Further thoughts on Google's new Privacy Policies

Like many Google users, I received an email from Google on January 28th detailing the new privacy policies that have generated so much media coverage and debate. They are worth a careful read.

Since my previous post, a Google employee also contacted me to explain some of the benefits of these new policies. This included creating a profile that ensures that search results reflect your interests. You can see your own profile (and edit it) by click here.

To quote the same Google employee:

The profile is all fairly broad attributes, demographics such as age range and sex, and broad interests. You don't have to worry about searching for some odd fetish (research for a book, of course) and having ads show up later, because the odd things wouldn't have a category in the profile. As we put it, "Google does not associate sensitive interest categories with your ads preferences."

So I am certainly not advocating giving up your Gmail account or your Android phone or boycotting Google's many services. But I do feel that most users do not understand the implications of Google's policy changes, either for good or ill, because most online data-gathering and profiling activities are largely invisible to them.

In fact, Google's new privacy policy offers a good opportunity for both personal reflection and public debate about what privacy means in the digital age.

I believe that those who engage in data gathering, like Google, have an obligation to educate the public about how their users' information is tracked, stored, and disseminated.

Consumers also need to think about the implications of having personal information tracked and stored indefinitely. While Google may protect users' privacy today, none of us can see into the future far enough to fully understand how this data might be used in ten years or twenty or beyond.

Just as advances in understanding the human genome required legal safeguards regarding an individual's genetic information, we may also be reaching the point where similar legal protections may be necessary to protect an individual's personal privacy on the internet.

Finally, the potential for abuse of this information may be low today, but that could also change in the future, particularly with regard to government policies on terrorist or other illicit activity (and that's taking only the U.S. government into account).

The privacy debate will continue, and we may well see Google's new policies as a salutary reminder of how crucial these issues are when more and more of our daily activities are transacted on the internet.

P.S. For two opposing views on the privacy debate, see the op-eds of Givens and Robertson.

Correction to the Original Post: The letter I referenced from thirty-two privacy and civil rights organizations is not a recent letter but one from 2004, which is not relevant to the current privacy policy changes.

Will Google Trade Privacy for Profits?

Just after its successful campaign against legislation (SOPA) that could have eviscerated the concept of “fair use” and potentially restricted free speech on the Internet, Google has made a troubling shift in its own privacy policies.

Google claims that it is simply consolidating privacy policies across its many internet services including its search engine, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, and its Google + social network.

But many of us who use these different services and are aware of how much of our web presence they can track are rightly concerned that our privacy is about to be sold, literally, to the highest bidder.

How much can we trust Google to keep its promise of “don't be evil” under the pressure of advertisers to provide the most minute and up-to-date information about everything we buy, where we go, and what our interests are?

And will Google put its own financial self-interest above its ethical obligations to allow its users to “opt out” of at least some of this tracking? Under the current proposed changes, there is no “opt out” for Googlers, unless they decide to stop using its services altogether.

Clearly there is always a trade-off between personal privacy and the convenience of getting information almost instantaneously whenever we use the web. My personal privacy policy is never to write anything in an email, blog, or on a social-networking site that I wouldn't be comfortable having appear on the front page of The New York Times.

But that doesn't mean that I want Google to keep track of what kind of medical information I might be seeking or what websites I read. And if I were a researcher looking into a topic like women passing as men (and I have researched this topic for a book I wrote), I wouldn't want that research to indicate anything about my own personal gender identity.

But these infringements on privacy seem picayune, when you think about the potential for this kind of aggregated information to be abused by hackers, identity thieves, and repressive governments who want to track down and suppress their political opponents.

Right now Google is proposing to scan the text of all emails and retain this information indefinitely; this change alone raises serious privacy concerns, and thirty-one privacy and civil liberties organizations have written a letter to Google asking for the suspension of its Gmail service until these policies are clarified.

This morning when I used Google maps to figure out the best bike route to an appointment, I was asked to click “Allow” for Google to find my location, but I have no idea what else I may have “allowed” since no service agreement or disclosure statement popped up for me to scroll through. And there didn't seem to be any way to get the route information I wanted without making this choice.

So now when I send email, I have to face the prospect that somewhere my words are being stored, and I have no say over who has access to them, and or how they will be used at some future date.

When I use my Android phone, Google can approximate my location because the phone reports back its location based on GPS data and the cell tower it's connected to. Right now Google states that there is no link between that data and the data collected when you check your Gmail on the same phone, but one can imagine that this could change as Google works to integrate its different services. Advertisers would be thrilled to know that you just asked a friend to coffee, and that they now have the opportunity to recommend the nearest Starbucks, whether you asked for that information or not.

I am not claiming that these changes indicate that Google is about to become the next incarnation of Big Brother. But the aggregation of so many different kinds of personal data by such a large and dominant corporate player in the Internet world should give consumers pause, particularly when Google is not giving us the choice to keep our personal data from joining the billions of other pieces of data it collects every time its users search, watch a video, send email, or try to map a route. Consumers should not be forced to forfeit their privacy in order to access the web, and they also deserve full disclosure of how that information is being used and will be used in the future.

Please, Google, don't sell us out!

Thoughts on the State of the Union

Two days ago I was invited to participate in a panel of citizens who represent different parts of the political spectrum and who had all agreed to watch President Obama’s State of the Union address and discuss it on the PRI program, To the Point.

So I made sure I could tune in my local PBS station and sat down with my kids to watch the President deliver the last State of the Union address of his first term.

I was impressed with President Obama’s strategic decision to touch on themes that would likely play well to moderate or independent voters – ending the war in Iraq, preserving the middle class dream of owning a home or sending your kids to college, and above all, a call to businesses to bring jobs back from overseas to a country that still suffers from having too many people out of work.

I was also pleased that the President was willing to assume a more adversarial stance towards Congress, which has played Russian roulette with the debt ceiling and still threatens to let unemployment benefits and an extension of the payroll tax reduction expire out of what can only be described as an act of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

But I have to admit I was a little taken aback when I found that the first question I was asked on To the Point concerned the Republican response and not the State of the Union speech itself. Fortunately, I’d listened to most of that too, so I could point out that that Governor Daniels’ assertion that “One in five men of prime working age, and nearly half of all persons under 30, did not go to work today” was misleading at best.

What I really wanted to ask was why Governor Daniels was focused primarily on how many men are unemployed when women make up over half of the US labor force. Is the female unemployment rate unimportant to the GOP? But I was already representing the Democratic point of view on the program, and to throw in “feminist” as well might unnecessarily rile the other two panel members, who were both male and Republican so I decided not to press the point.

But here I can say explicitly that while I suspect that Governor Daniels’ examples were purposely selected to make the unemployment situation look as bad as possible, it also strikes me that the focus on men here is symptomatic of the GOP’s blind spot when it comes to working women, just as the Republican leadership foolishly persists in describing the increasing economic gulf between rich and poor as “class warfare,” when even a majority of Republican voters thinks that those making over $1 million should pay a greater percentage of their income in taxes.

That is the main reason I believe President Obama has an advantage going into the current election cycle. Americans are no longer buying the “politics of envy” rhetoric any longer, especially when it comes out of the mouths of millionaire candidates like Mitt Romney. Of course, Mitt Romney can claim that paying a 15% tax rate is perfectly legal, and that he shouldn’t pay more than he owes. But he embodies the very inequity of the tax system and has said nothing about what he would actually do to address this inequity. In fact, both Romney and Gingrich bridle at the suggestion that millionaires contribute the same percentage of their income to the treasury as middle class Americans, who are paying 25% if they make more than $35,000 as a single filer and more than $47,000 as a head of household.

President Obama also sent an inspiring message when he mentioned the military as an emblem of what can be accomplished when every person is focused on a common purpose.

Those of us who've been sent here to serve can learn a thing or two from the service of our troops. When you put on that uniform, it doesn't matter if you're black or white; Asian or Latino; Native American; conservative, liberal; rich, poor; gay, straight. When you're marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails.

Certainly, as an institution, Congress is about as far from the military as you can get. It’s meant to be a place where people represent different points of view and argue for different solutions to our nation’s problems. But the increasingly divisive, tit for tat, petty partisan politics that has dominated Congress during the past year has rightly disgusted voters on both the left and the right.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Landmark civil rights legislation, the Clean Air and Water Acts, and even welfare reform under President Clinton were all undertaken with cooperation between the two parties and with a sense of the common good.

Statesmanship in the best sense of the word is all but extinct in today’s Congress, and in an election year, there seems little chance of its resurrection, but by advocating moderate policies in clear, unvarnished terms, President took the first steps towards a reasonable and thoughtful way for both parties to respond to the nation’s most pressing need.

Hubert Humphrey said that the “essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.” It’s time for our representatives to stop lobbing bombs at one another and show just this kind of consideration for the future of the country rather than wasting another year in an unprofitable and potentially dangerous stalemate.

The Internet Strikes Back!

Up until this week, it's safe to assume that very few Americans had ever heard of SOPA or PIPA, much less formed an opinion about them.

But all of that changed when the Internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia joined forces to make all of us realize what our world would be like without a free and unfettered net. Google blacked out its logo, Wikipedia's English version went offline, and site after site offered links for users to contact their representatives in Washington to protest these proposed bills.

By the end of the day on January 19th, Google had collected over 7 million signatures opposing SOPA and PIPA, and members of Congress, even those who had supported the bills, were practically tripping over themselves to run away from them. For the moment, SOPA and PIPA are off the table, but it's unlikely that Hollywood and the Chamber of Commerce will give up easily.

There are so many things wrong with SOPA and PIPA that it is difficult to know where to start, but perhaps the most obvious one is how these bills distort the balance of power between a creator and an end user under copyright law. According to these bills, the movie and record industries would be entitled to a “private right of action” in which they could directly target any site they believe is dedicated to or even “facilitating” infringement of copyright and have full immunity for doing so if their claims are proven false.

Not only is this a recipe for blackmailing any website hosting material a corporation doesn't want public; it would also eviscerate any remaining rights to the “fair use” provision of copyright law. No one would want to play the Talking Heads' “I want to make him stay up all night” as background music for their baby videos, or parody Lady Gaga's “Telephone,” since it it could be interpreted as “infringement” according to these bills, and no internet provider would take the risk of hosting this kind of material on its site. These bills would foster a “guilty until proven innocent” atmosphere on the web that would be tantamount to corporate censorship and destructive of the kind of creativity that thrives on the access the internet offers to all kinds of art, media, and information.

But the most frustrating thing about these bills is that this kind of legislation has been proven over and over again not to work. Since the 1976 Copyright Law, content providers have gone to Congress sixteen times to create more and more restrictive copyright laws, and these laws have done absolutely nothing to solve the problem of pirated copies and illegal downloads. Taking down websites will not stop piracy, and prosecuting people for downloading movies and music will not ensure that they then purchase a legal copy.

In fact, one reason that music sales are on the rise again, may well be that new technological devices like the iPhone and iPad are making people want more content accessible all the time. Yet the corporate content providers continue to try to muzzle the very technology that increases demand for what they supply.

I am not denying that illegal downloading is an issue. The very qualities that make the Internet so attractive and so powerful are also those that can make it quite a dangerous place. Every flavor of pornography is accessible with a few keystrokes, viruses come disguised as love letters, and there are few of us left who have not received one of those “our database has been hacked” notifications, meaning that some unscrupulous person now knows our name, address, and other private information.

But these dangers do not stop us from using the Internet every day (and probably every hour) of our lives. In fact, what I find so exhilarating about yesterday's protests is the way the Internet can magnify the voices of individuals into something so powerful that it can topple governments and turn corporate lobbying on its head.

Yesterday millions of people used the Internet to strike back at legislation written by corporate lobbyists solely for the benefit of corporate media that would have undermined our fundamental values of free speech, fair use, and the right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. We witnessed more than the defeat of some terrible legislation; we also witnessed democracy in action on an unprecedented scale, and that is truly something to celebrate.

My Children are from Mars, Mercury, and a Galaxy Far Far Away

When you head home from the hospital with a little bundle in an infant car seat, you worry about sleepless nights, developmental milestones, and how you're ever going to pay for childcare, much less college.

What you don't really think about is that somewhere in that tiny little body is a unique and often unfathomable individual who will very soon develop a will of its own.

While I never had very distinct ideas of what I wanted my children to become and considered myself too “progressive” to slot them into the conventional triad of doctor/lawyer/business professional, I did have half-formed dreams of them winning awards, playing in an orchestra, or at least making the honor roll.

And then they started growing up, and my expectations met the irresistible twin forces of personality and peer pressure.

My oldest (the one from Mars) was very independent and cared little for convention. In preschool, he decided that it was cool to wear knee socks pulled up all the way over his knees, and soon his best friend's mom was calling me to ask me, “Where did you get those socks? My son won't go to school without them!”

In elementary school, he came up with his own Halloween costumes based on characters from book like Roald Dahl's The BFG. The year he dressed up as Pippi Longstocking, complete with bright red wig and pig tails, I remember one parent looking at me and saying, “That's Mars? I thought he was a girl,” and then turning bright red in case I took offense.

In middle school, he insisted on taking up martial arts and giving up dance, despite having the chance to fulfill his mother's dream of seeing him on stage in a leading role in The Nutcracker.

By high school, I knew very well that I could offer Mars advice, and he would smile and then do what he wanted anyway.

My youngest son (Mercury) was born almost ten years after his older brother and spent the first five years of his life as the object of adoring attention. We were so happy when we uttered his first word, “bubble” in a tiny breathy voice that we didn't realize he would never stop talking.

Mercury is always in motion and in close orbit around his older brothers. As a person who is uncomfortable around weapons of any kind and squeamish about depictions of violence,it was quite disconcerting to have a child who begged for an air soft gun from the age of eight and got his brother to convince me that it was “okay” for him to play Modern Warfare.

If there is a child who fit classic definition of ADD/HD, it is Mercury, and that can make life as a mother a little exhausting. I've been known to tell him after repeated badgering to make sure I'm listening, “No, I'm not listening. You've been talking nonstop, and I need a little break. Please!”

Peer pressure plays a considerable role in Mercury's view of the world, and that means I have become even more of an “embarrassment” to him than I ever was to any of the others.

Yet Mercury has also fulfilled one of my cherished maternal dreams. He plays the violin very well and will soon be much better than I ever was.

And then there is my second son, who seems to exist somewhere in a galaxy far, far way. He has been my most challenging and enigmatic child. Galaxy is the kind of quiet, unassuming young man that adults love and small children flock to.

He has a natural athletic grace and could play any sport on a competitive level, except that he only likes to compete against himself. On a long board or a surf board, he is a wonder to behold, and when he's not doing that, he's likely in his room, playing the guitar and composing music.

If you ask my children what they want to become when they grow up, Mars is practically there. In May he'll graduate from college with a degree in Political Communication, fluent Arabic, and a plan to go to law school. Mercury, on the other hand, is still torn between wanting to blow things up and his desire to become a race car driver.

And Galaxy is still somewhere far, far away contemplating his options.

Twenty-one years ago I would never have imagined being the mother of three such different individuals, and I know that's a good thing. Because if I've learned anything, it's that parenting is as much a process of letting go of expectations as it is of watching over and directing a child's path.

These three boys will find their own orbit, and I won't be the center of their universe any longer. But there will always be a gravitational pull between us, the familial tie of parent and child, and I trust that this force will keep us within the same ambit.

New Year's Resolutions

Every January thousands of people make resolutions. Some start visiting a gym or join Weight Watchers. Some give up smoking or tear up credit cards to prevent shopping sprees. Studies show that for most individuals, the failure to keep New Year's resolutions hovers somewhere between 78% and 88%. We are truly creatures of habit, and those habits that are most deeply embedded in the wiring of our brains are the hardest to break.

Still almost half of us make New Year's Resolutions every year despite the daunting odds, demonstrating that perhaps the easiest New Year's resolution to make is to resolve to continue making New Year's resolutions.

A week ago, on the first day of 2012, I participated in this annual ritual, but the most important resolution I made was this: I promised myself that I would appreciate what I have.

It sounds like a simple proposition, but it's not easy to put into practice.

People tend to take what they have for granted. We forget that the very senses we possess-- sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—form our essential connections to the world around us. Isolated in an office or a car or our living rooms, we cannot experience the warmth or cold of the weather; the rustle of trees or the cry of a bird; the smell of freshly mowed grass or the taste of a ripe blackberry growing wild along the road.

But it's not just the physical world that eludes our consciousness. Too often, we find ourselves talking to people but not really listening to what they say. Before anyone has had a chance to finish a sentence or two, we're already formulating a response, thinking about our next appointment, or worse yet, surreptitiously glancing at our cell phones. And if we are truly honest with ourselves, very few of us can remember the last time we just sat on a park bench and did nothing at all except be in the moment, exercising a deliberate awareness of everything around us.

This past December I realized that I was spending far too much of my own life in this kind of sensory and social deprivation. Like Lewis Carroll's White Queen, I was running as fast as I could only to stay in the same place, and worst of all, I was losing my sense of connection to the people I love.

So New Year's Day has come and gone, and I still have this resolution to fulfill. While I'm riding my bike, I feel the crispness of the air rushing past. When I'm out walking the dogs, I smile at the people who are approaching me on the sidewalk. When I'm with friends, I try to take a moment and think how lucky I am to have them and how lonely my world would be without them. When my kids are driving me crazy, I try to stop myself from yelling at them and remember to give them a hug because I love them.

Of course, my efforts to appreciate what I have are often thwarted by the small insults and irritations of daily life: a driver cuts me off; I'm infuriated by some irrational act of Congress; my son leaves his shoes where I can trip on them for the umpteenth time; my husband fails to understand my directive to leave silverware in the side of the sink where forks and spoons won't fall into the garbage disposal and get chewed up.

And then there are the twin distractions of fear and envy: What if I can't pay my bills this month? What if my new business never works out? Why can't I afford to remodel my house like everyone else? Why don't I have the relatives with cabin near Tahoe? Those distractions can keep me suspended in a feverish anxiety about a possible future that may or may not ever come true.

But in reality all of us only ever experience the present moment. Today, this house, this family, these friends, these possessions are all that I have, and I can choose to see them as sufficient for now or choose to disparage them because they don't live up to my expectations of what might be.

The Gospel according to Matthew puts the case this way: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” (6:4).

I don't advocate living my life with no thought of the future, and my focus on what is sufficient looks more towards the joy than the pain of daily living, but the apostle's sense of where we might best invest our attention is exactly on the mark. All I have is today, and with luck, the tomorrow that will become today. That's why my resolution is more than a New Year's ritual; it's a resolution I am making for my life to be the best it can be right now.

The Blog is Back

I made my last post to Springs to Mind in August of 2009 when I took a full-time job. Now, after a two-year hiatus, I'm coming back to blogging with more thoughts and reflections from an almost 50-something woman living in Silicon Valley with three kids, two poodles, one husband, and no Prius.