Will The Patriot Act Cost Google Business?
from the well,-thanks-to-fear-mongering dept
The Globe and Mail is running a somewhat sensationalistic piece about a Canadian university, Lakehead University, that decided to start using Google's email system to replace its own buggy and frequently crashed offering. The problem? Fears concerning US data privacy laws, such as the Patriot Act, mean that professors are told not to send confidential info, including grades, via email. This has upset a number of professors who are protesting the use of Google's products. There are a few different points that are worth sifting out of this.First is the question of whether US laws like the Patriot Act, are potentially harming US businesses, as foreign organizations choose not to do business with them due to the implications of those laws. Chances are likely that this is happening quite frequently, even if those fears are totally overblown with respect to reality. Of course, it's not clear why a company like Google doesn't just set up local servers in certain countries, like Canada, to deal with local companies -- and then consider those out of the reach of US laws and authorities. It would seem like a smart business move.
The second question, though, is whether or not the government is really sniffing through everyone's email. The article seems to imply that, thanks to the Patriot Act, the feds have open access to Google's servers. While you can understand the paranoia, that's a bit overstated. The article says: "Using their new powers under the Patriot Act, U.S. intelligence officials can scan documents, pick out certain words and create profiles of the authors." That's not accurate. Or, rather, it's leaving out huge parts of how this is done. The Patriot Act didn't just hand all of Google's info over to the feds so they can create profiles on anyone. I'm not one to defend the Patriot Act, which I think is a terrible piece of legislation, but it does no one any good to make false statements about what it has allowed.
The third question is whether or not Google's own ad displays next to email is troubling to a university -- which is a bogeyman I thought had been killed back around 2004. Given the cost (free) to the university, you'd think they'd understand the tradeoff. The "payment" is the ads. If it's such a problem, then the university is free to go spend however many millions of dollars on building its own system. Or, perhaps Google can offer up an ad-free version for paranoid universities.
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Filed Under: canada, data privacy, patriot act
Companies: google
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we don't need no steenkin' Act of Congress
And it didn't hand over all of America's telephone conversations, but most telcos fell all over themselves to give the feds unwarranted access to our phone calls. If Verizon lets the government have whatever it wants, it's not unreasonable to fear that Google will do the same.
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False Statements?
The only argument I see is whether the Patriot Act allows it or whether it's illegal, not whether or not it's happening.
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This happens quite a lot
http://www.privacylawyer.ca/blog/2004/05/bc-privacy-watchdog-seeks-us.html
The general feeling here, and probably in other countries is that, justified or not, any information that passes through the US has all the privacy of a postcard.
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Our government has always been hooked into our communications networks, this is nothing new. Of course, now it has the technology to actually do something with it, so that does change the ball game a bit. Encryption? I have read reports that the NSA has the capability to intercept Skype, so even p2p isn't safe anymore.
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Patriot Act allows it or...
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Google does offer ads free versions to Edu
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Confidential info
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Re: Confidential info
http://www.langenhoven.com/code/emailencrypt/gmailencrypt.php
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All the same, the CIA would need some very compelling reasons before they got permission to conduct covert intelligence-gathering operations against residents of neutral or allied countries; that kind of thing is extremely bad for diplomatic relations.
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Hilarious
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Patriot Act vs. Executive Orders
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uh huh...
So, you are saying we should just sit back, relax, and not care that our rights are being stripped away? I believe that's how they got the Patriot Act passed in the first place right? "Give up your rights so we can protect your freedom".
People are such sheep.
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Is it "authorized" by the Patriot Act? Right or wrong, the justice department thinks so.
So you say, anyone can break the law-- but to that, I say it is much easier when the law has been made grey. Indeed, why break it when its boundaries have been replace by rubber?
Thus, it is not merely sensasionalist to say that "[u]sing their new powers under the Patriot Act, U.S. intelligence officials can scan documents, pick out certain words and create profiles of the authors."
IAAL.
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No-ads on University email
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Re: No-ads on University email
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it's called google apps for your domain
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editions_spe.html
i'm sure the service uses much of the same software and infrastructure, but it's not the same thing.
as for the guy that talked about not having control and spam and viruses, i have set up two instances of google apps for domains for non-profits that i used to work for, and the admin accounts that you set up have full control of everything. i set up the accounts, i changed the passwords and everything, google only set up the application.
i have also used gmail to centralize email from two unix shell accounts and my university email. one shell account, i had been using as my primary email account for 10 years. i was worried that i would have to abandon them since i was getting so much spam, but i forwarded both of them to gmail and i think one spam message has slipped through in two years.
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Taps
All you need to do I look at where the 13 primary's are and you will find the locations of the NSA's taps.
We should all be wearing tinfoil hats (Real Tinfoil) I have one on under my touk.
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Methinks you're giving Google engineers a little too much credit here. It shouldn't be terribly difficult to roll out a working email solution. It's only been done eleventymillion times...
Of course, it may not have some of the sweet usability goodness of gmail, but it's not like they're for lack of options, not to mention the open-source alternatives...
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Concerns at the University of Toronto as well
In my Software Engineering class last term, my prof discussed the Patriot Act's effect on this policy. There are some privacy laws in Ontario that affect data stored in jurisdictions with weaker privacy laws (such as the US, because of the Patriot Act). More importantly though, in terms of relevancy, he asked the class how many students were from out of the country. Half the class raised their hands. Many international students are from countries that the US might not have great relations with either.
As a Canadian, it is a concern when it comes to storing student information, or even storing client information at my business. I work at an I.T. consulting company, and we have a web host which we use for a wide variety of clients. Currently, that hose is in the US, but we're in the process of migrating to a Canadian host, largely because of the privacy implications of the Patriot Act. We want to be able to tell our clients that they are protected by Ontario privacy laws, rather than warn them of the implications of the Patriot Act.
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Canadian Law isn't all that great either.
Again, lest anyone think I'm saying different: The Patriot Act *is* bad for privacy. But not so much that when comparing US to other nations the US doesn't still come out pretty good in that area.
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google mail in academia or other corporate environments
1) "google set up shop elsewhere". I believe that US law makes executives personally responsible. So it's not just the data centre that has to move, it's the whole company. Ask the CEO of Bodog why he never sets foot in the US any more.
2) "open access". I can't comment, I'm not sufficiently familiar with the process. My observation is that the Patriot Act, secret warrants and other security legislation do not make me confident that the public would ever know the truth.
3) "ads". sigh. It's a sad reflection on a generation that so willingly accepts being subjected to advertising in every nook and cranny of their lives. No wonder TV advertisers can get away with in-band advertising (popups during the programs)
And you didn't even get to the real issues in the labour grievance filed by the Lakehead Faculty Union:
1) personal privacy: communications between student and professor are supposed to be private. *No-one* is supposed to have access to them. Period.
2) Academic work-in-progress: If two researchers are communicating about a research project, there may be unpublished results, speculations, untested theories and other material that shouldn't be accessible until results have been published. This can be a part of "academic freedom" which *the* sacred cow in academia.
And as the article points out, this trans-border data-flow problem (which has existed since the 1970s, btw) is not restricted to adademia. Corporate, proprietary information is also subject to examination. Our organization recommends that none of the "free" webmail services be used for anyhing important, including gmail and hotmail/live.
And if this isn't enough to make you paranoid, consider:
http://tradelawyersblog.com/blog/archive/2008/february/article/another-story-on-laptop- searches-by-united-states-customs-and-border-control/?tx_ttnews%5Bday%5D=11&cHash=9a4f49cf11
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