Well, it does sometimes anyway. And that’s good.The G demands a warrant showing the Organs of State Security have reasonable cause to request the materials. Certain types of information are released with warrants, and the Federales and their “requests” are pretty generally not covered…the “Patriot” Act dontcha know…the one that nobody in Congress read before they voted on it, the one that suddenly materialized right after the 911 attacks, all those pages, just suddenly conjured into existence. Hmmmmm… Google’s position is made possible by the conflicting appellate court decisions on whether the Organs need warrants. Some seem to imply yes and others seem to imply no, and the Supremes have not yet been drawn in and nobody is anxious to do push it. For my money, the Nine would roll over and bow down to the Executive, as they consistently have in “security” matters.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/01/google-says-get-a-warrant/

The writer Gore Vidal noted with no little bitterness the changes that had occurred as the USA became more deeply committed to the Cold War. He summed them up in an essay called The National Security State. VIdal traced the emergence and development of practices that would previously never have been allowed, but were now in force on grounds of ‘national security’.  Gore Vidal died this year and I’m sure he had plenty of time and occasion to ponder the emergence of the Surveillance Society, an offshoot of the National Security State, in which somebody is watching you, now matter where you are or what you’re doing. A great deal of the watching, however, is not being done by the State, but by commercial enterprises or local metropolitan authorities.  Technology to do this is available and relatively cheap, especially when your friendly Homeland Security agency is picking up the check.  So, poor slob that you are, your actions online are being tracked by software programs which note how many times you show interest in, say, German Expressionist movies, and then sells that information to Expressionism Are Us, so the company can tailor ads to pester you about whatever it is they’re selling. This non-governmental surveillance online is pervasive, and you, Joe Dolt, are in many databases. The cumulative effect is that a great deal of information is available about a great number of people. And the Organs of State Security can, and do, often, avail themselves of this data whenever it suits them.  Two new  wrinkles:  transit authorities in various cities, from very large ones to burgs that barely maintain service, are installing video and audio surveillance systems in buses. The devices can record rider conversations as well as capture images of the passengers. And the Organs of State Security are paying for the installations. Next, the Federal Trade Commission is bestirring itself to look at the apps installed on kids’ games and similar products. These, too, are capturing data about the little tykes, in depths that range from the casual to the detailed. Names, addresses, GPS location,age, etc.  The basis of the FTC’s action is that the companies are not being square with parents about the capture thingy.  I hear the old Gestapo man’s justification: “if you have not done anything wrong, you  have no reason to worry”.  It seems that fewere and fewer Americans are, really, willing to tell the authorities to beat it, if that means some personal inconvenience.  Freedom-loving?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/technology/many-mobile-apps-for-children-fall-short-on-disclosure-to-parents-ftc-report-says.html?hpw&_r=0

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/12/public-bus-audio-surveillance/

Bruce Schneier had a good reputation in the somewhat recondite field of cyber-security. He runs a company that advises on such matters, and his writings on the topic make sense and easy to grasp, as long as you are not down too deep in the engine room of check-digits and authentication strings and other apparatus of the security wonk’s trade. The link posted here goes to an interesting survey piece in which he compares the current digital user scene to the feudal order of medieval society in the West, and by that I mean, roughly, the lands west of the old Roman limes or fortified border that marked the Empire off from the barbarian lands to the east. Anyway,  back to Schneier. His comparison is just that; a comparison. But a lot of what he says is direct and right on point.It does seem as though a kind of ‘digital feudalism’ is emerging, or even, that it has emerged and is functioning as the de facto social order in Digitopia. In feudalism, there were vassals and lords. The vassal surrendered something to the lord, in return for protection. That ‘something’ was service of one sort or another.  The digital vassal surrenders something to Amazon, or Google, or Apple or something. In return, the vassal gets protection: automatic updates, auto backup, etc.  The security of these services is much greater that that any individual could get personally. But the ‘service’ the individual yields can be fiscal, in that s/he is more or less bound to buy the Lord’s products and pay the Lord’s fees. OK, medieval society was a great deal more complicated than what we read in the college history texts, and that’s because it had people in it. People always mess up everything, mostly by not fitting neatly into one of the categories they were supposed to fit into, and they were tolerated because they could do something interesting or useful. Anyway, read it here:

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/11/feudal-security/

Previously in these lines, I have noted the considerable attention that Google has been attracting on the part of DOJ anti-trust enforcement agencies. It’s been going on for a while, but over the weekend news stories appeared to the effect that regulators are very close to bringing legal action against the search giant. Being big has its benefits and its problems. And one of those problems is that unless people in the agencies are comatose or bought off or muzzled by higher-ups, your activities as a biggie will start drawing attention.   No papers have been filed and Google is not sweating, at least not until the actual documents are revealed. The G has been in hot water before, on both sides of the Atlantic, but this one may be much more threatening, such as, the break-up of the company. Standard Oil, the granddaddy of Exon-Moblil, got the anti-trust treatment and had to break up into three companies.  We shall see.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/technology/ftc-staff-prepares-antitrust-case-against-google-over-search.html?hpw

 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/google-facing-imminent-antitrust-lawsuit/