Every wonder how much information Google has gathered? Scott Cleland, publisher of the Website GoogleMonitor.com, has pulled together a snappy one-page graphic, “Google’s ‘Total Information Awareness’ Power,” that answers the question.
The term “Total Information Awareness” comes from Admiral John Poindexter, who in the wake of the 9-11 terror attack, proposed U.S. intelligence agencies use all available surveillance and information technology to track terrorists. Concerns were raised that the program would become a mass surveillance system that would invade Americans’ privacy without due process. Congress scrapped it in 2003.
Cleland’s suggestion is that Google amasses data on the scale of the “Total Information Awareness” program.
Cleland says he pulled the graphic togeher to “to help you picture both the enormity and unprecedented power of what Google knows about you and the world’s information—public, private and proprietary.”
In sum, at present there are minimal checks and balances, oversight, or accountability for Google’s unprecedented and unmatched permission-less profiling power and information market power.
If this chart does not trouble you, at least some, you are forgetting the old adage and repetitive lessons of history — that unconstrained power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I encourage you to download the PDF and have a close look for yourself.
9. June 2010 at 6:10 am
If you want something slightly useful to do with your life, why not chase after the real companies and governments which do abuse privacy ?
Google is the gold standard on the internet when it comes to privacy, and the majority of the claims on this site are truly farcical and absurd, which defy rational logic and basic research/common sense.
Every single ISP (and the US government) knows absolutely EVERYTHING you do online, there is no privacy on the internet, get used to it.
One of the great things about Google is that they allow us to control the information they keep about us. There’s very few if any companies which allow that, and it’s exceptionally naive to think otherwise.
I’m all on for exposing any company which abuses it’s power, but this website seems more like an attention seeking farce which is funded by companies who have a vested interest in diverting attention away from themselves while trying to make their competitors look less bad with some extraordinarily poor research and farcical interpretations thereof.
1. July 2010 at 7:50 pm
That you have published the above letter from Homer Simpson speaks volumes about what you stand for.
Yes, Google amasses data. They may be profiling you only for advertisement purposes *today*, but the question is whether such concentration of power on the internet is desirable.
As long as that question is not answered, we can’t talk about any Gold standard. In fact, a service such as scroogle.org is closer to the gold standard; or http://eu.startpage.com/ (previously lxquick) whose search results you may find less attractive. The point is about having a choice.
8. November 2010 at 9:23 am
I’ve become very concerned with Google’s data aggregation and total disregard for privacy. I saw the insane violations of Buzz. I see how my Android phone does everything it can to collect and upload my entire profile (including my location) to Google’s servers. And, I saw my pseudo-anonymous YouTube account linked to anyone who I’d had email contact with.
But, people don’t seem to care and I can’t understand why.
12. August 2011 at 3:43 pm
First post is by either a goog employee or a complete moron.
Startpage.com looked promising as an alternative to goog, but then I saw they use adsense! LOL They are either very stupid or they know they’re BSing people too. By having adsense, goog is still capturing all the data as usual including ip, which can be associated to profiles they already have and resume adding data to them.
Face it… anyone who is using goog stuff, you will pay for it someway someday. And android users… fall off the planet already you idiots!