Scroogled (2007)

[jrockway]

People like to use this as a reason for being worried about the privacy policy change, but this story is about a government gone very wrong, not about some company targeting ads to you based on ads you've clicked. The problem here is that the government can go on warrantless fishing expeditions, not that Google remembers that you dressed up as a suicide bomber and did 'shrooms. The secondary problem is that the government has some problem with those things; I know of no law that prevents you from entering the United States because you were a suicide bomber for Halloween.

Yes, it's scary if an authoritarian regime with something against you knows everything you've ever done in your life. But the solution is not to stop living your life, it's to prevent the government from throwing away the Constitution.

[incongruity]

There's also a lesson in there about what happens when anyone gains the power that comes along with that much specific information about anyone and everyone.

That much valuable information attracts not only the government, but also the criminally motivated and those seeking power over others. All of it's scary – and we're willingly going along with it, at the moment, because it's useful for us, in the short-run.

[julien_p]

Previous discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3285671

[makeramen]

can an editor add [2007] to the title please?

[cperciva]

I'd like s/By/Written by/ too, since my first thought was that Cory Doctorow was scroogling people.

[raganwald]

Is it new to you?

[josscrowcroft]

I liked this but the ending made no sense, felt like it should have been a few paragraphs longer? Pretty abrupt.

[zackzackzack]

I wrote something a few days ago that was inspired by this: http://zacharymaril.com/blog/2012/02/17/who-will-regress-the...

[Karunamon]

On one hand, Doctorow knows how to tell a pretty riveting tale.

On the other hand, this alarmism is just as absurd as it is on the ACLU's "zOMG pizza!" flash presentation.

[rdl]

The most implausible part of this story is that Google would care what Yahoo is doing. Other than that, totally plausible, which is a bit depressing.

[joshstrange]

Old story but great message, I always send this to people that don't understand how important privacy on the internet really is

[tomjen3]

It is not important. What is important is that the government never gets its hands on it. Google will just show you more accurate ads.

[aorshan]

I've never read this before. I think the thing that scares me the most is how easily I can see some of these things happening.

[trevin]

Here's an audiobook version of this: http://ia600307.us.archive.org/26/items/WithALittleHelpMp3s/...

[ranit8]

Why would someone downvote this? Anyway, found a page for the whole podcast series. http://recall.archive.org/details/WithALittleHelpPodcasts

[GigabyteCoin]

Great writing as always.

My favorite line:

"Give it five years, [Google]’ll know how many turds were in the bowl before you flushed"

[tomelders]

That's enough to make me hack my Safari Binary and setup Duck Duck Go as my primary search.

[jrockway]

But the imaginary CIA collects your search queries right at your ISP. And they've broken SSL.