Beyond Google and evil: How policy makers, journalists and consumers should talk differently about Google and privacy

First Monday

Volumn 14, Issue 4, 2009, Pages

  Hoofnagle, Chris Jay ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 70049111214     PISSN: 13960466     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5210/fm.v14i4.2326     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. Google, "Company overview," at http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/.
2. Google, "Our philosophy," at http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html.
3. In 126 of the articles, Google was simply referenced as a "resource" where a privacy issue was mentioned. This means that Google is discussed as a service, fact of, or feature of the online world, usually in the context of an article that is not about privacy. For instance, a November 2007 New York Times article discusses apartment hunting, and the use of Google to learn more about a property. The article continues to explain that the house hunters value the privacy of their carriage house. Joyce Cohen, "Finding that hidden gem," N.Y. Times (18 November 2007). Frequently, articles classified in this bucket discuss the idea of Googling a term to find a business. The article might then recommend that the consumer check to see if the business has a privacy policy.
4. "Privacy is important" statements are those where Google makes reference to privacy as a value without specifying particular actions taken to protect privacy: E.g., "Privacy and trust are probably the two words that are going to make the Internet the healthiest in the future," in Louise Story, "F.T.C. takes a look at Web marketing," N.Y. Times (2 November 2007).
5. "A Google spokesman said the company takes privacy seriously but is not currently developing a service to immediately discard search queries," in Miguel Helft, "Ask.com puts a bet on privacy," N.Y. Times (11 December 2007).
6. E.g., "... our whole business is dependent on the trust of users," Miguel Helft, "Google profit soars 69 percent for quarter," N.Y. Times (20 April 2007).
7. See e.g., Colin J. Bennett & Charles D. Rabb, The governance of privacy: Policy instruments in global perspective, pp. 52-79 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006).
8. Avoiding creepiness may also explain why Google refused to place a link to its privacy policy from its homepage, until it was required to do so by a California statute. Saul Hansell, "Google, privacy and California," N.Y. Times (2 June 2008).
9. Google originally argued that placing a one-word link to the privacy policy would make its homepage too busy (violating a so-called 28-word rule), but within months added verbiage promoting its new wireless phone (bringing the page to 39 words). Miguel Helft, "Is 39 the new 28 at Google?" N.Y. Times bits blog (22 October 2008), at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/is-39-the-new-28-at-google/.
10. Machiavelli, The Prince, chapter XIII at 130 (Hill Thompson, translator; New York: Heritage Press, 1955)
11. James P. Nehf, "Shopping for privacy on the Internet," 41 J. of Consumer Affairs, 351 (Winter 2007).
12. Consider the limited resource of time as a hurdle. The speed and convenience of ecommerce itself would be squandered if consumers actually read privacy policies, tracked companies' privacy performance in newspapers, and followed reports by privacy advocates and regulators. Aleecia McDonald and Lorrie Cranor found recently that, "... reading privacy policies carry costs in time of approximately 201 hours a year, worth about $2,949 annually per American Internet user. Nationally, if Americans were to read online privacy policies word-for-word, we estimate the value of time lost as about $652 billion annually." Aleecia M. McDonald & Lorrie Faith Cranor, The cost of reading privacy policies, presented at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (26 September 2008), at http://tprcweb.com/files/CostOfReadingPrivacyPolicies.pdf.
13. Jaikumar Vijayan, "American Express most trusted company for privacy, study finds," Computerworld (28 March 2007), at http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=privacy&articleId=9014698&taxonomyId=84.
14. For instance, Hewlett-Packard was ranked in the top five in Ponemon's 2006 report, dropping to 16 in 2007. Jaikumar Vijayan, "American Express most trusted company for privacy, study finds," Computerworld (28 March 2007), at http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=privacy&articleId=9014698&taxonomyId=84. This drop was probably attributable to publicity surrounding Hewlett-Packard's use of private investigators to intimidate reporters. The point here is that while Hewlett-Packard was so highly rated, in actuality, its agents were engaging in problematic, privacy-invasive investigations of reporters.
15. For example, in order to make consumers feel at ease in conducting more health-related activities online, DrKoop.com leveraged the substantial trust generated from C. Everett Koop's tenure as Surgeon General. During his time in government, his conviction that tobacco products were harmful drove a number of politically unlikely anti-tobacco interventions. While he was a controversial figure, this tough approach on tobacco was a strong display of integrity against monied political interests. A user of DrKoop.com would assume that medical information entrusted to the site would be shielded from the monied marketing, insurance, and other interests in the health field. But shortly after DrKoop.com went bankrupt, it attempted to sell its customer database to the worst type of huckster our regulatory system tolerates: a nutritional supplement company. Alorie Gilbert, "Is DrKoop.com taking care of privacy," ZDNet News (1 July 2002), at http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-123846.html.
16. John Palfrey & Urs Gasser, Born digital: Understanding the first generation of digital natives at p. 69 (New York: Basic Books, 2008). Observing that, "It's too much to expect any Digital Native to manage a hundred relationships with a hundred companies and other institutions that hold data about her.".
17. Colin J. Bennett & Charles D. Rabb, The governance of privacy: Policy instruments in global perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006).
18. Joseph Turow, Americans & online privacy, the system is broken, Annenberg Public Policy Center (June 2003), at http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/Downloads/Information_And_Society/20030701_America_and_Online_Privacy/20030701_online_privacy_report.pdf.
19. Joseph Turow, Lauren Feldman, & Kimberly Meltzer, Open to exploitation: American shoppers online and offline, Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania (1 June 2005), at http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/NewsDetails.aspx?myId=31.
20. Chris Jay Hoofnagle & Jennifer King, "What Californians understand about privacy online" (3 September 2008), at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1262130.
21. Owen Thomas, "Google CEO has no time for your privacy," Valleywag (19 November 2008), at http://valleywag.com/5093634/google-ceo-has-no-time-for-your-privacy.
22. John Battelle, The search, p. 102, (New York: Penguin, 2005).
23. Saul Hansell, "Your ads here (all of them)," N.Y. Times (30 October 2005).
24. John Battelle, The search, pp. 91-92, (New York: Penguin, 2005).
25. Id. at p. 92.
26. Google, "Our philosophy," at http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html.
27. Google, "Advertising policies,", at http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=guidelines.cs&topic=9271&subtopic=9279&hl=en.
28. See e.g., Charles Duhigg, "Papers show Wachovia knew of thefts," N.Y. Times (6 February 2008), at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/business/06wachovia.html ("InfoUSA advertised lists of "Elderly Opportunity Seekers," 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money," and "Suffering Seniors," 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer's disease. "Oldies but Goodies" contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change.")
29. Saul Hansell, "Your ads here (all of them)," N.Y. Times (30 October 2005).
30. Google's system does not address a form of online bait and switch where the business falsely represents that it has inventory of an item in order to entice the consumer into making a purchase.
31. Susan Stellin, "Google's revival of a Usenet archive opens up a wealth of possibilities but also raises some privacy issues," N.Y. Times (7 May 2001).
32. Christopher Soghoian, "The problem of anonymous vanity searches" (23 January ), at http://ssrn.com/abstract=953673. ("If Google can build a higher-quality data set of customer information, they can charge more per advertisement, whilst also gaining a significant market advantage over the other search engines.").
33. Id. at 3.
34. Id. at 3.
35. "Federal Trade Commission, online behavioral advertising moving the discussion forward to possible self-regulatory principles" at 1 (20 December 2007), at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/12/principles.shtm.
36. Lisa Napoli, "Frequent search engine users, Google is watching and counting," N.Y. Times (6 October 2003).
37. "Technology brief - Google Inc.: Service to speed Web viewing raises some privacy concerns," Wall Street Journal (5 May 2005).
38. Bob Tedeschi, "With its home page, Google could get a bit closer to its users," N.Y. Times (23 May 2005).
39. Saul Hansell, "Microsoft plans to sell search ads of its own," N.Y. Times (26 September 2005).
40. Saul Hansell, "Advertisers trace paths users leave on Internet," N.Y. Times (15 August 2006).
41. Jessica E. Vascellaro & Kevin J. Delaney, "Search engines seek to get inside your head - Google, others start to comb users' online habits to tailor results to personal interests," Wall Street Journal (25 April 2007).
42. Jessica E. Vascellaro & Kevin J. Delaney, "Search engines seek to get inside your head - Google, others start to comb users' online habits to tailor results to personal interests," Wall Street Journal (25 April 2007).
43. Louise Story, "To aim ads, Web is keeping closer eye on what you click," N.Y. Times (10 March 2008).
44. Saul Hansell, "Google tries tighter aim for Web ads," New York Times (27 June 2008)
45. Jessica E. Vascellaro & Kevin J. Delaney, "Search engines seek to get inside your head - Google, others start to comb users' online habits to tailor results to personal interests," Wall Street Journal (25 April 2007).
46. Saul Hansell, "Google tries tighter aim for Web ads," New York Times (27 June 2008)
47. Katie Hafner, "In Google we trust? When the subject is e-mail, maybe not," N.Y. Times (8 April 2004).
48. For instance, with respect to Google Desktop, the company was developing password protection in order to deal with the problem of finding other users' information while using Desktop Search. Kevin J. Delaney, "New search software raises privacy issues; Recording IM sessions," Wall Street Journal (27 October 2004).
49. Google, "Another step to protect user privacy" (8 September 2008), at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/another-step-to-protect-user-privacy.html.
50. Chris Soghoian, "Debunking Google's log anonymization propaganda," CNet (11 September 2008), at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10038963-46.html.
51. Google, "Chat 'off the record' - Google privacy tips" (19 December 2007), at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBwkvnyLXDE.
52. Google, "Chat 'off the record' - Google privacy tips" (19 December 2007), at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBwkvnyLXDE.
53. Google, "Web History privacy notice," http://www.google.com/history/privacy.html.
54. "Off-the-Record Messaging," at http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/.
55. Lawrence Lessig, Code and other laws of cyberspace (New York: Basic Books, 2000)
56. Steve Lohr & Miguel Helft, "Clash of the titans," N.Y. Times (16 December 2007).
57. James Grimmelmann, "The Google dilemma", N.Y.L.S.L. Rev. (forthcoming).
58. "Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General, Terrorism Information Awareness Program - Report No. D-2004-033," (12 December 2003), at http://www.dodig.osd.mil/audit/reports/FY04/04033sum.htm.
59. Id. at pp. 9-10.
60. See e.g., Paul Ohm, "The rise and fall of invasive ISP surveillance" (30 August 2008), athttp://ssrn.com/abstract=1261344.
61. See "Declaration of Joel McElvain" at 4, Gonzales v. Google, Inc., 234 F.R.D. 674 (N.D. Cal. 2006).
62. Katie Hafner & Matt Richtel, "Google resists U.S. subpoena Of search data," N.Y. Times (20 January 2006).
63. 234 F.R.D. at 679.
64. "Google's half victory," Wall Street Journal (21 March 2006), at p. A14; "Hot topic: Searching for Google," Wall Street Journal (18 March 2006), at p. A8.
65. "Hot topic: Searching for Google," Wall Street Journal (18 March 2006), at p. A8
66. "... And Google at home," Wall Street Journal (30 January 2006), at p. A18
67. "Fishing in cyberspace," N.Y. Times (21 January 2006), at p. 12.
68. "Declaration of Joel McElvain" at 17, Gonzales v. Google, Inc., 234 F.R.D. 674 (N.D. Cal. 2006).
69. "Google's opposition to the government's motion to compel" at 18, Gonzales v. Google, Inc., 234 F.R.D. 674 (N.D. Cal. 2006).
70. "Google's opposition to the government's motion to compel" at 18-21, Gonzales v. Google, Inc., 234 F.R.D. 674 (N.D. Cal. 2006).
71. Louise Story & Miguel Helft, "Google buys an online ad firm for $3.1 billion," N.Y. Times (14 April 2007).
72. Miguel Helft, "Google profit soars 69% for quarter," N.Y. Times (20 April 2007).
73. Steve Lohr, "Inquiry into deal," N.Y. Times (2 June 2007).
74. "Opinion and order" at 13 in Viacom International et al. v. Youtube et al., 07-CIV-2103 (LLS), (S.D.N.Y. 1 July 2008).
75. Jessica E. Vascellaro, "YouTube suit sets protocol to shield IDs," Wall Street Journal (21 July 2008).
76. Alma Whitten, "Are IP addresses personal?" Google Public Policy Blog (22 February 2008), available at http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/02/are-ip-addresses-personal.html.
77. Google, Inc., "Archive: Privacy policy" (14 August 2000), athttp://www.google.com/privacy_archive_2000.html.
78. Google, Inc., "Archive: Privacy policy" (1 July 2004), athttp://www.google.com/privacy_archive_2000.html.
79. Google, Inc., "Archive: Privacy policy" (14 October 2005), athttp://www.google.com/privacy_archive.html.
80. "Google, Inc., Privacy policy" (7 August 2008), at http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html.
81. "... 87% (216 million of 248 million) of the population in the United States had reported characteristics that likely made them unique based only on {5-digit ZIP, gender, date of birth}. About half of the U.S. population (132 million of 248 million or 53%) are likely to be uniquely identified by only {place, gender, date of birth}, where place is basically the city, town, or municipality in which the person resides. And even at the county level, {county, gender, date of birth} are likely to uniquely identify 18% of the U.S. population. In general, few characteristics are needed to uniquely identify a person." Latanya Sweeney, Uniqueness of Simple Demographics in the U.S. Population, Laboratory for International Data Privacy (2000), at http://privacy.cs.cmu.edu/dataprivacy/papers/LIDAP-WP4abstract.html.
82. Machiavelli, The Prince Ch. XV at pp. 115-6 (Hill Thompson, translator; New York: Heritage Press, 1955).
83. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future pp. 74-92 (Marion Farber, translator and editor; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
84. John Battelle explains that the Google founders' skepticism of advertising, described as an "allergy" by an early investor, caused a delay in finding a sustainable funding model for the company. John Battelle, The search, p. 92, (New York: Penguin, 2005).
85. John Paczkowski, "Digital daily: Selective search privacy," Wall Street Journal (18 June 2007)
86. Federal Trade Commission, "Consumer Fraud in the U.S.: Second FTC survey" (October 2007), available at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/10/fraud.pdf.
87. In April 2007, John Battelle called for data portability and a deletion right, among other consumer protections. John Battelle, The Data Bill of Rights, John Battelle's Searchblog, at http://battellemedia.com/archives/003575.php.
88. This table only reflects articles where someone from Google was quoted, not all articles covering a certain topic.