues in the taxonomy of human experience

[Listera]

Skot Nelson:

> Google's motivations may change.

Anything is possible under the sun, but we worry about things when they rise
to the level of a problem.
 
> they are, in fact, now more likely to change given the company's status as a
> publicly traded company with shareholders.

There's no such automatic likelihood. AAPL, for example, hasn't drastically
changed over the last two decades to become an evil company because it
became public or big.
 
> this is not a non-issue. google IS analyzing data which, by many
> definitions, would be considered private (the content of my email, for
> example).

Every time you use your ISP, and that would be every time you do anything on
the net, your packets are "analyzed". In fact, virtually all ISPs "analyze"
incoming email for spam/virus/etc. And, if you request, tag them as such for
you. You think they read the content of your email too? Your email is
"stored" for various periods of (short) time at various servers by the time
it reaches you, you think all those people read the content of your email
too? AAPL and MSFT have access to your email through .mac and Hotmail, you
think they read the content of your email too? And, finally, NSA's ECHELON
(in concert with various Anglo-Saxon security agencies GCHQ, CSE, DSD, GCSB)
have been "analyzing" your email for years. Is this news? You could encrypt
your email and other data, of course, but beyond that, is there anything
else you can do?

Ziya
Nullius in Verba