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Speaking strictly from a business point of view, why would google want to keep a personality list on you ?
Originally posted by dolphinfan
reply to post by Akutski
I think the business elements of this issue is immaterial.
It is the same as the issue we had a while back with AT&T, where the government forced AT&T to hand over domestic phone records under the FISA statue. That was done absent the appropriate FISA legal review (the review was done after the fact).
The issue here is that the data in and of itself is potentially valuable to the government for all sorts of purposes. As a business, Google will certainly attempt to integrate the data for the purposes of making money. In so doing they will create an asset that could be used by the government to track citizens and correlate data points to attempt to intrepret behaivor. I actually don't care what purpose the government or anyone would choose to use the information. The fact that they have the information to use is what troubles me. Having the information in one place is not a good thing. Having some of the smartest people out there figuring out way to build the infrastructure and develop the logic and how to manipulate it is a worse thing. The government would never be able to competently manage and manipulate this data. Google can.
An example, albiet a very minor one happened a while back with a major grocery chain (I think it was Safeway). A gent fell in their store and hurt his back and sued the store because he slipped on something in the isle. The store determined he was a rewards/loyal customer and had a rewards card. They accessed the data and discovered that the gent bought a lot of beer. They used that information in the lawsuit, claiming that he most likely fell because he was drunk. His lawyers made that public and they settled and appologized.
Again, a small example, but I firmly believe that having this information in the hands of one entity and one with ties to the government is simply not a good idea. Other data points could easily be aggregated with this data as well. Credit card purchase records, GPS data from your car (this is already being used in rental cars to issue penalities for speeding), any manner of data.
Its just not a good idea and the fact that they are a commercial enterprise will drive them to find innovative ways to correlate the data. It is easy to envision where this correlated data could become a "national security" asset. Not a good thing