[ga] Abusive Domain names?: Questioning Google's Privacy Reform

["Jeffrey A. Williams" <jwkckid1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All,

I can't of course speak for Google users, I am not one, but I am
yet again having trouble believing anything Google officially
says, or for that matter does, as well as having more and more trouble
with their sense of right and wrong, and User Friendliness.

  Given that Privacy is a very special and VERY important right,
as it is not separable from saftey/security, endangering others by
having business practices and policies such as Googles TOS
and this article below demonstrates gives me and our members
much more than just pause, but grave concern as well for many
obvious and not so obvious reasons, all of which Google executives
should be well aware of and/or recognize fully, but either don't,
or do, and could care less...

  I think old Ben Franklin summed it up best when he said:
?Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.?

  As such, it seems obvious to me that the DOJ is also playing
a very dangerous game in thier "Deal" with Google, and doing
so at the expense of Google users without their knowledge
or especially consent.  Such is irresponsible and egregious
in the extreme IMO, and breads mis-trust in an American
institution sworn to uphold the law, the Constitution,
and the rights of ALL US citizens.  

See:
A story questioning whether Google's recent commitment to anonymize
IP logs faster is  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-10038963-46.html
really as good as it sounds.  We discussed
  http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/09/1334251&tid=158
their announcement a few days ago. CNet's Chris Soghoian
takes a closer look: "While the company hasn't said how it 
de-identifies the cookies, it has revealed in public statements that 
its IP anonymization technique consists of chopping off the last 8 
bits of a user's IP address. As an example, an IP address of a home 
user could be 173.192.103.121. After 18 months, Google chops this 
down to 173.192.103.XXX. Since each octet (the numbers between each 
period of an IP) can contain values from 1-255, Google's anonymization 
technique allows a user, at most, to hide among 254 other computers. ... 
Google has now revealed that it will change "some" of the bits of the IP
address after 9 months, but less than the eight bits that it masks after 
the full 18 months. Thus, instead of Google's customers being able to
hide among 254 other Internet users, perhaps they'll be able to hide
among 64, or 127 other possible IP addresses. By itself, this is a
laughable level of anonymity. However, it gets worse."

Regards,

Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 281k members/stakeholders strong!)
"Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" -
   Abraham Lincoln

"Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is
very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt

"If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B;
liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by
P: i.e., whether B is less than PL."
United States v. Carroll Towing  (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947]
===============================================================
Updated 1/26/04
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div. of Information Network Eng.  INEG. INC.
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