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So what can Google do for me? or Open Source Weaponry.
Cleverly, the dead tree and mainstream press only ever worries about Facebook and the likes, and while researching articles on why Facebook is bad one of the first things they turn to is Google, but Google has become as ubiquitous and invisible as the telephone, "I'll speak to you tomorrow" when you won't be within 50 miles of me.
You only have to look at stuff like Google Calendar to be exposed to the slick interface and sucked right into thinking "Hey, this could be real useful for me." Especially when those cookies make it oh so easy for you to flip from mail to calendar to blogger to shopping and back.
(BTW, there is no calendar on the CIA site, but if you pass that way, look up the Intellipedia, the spooks version of wikipedia, secret of course, really, nothing to worry about there...)
Naturally Google wants *something* from you in exchange for providing all these free tools and slick interfaces, so the argument goes, but they are up front about what they want, etc etc, no big deal, meanwhile we get these really great free tools to use.
But, it's like the Robinson Crusoe article, the point is that nobody gets the point, we're all way too busy and important to stop and sniff the flowers, for each individual user Google tools can seem worthwhile, great, did you suppose for one second that this attractiveness is anything but designed in? Who is going to benefit most? How are you even going to be able to answer that in a meaningful and intellectual manner when the data you need to formulate that answer is proprietary, behind locked doors at a Googleplex.
MY GOD MAN, we're even told, that these two (Brin & Page) who were living in a world populated by things like the Altavista search engine could not spell Googol any time between coming up with the name and registering the domain, we're told some cutsey little story and we BUY IT, well hello little girl, I have some lollipops in my car.
So, you log into your Google calendar, and make an entry for the 1st April 2008, Bruce Perens has won the El Gordo lottery and as a gesture of something or other has decided to host an all expenses paid party for the first 500 registered Technocrat users in Century City, well great, except _I_ didn't give you permission to tell Google my whereabouts. Nor did anyone else invited.
In 2006 I was stood in the Royal Courts of Justice in London as a plaintiff, the case is Bunt v Tilley & ors, I was the plaintiff and it was a Defamation action.
Included in the "ors" (others) was British Telecom, AOL & Tiscali, being the ISPs of the 3 individuals.
Now, unsurprisingly, the world & dog has an opinion about that legal action, and me for bringing it, and unsurprisingly none of them listened to my reasons for bringing it.
The reason I brought the case was because as the Law stood (at least here in the UK) the whole issue of defamation and "publisher" was murky to say the least, and being personally labelled a "known paedophile" amongst other things I thought to myself "what the hell, why take it, why not drag it into Court."
The 3 individuals do no matter, the 3 ISP's do, and while the case against the 3 individuals was "struck out" (basically an abuse of the court process by way of reams of unnecessary paperwork) the case against the 3 ISPs was not, it was heard and they were granted immunity as "mere conduits" under the Electronic Commerce Directive 2002, and this legal protection was *extensive*, even if the material in question was child pornography or copyrighted / intellectual property, they were effectively immune.
Currently in the UK we have Phorm, who are getting around the Law on interception by leasing the servers that will intercept ALL the ISP's traffic to the ISP themselves, so they get to monitor ALL your traffic, even email, but it's not illegal brother.
This is like Google Calendar and others, if I send an email to you I do not consent to a third party viewing it, even if you do, and any shrink wrapped EULA or the shifting goalposts of your ISPs constantly evolving T&C do not apply to me, and yet....
Most people said I was stupid to bring that libel action, and a man who represents himself in Court has a fool for a Client, and all the rest, well most people are looking for trite answers, most people are wrong, I was extremely stupid, but not for the reasons most people stated.
I was extremely stupid because I naively believed that where one man holds a door open, others will walk through. In that I was excessively stupid.
At this point I should make one thing very clear, the judges themselves, who we like to ridicule ("what's an internet?") were extremely intelligent people, not technophobes in any way, but their job is to see everything through the filters of existing case law, even when, as in this case, extending it.
At the time I was thinking to myself "This is it, their (the ISPs) escape clause was "mere conduit" or in other words they acted as common carriers." therefore they couldn't do anything to jeapordise that "mere conduit" status.
It doesn't matter now, nobody walked through that open door.
Now we've gone way beyond traffic shaping and we already at wholesale interception of traffic, and nobody is challenging "mere conduit."
Google are using exactly the same strategy as the ISPs, they are building out infrastructure and technologies ahead of the expanding boundaries of the Law, they are in effect colonising new territories and imposing their own de-facto laws.
Nobody is going to challenge the FACTS that I can literally blackhole Google at my router, and yet Google can still build data on where I am, what I bought and sold, who I know, who I work for, what I think, who I am, thanks to other people using their "free" tools and inputting this data.
"Do No Evil" corp does not have ANY system whereby I can register my name (oh the irony) and have it automatically blacklisted from their entire systems.
Like the Banks in the past weeks, "too big to fail" and similar memes comes to the fore. Oh, sorry, we've already built the system, too late to change it now, especially for one solitary user.
So, what of the Article title, "So what can Google do for me? or Open Source Weaponry."
There are few things more Open Source than UK Law, the Open Source UK legal system works, I spent about £1,000 to drag two of the country's top ISP's kicking and screaming into the highest courts in the land, and trust me, I was there, their sole interest was NOT being there.
But Open Source law is like Open Source code, it doesn't prevent any user from using it to nefarious purposes, I can build an anti personnel neutron bomb on BSD, it breaks lots of laws but not the BSD licence.
Google and the ISPs mentioned (and by extension all ISPs) all make extensive use of Open Source code, to serve their own ends and not ours.
It doesn't actually *work* if the other party is determined to play by a different set of rules, and whether it be Microsoft or Google or the BBC, the same things apply.
It doesn't actually work if doors are opened and nobody walks through them.
I was incredibly stupid in bringing that legal action, and I was incredibly stupid for one reason and one reason only, I actually believed that if you stand up and fight (this by the way is despite plenty of personal experience in Courts and out to the contrary) you will not be alone, sooner or later someone will decide to stand up, not necessarily beside you, but at least stand up, and be counted.
I was wrong, to use the classic example of intervening in a street mugging, nobody will help, most will simply jeer at the spectacle.
It's like Bruce and the OSI, he can't win because they aren't playing by the same rules, to beat them he has to abandon his position of moral superiority. You lay down with dogs and you get up with fleas.
It's like the White House missing e-mails, the USA also has an Open Source legal system, it is a perfectly good system, but it stands no chance against team players who have no intention of adhering to the system if they can possibly avoid it.
If just 1,000 people, that is 1 in 60,000 of the UK population, decided to actually defend their rights in the Courts then things like Phorm and Google and BT would be stuck in legal quicksand and left no option but to adhere to the rules they claim allegiance to.
But it won't happen, and it won't happen in Open Source software, and it won't happen with personal liberty, personal freedom, personal privacy, it won't happen because getting 60,000 people to blog about why I was an asshole for going to Court is trivial, getting even 1 to try it for themselves for their own agenda is like sweeping water uphill.
This is how wars happen.
We DO have a dystopian future, because we are all too busy being individual sheep to consider the case of two wolves and one sheep deciding democratically and legally what to have for lunch.
What have I personally learned?
I've learned that *when* the shit hits the fan, my experiences make me ideally suited to sign up early for the combat arm of the protection squad, that'll be the SS to you brother.
If I was a yank you could find me in the USA version of the Shutzstaffel, aka Homeland Security, working my way towards the inner circle in readiness for the formation of the SS.