Google Talks Transparency, But Hides Surveillance Stats

[siljaline]

<quote>
Google likes to trumpet transparency and free expression, especially when it concerns the internet, part of its commitment to the corporate motto, "Don't Be Evil."

But despite the company's recent online public policy posts espousing unfettered online expression, we aren't buying it.

The Mountain View, California, search and advertising giant said Wednesday, for example, that it was a "company that believes deeply in free expression" and that it was "determined to continue to do our part and make new, significant contributions to promote free expression in 2010."

But juxtapose those and other recent statements on its public policy blog with the real facts - facts that Google won't cough up. </quote>

<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/google-talks-out-its-portal/>

Silj

--
"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game
because they almost always turn out to be -- or to be indistinguishable from
-- self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time."
- Neil Stephenson, _Cryptonomicon_

[Autumn]

On Thu, 17 Dec 2009 20:49:17 -0500, "siljaline" <sp...@uce.gov> wrote:

><quote>
>Google likes to trumpet transparency and free expression, especially when it concerns the internet, part of its commitment to the corporate motto, "Don't Be Evil."
>
>But despite the company's recent online public policy posts espousing unfettered online expression, we aren't buying it.
>
>The Mountain View, California, search and advertising giant said Wednesday, for example, that it was a "company that believes deeply in free expression" and that it was "determined to continue to do our part and make new, significant contributions to promote free expression in 2010."
>
>But juxtapose those and other recent statements on its public policy blog with the real facts - facts that Google won't cough up. </quote>
>
><http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/google-talks-out-its-portal/>
>
>Silj

Good article. I use GMail with Outlook Express. I am still trying to
figure out how to keep GMail from keeping copies of my "sent" and
"deleted" emails on it's server. Every other day, I have to log on
and manually delete those items. But still, why do they have them?

Autumn

[siljaline]

Autumn wrote:

> Good article.

Thanks, it was quite a treasure-trove of not oft-posted information on Google.
Wired's Legal Team must have had a nightmare doing due-diligence on that one !

> I use GMail with Outlook Express. I am still trying to
> figure out how to keep GMail from keeping copies of my "sent" and
> "deleted" emails on it's server. Every other day, I have to log on
> and manually delete those items. But still, why do they have them?

I also poll Gmail via Outlook Express and retrieve it from the Web as well.
While I am by no means a Gmail expert I think if you fuss with the below settings
Google invasiveness on your Web mail may be less.
<http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=13273>

I guess on the redeeming things of Gmail is that it doesn't assign that crappy
footer on every email you send, the UI is pretty good as well.

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