[IP] Google search and seizure, etc. vs. technologists

Sat Dec 3 08:53:22 PST 2005

>In the 1980s, the "average user" would never
>need a local area network in his home. In the early 1990s, the
>"average user" would never understand or need the Internet. And so on.

In fact, the reality of the current security and privacy mess with
the Internet helps to prove my point.  For example, talk to the folks
who drive around plotting all of the open wireless LANs that are
literally everywhere in virtually every neighborhood.  The vast
majority of them have *no* security at all -- not even cruddy old
WEP.  This includes businesses, medical offices, you name it, as
well as vast numbers of private homes.  Yet, for years every WLAN
product has included at the very least WEP capabilities, and
instructions on how to set it up.  Despite this, many people's open
WLANs are constantly being abused, sometimes with tragic results.

That situation is gradually starting to improve, but only because the
setting up of *some* level of security has become part of the
standard installation scripts for many products.  But until this
became the *default*, even when it was easy to use, most people
didn't bother.  Why?  Most of the time, simply because they didn't
believe that any associated risks applied to them -- and that view
is easy to understand.  The computer industry is great at promoting
the vast benefits of their products, but do their best to keep the
downsides to the fine print, buried in click-through license
mumbo-jumbo that even many lawyers would have trouble understanding,
along with lilliputian quick-start guides that are the only
instructions many people read.

The same thing goes for Internet services.  It is utterly reasonable
to expect that the *defaults* provided will respect people's privacy,
security, and other rights.  We are a society of laws and those laws
are there (at least in theory) to help protect those rights.  It is
unfair in the extreme to suggest that anyone who doesn't jump
through hoops to protect themselves from information abuse is
somehow negligent, while asserting that legislative efforts should
not be made to rein in the way that the services behave -- so that
those services meet a reasonable standard that society agrees is
appropriate.

Yes, imposing society's will on such firms can be tough to do,
especially when dealing with powerful and well-heeled interests.
But not to do so -- to not even try -- is just surrendering to what
most of us know in our hearts is just plain wrong.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren at pfir.org or lauren at vortex.com or lauren at eepi.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, EEPI
   - Electronic Entertainment Policy Initiative - http://www.eepi.org
Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com

  - - -

>
>
>Begin forwarded message:
>
>From: Phil Karn <karn at ka9q.net>
>Date: December 3, 2005 7:10:30 PM EST
>To: dave at farber.net
>Cc: ip at v2.listbox.com
>Subject: Re: [IP] Google search and seizure, etc. vs. technologists
>
>
>>From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren at vortex.com>
>
>>1) Any practical attempt to "swamp" Google's database in such a
>>   manner is unlikely to succeed, given the sheer volume of legit
>>   queries that they receive.  I suspect they'd be smart enough to
>>   detect abuse patterns fairly easily.  That kind of analysis is
>>   their bread and butter.
>
>The idea is not to "swamp" Google. It's simply to create a little
>plausible deniability -- i.e., reasonable doubt -- that a given
>search was entered by the user and not by the automatic daemon.
>
>>2) Attempts to purposely "abuse" Google in such a manner (faked
>>   requests) may well violate their Terms of Service, and if they
>>   don't now you can be sure that they will in some future version
>>   of the ToS.  The likely result will at a minimum be bans and ISP
>>   actions, and at the max lawsuits.  Pull out your wallet.
>
>Again, "swamping" or "abusing" Google is not the intent, nor is it
>very likely given Google's strong emphasis on performance and
>scalability. The idea is simply to create doubt that a given query
>was generated by a human, not by the robot. The "quality" of the
>synthetic queries is much more important than their quantity.
>
>Still, the extra traffic just might have the effect of encouraging
>Google to adopt a stronger privacy policy. Not that I'd place much
>stock in that, of course (see below.)
>
>>3) Routing queries through anon proxies will provide some protection
>>   for the technological elite who understand such things.  They will
>>   not protect the average user, who most likely doesn't understand
>>   the risks and issues, and will never use such proxies, even
>>   assuming that they were trivial to use.
>
>I wish I had a nickel for everything I've been told "the average
>user" would never understand, need or be able to use. Back in the
>1970s, the "average user" would never understand, need or be able to
>use a personal computer. In the 1980s, the "average user" would never
>need a local area network in his home. In the early 1990s, the
>"average user" would never understand or need the Internet. And so on.
>
>It is no more necessary that the "average user" understand how an
>anonymizing Google proxy works to use it effectively than to
>understand the fields in TCP/IP packet headers. The whole idea of
>civilization and commerce is that many people can benefit from
>specialized knowledge and skills that they themselves lack. The open
>source movement and the Internet itself have certainly demonstrated
>this.
>
>Personally, I prefer the anonymizing proxy over the random query
>generator. The proxy is likely to be more effective, and it generates
>no extra load. I mention the generator mainly to be complete. My
>point is that there *are* technical defenses against potential
>privacy abuses, and we can implement them ourselves instead of
>naively demanding that Google respect our privacy against their own
>commercial interests.
>
>And even if Google were completely honest, they would still be
>subject to Patriot Act abuses that we would never know about.
>
>The sad fact is that "national security" has become the root password
>to the Constitution. The only effective defense against a "rooted"
>system is not to put any sensitive information in it in the first
>place.
>
>--Phil
>
>

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