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Google claims IP addresses aren't important. Tell that to David Petraeus....
Judge Susan Illston said in court today that she had questions about provisions of the proposed FTC settlement with Google which allows them to retain and profit from the data they collected by hacking Apple’s Safari browser.
In 2011 Google was caught circumventing privacy protections in order to place tracking cookies on the computers of up to 190 million Safari users worldwide, contrary to what they claimed in their privacy policy.
Consumer Watchdog is challenging the settlement, which also includes a record fine of $22.5 million and allows Google to deny liability.
Judge Illston waved off most of their concerns about the size of the settlement and the admission of guilt, and said “my preliminary view is to grant the request to approve the order.”
She then asked lawyers for both sides about provisions in the settlement that allow Google to retain the hacked data.
“The Commission considers Consumer Watchdog’s concern to be unlikely, because old data is of negative value” said the FTC counsel Adrienne Fowler, who maintained that Google anonymizes IP addresses after nine months and can no longer associate it with individual users, rendering the data useless.
Consumer Watchdog was represented by Gary Reback, the well-known Silicon Valley antitrust attorney, who challenged the notion that the data had no value:
Reback said Google has suggested that IP addresses are not important. They are indeed important, he said—as evidenced by the scandal that led to the resignation of former CIA Director David Petraeus. That incident came to light after the FBI used IP addresses to track allegedly harassing emails, he noted.
Illston could refuse to approve the settlement (unlikely), approve it as-is or approve it conditionally, requiring Google to meet stipulations like deleting the ill-gotten data.
According to Megan Geuss of Ars Technica, Reback feels he achieved at least one of his goals in the hearing by forcing Google and the FTC to publicly hold hands:
“I wanted a courtroom where the government and Google were at the same table, hand in hand, and somebody is challenging them,” Reback said. “Because when I did the Microsoft case, that was the turning point. When the government had to sit at the same table with Microsoft and defend them… I wanted the commissioners to feel the cosmetics if you will, the presence of the government defending Google’s conduct in litigating against a consumer protection agency. I wanted to know if they feel proud of that.”
Google watchers were following the proceedings closely for hints as to how the FTC will deal with the internet behemoth in its current antitrust investigation. Reback claims that “it implicates the procedure that will be used to resolve the antitrust case…A consent decree will be weak, it won’t really make Google do anything.”
11 Comments
Respect is neither public property nor respected. If greedy wallstreet bankster thieves can steal your land and homes, what’s a little breaking and entering?
As you note, one law for them, one for the rest of us.
That’s not the rule of law.
Thank you, Jane, for continuing the Google tale …
The Rule of Law was not evident in the BP decision either and, as Robert Reich puts it, “Corporations aren’t people …”, although his understanding of how corporation came to be “people” is oddly lacking … it well predated “Citizens United”. On the whole, however, Reich makes most of the right points:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-bp-isnt-a-criminal_b_2147743.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
It should be pointed out who is “in charge”, now, and making that very clear IS part of the “real work” … necessary to challenging the concerted assault on the Rule of Law being waged by the current, “Democratic”, administration … of Barack Obama.
DW
I don’t think that makes any sense. There is good reason to find corporations criminally liable, not the least of which it impacts their ability to be government contractors, irrespective of who is in charge — one of the reasons Corporations fight it so hard. It also exposes them to civil liability.
Reich’s article is more of a clever conceit. In reality there is no reason why the corporation AND guilty executives should not be held responsible.
Google claims IP addresses aren’t important.
Yes, General Petraeus’s babe Broadwell, supposedly a very smart military intelligence expert, thought the same or did not think at all about the IP address. She went bonkers under the cover of anonymous emails and blew up her live life along with the balls of David Petraeus.
I guess it is time to NEVER use Google again.
One question I have is that if I logout of my YouTube account or google email, am I really logged out (if I am using safari?
Jane, I just want to apologize for bailing out on the internet and FDL for a while. The darkness of seeing my brothers and sisters tear-gassed and gitmo-cuffed, etc, proved to be too much for me. I had to Leave The Internet.
Genuine apologies for being all flawed and human, with feelings and stuff. And I don’t mean any of this in a snarky way. For real. For real for real for real.
“Corporations” are merely “fronts”, Jane, and while the “fronts” should be held to $erious account, even ruinously $erious account, it is the actual persons who use those “fronts” who should be held criminally AND civilly guilty … corporations cannot be imprisoned, executed, or feel any human emotions, including physical or emotional pain, they can, however, become essentially “immortal” … indeed, the greatest “problem” confronting “corporations”, at this time, is that they might be “et” by another “corporation” … and thereby cease to “exist”…
By and large, I do agree with you that Reich is often far too clever by half, (or even whole … as he shilled for Obama yet chooses to willfully ignore Obama’s clear and present role in protecting corporate “interests”, oil, banking, and “defense”).
;~DW
I agree, I just don’t think the two are mutually exclusive.
Let’s say you have a corporation Q where X, Y and Z executives commit crime A in the course of their jobs. X, Y and Z go to jail. Does that mean corporation Q is without liability now? In other words, can they just throw the executives under the bus and go on with business as usual?
That’s a recipe for disaster, IMHO. Both should be held to account.
Yes, both the “corporation” AND the executives who MADE and ENFORCED the decisions should be held to account.
However, the “corporation”, despite what people “believe”, actually mad no decisions. The Board of Directors OR specific individuals made the decisions.
My point is that “corporations”, “markets”, and the “unseen hand of God” do NOT make any decisions, but that people are LED to “believe” that these “entities”, somehow, “make” decisions and that no human agency is involved.
For example, people speak about Firedoglake “doing” or not doing certain things. However, the entity, “Firedoglake”, of its own volition does nothing, except those things that you, as owner, or following the “advice” of those who you consider to be advisers choose, to do … or those whom you pay or permit to make, with certain “latitude”, choose to do. Now, as I have said to you, on numerous occasions, before you do or permit others to “do” things, it is my guess that you consider the effect that the “doing” will have on trust, the trust which others have for you and for the entity known as Firedoglake. As I say, I guess, I consider this to be so.
Whereas other “entities”, what we may call “corporations”, be they “banks”, “oil companies” and so on, do NOT appear to run potential “actions” through the concerns of Trust, but primarily through the “interests” of profit, of political suasion, or legal “power” … these are much more selfish, and self-serving “goals” than is your very central concern about trust.
Let us examine, for a second or two, the “beliefs” around the entity known as the “market”. Neither you nor I would pretend that the “market”, under current conditions is either “free” or “impartial” … in fact we would both point to the protections offered the bankers as proof that the “market” does not, in fact, “operate” as many people are led to “believe” that it does, and we would further suggest that without meaningful regulation, such a thing as a “free market”, an entity which determines the very “best” of overall social utility does not and cannot actually exist. That the very absence of a functioning Rule of Law is absolute proof that such a free market is not intended to exist … and yet people are told, every single day, that such a “market” exists and that it is, essentially the very same thing as “democracy” … and sufficient reason to go to war with other nations when those other nations resist or hinder “free enterprise” and thereby “democracy”.
You and I would suggest that “free enterprise”, as it is “practiced”, today is, in fact inimical to democracy, to actual freedom and to meaningful security … even to personal well-being when a “system” will not permit, for example, a health care system which is affordable and not subject to the “profit” concern.
Mostly, Jane, what I am trying to get across, however poorly, is that the “way” that we think about things limits “how” we think about those things.
“Corporations” on the face of it, are entities designed to limit liability, financial and legal RESPONSIBILITY … on the most personal and individual level … and that is precisely what is causing our civil society to be destroyed along with the Rule of Law.
Since we cannot think about the actual function of “corporations”, that of the evasion of personal and individual responsibility, therefore we cannot understand that when a legal “system” recognizes “corporations” as people, when corporations are not and cannot exist in the flesh and blood way that actual people exist, then we have accepted the confoundment of our humanity such that human perspective, that the concerns of actual humanity, are shunted to an inferior position and truth (as well as “trust”) become manufactured “items”, subject to “selling” and a “matter” of “fashion” … a tyranny of intentional deceit, wherein the “law” may be cunningly used to undermine the Rule of Law.
If we look at the use of drones we find much the same “predicament”. When the use of drones is questioned, the glib answer is, “It puts our brave soldiers at much less risk.” Which answer does not deal with the moral issue of killing at all, but places a different “belief system” to the fore, and in the process, renders the moral question quite moot and those who would raise the moral question politically mute …
One would like to imagine that all individuals actually think for themselves. Such evidence as you and I are daily confronted with, suggests something else, however. If you follow my “drift”?
Always a true pleasure, Jane (and an education), to converse with you.
DW