SpyVeillance: Thread

[grarpamp]

Google is the CIA's best TOP-SECRET friend. 1984.


"Users Have A Right To Know": Class Action Lawsuit Sheds Light Onto
Google's Opaque Data-Mining Practices

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/i-dont-have-the-faintest-idea-what-google-has-on-me-google-fell-short-on-privacy-promises-employees-say-11668779086

It turns out that big tech companies may not be as committed to your
privacy as their PR departments would have you believe - go figure.

The latest example of this reality appears to be Google, who was
revealed last week by MarketWatch to have data-mining practices that
employees say that they sometimes “don’t understand and can’t
describe”.

The report cited a class action lawsuit alleging that Google "violated
promises not to collect data of those using the browser without
signing into their Google accounts". Documents recently became
unsealed in the case, offering a look into how privacy is discussed
internally at Google.

In the lawsuit, one unnamed employee seemed to make it clear that
Google's privacy policies are opaque, stating: “I don’t have the
faintest idea what Google has on me. The fact what we can’t explain
what we have […] on users is probably our biggest challenge."

“Users have a right to know,” one employee said. Another commented:
"The reasons we provide are so high level and abstract that they don’t
make sense to people.” A third employee said: “Consent is no longer
consent if you think of ads as a product."

Additional employees seemed to solidify the ethos within the company.
A former employee who recently left the company said: “I am more than
willing to believe this is how executives talked to each other."

“Even people I was organizationally close to, knew well, and
respected, were finding ways to justify that stuff to themselves,”
they said about the company's privacy teams. “The individual
contributors [on Google’s privacy teams] are always idealistic people.
Some of these quotes [from the case] look to me like things that
idealistic people would say; others look like things management would
say when the idealistic people aren’t around.”

When asked by MarketWatch, Google responded to the report by stating
that “privacy controls have long been built into our services and we
encourage our teams to constantly discuss or consider ideas to improve
them.”

As the report notes, ads are a material revenue generator for Google,
making up $209.5 billion in sales for the company in its 2021 fiscal
year.