We Want Schmidt's Head !
Google would like you to know they grabbed way more private information than they first let on, but it was completely, totally accidental :
Google Inc said its "Street View" cars around the world accidentally collected more personal data than previously disclosed, and that it was changing its privacy practices.
Regulators in some of the more than 30 countries where the cars operated are looking into the issue.Google's Street View cars, which are well known for crisscrossing the globe and taking panoramic pictures of the city's streets, collected the data. The company displays the pictures in its online street maps.
Google said it wants to delete the data as soon as possible. It disclosed the snafu in May, but said at the time that the information it collected was typically limited to "fragments" of data because the cars were always moving.
Well, if by “fragments” you meant “entire e-mails” or “passwords”, then it appears Google fragmented the hell out of the landscape. And after this massive breech of trust and invasion of privacy we have to trust them Google won’t ever, ever do it again :
Google said it has appointed Alma Whitten as director of privacy for engineering and product management, and that the company was adding new internal procedures requiring engineering product managers to maintain a privacy design document that records how user data is handled.
Google also said it was enhancing its privacy training for engineers and other important groups within the company.
But the most damning evidence, and one that would send a chill racing up the spine of any rational person, is this :
.Google said collecting the additional data was a mistake resulting from a piece of computer code from an experimental project that was accidentally included
So Google is experimenting with means to invade our privacy? Except for an incompetent engineer or thirty, we would not have any clue that Google was building the tools to invade privacy at will. And if it was bad in the spring, and worse now, what would it be like if we could force full, honest, and transparent disclosure from Google?
Are we alone, or does that whole ‘don’t be evil’ thing just appear to be a B.S. marketing slogan right now?