Posts Tagged ‘ Google ’

The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’ (article by Julian Assange)

June 20, 2013
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In a recent New York Times opinion piece, “The Banaility of ‘Don’t be Evil,” Julian Assange critiques the book “The New Digital Age – Reshaping the future of people, nations and business,” co-authored by Jared Cohen and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. A short summary of the book can be found here. The title of Assange’s article, which is fiercely critical of Cohen and Schmidt’s ideas for the future of a digitized civilization, is a reference to a phrase long ago used by Hannah Arendt to note that the greatest evils in human history (particularly the Holocaust) were not executed by sociopaths and…

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Does Google censor the internet?

June 19, 2012
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The answer is “yes.” The evidence for this comes from a report prepared by Google itself, which will be released next week. According to the Wall Street Journal, the report shows that: Google received more than 1,000 requests from governments around the world in the second half of last year to take down items such as YouTube videos and search listings, and it complied with them more than half the time, according to information provided by the company. One example of the sort of censorship Google engages in concerns a request by the Thai government to remove YouTube videos insulting the…

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The UK government’s war on internet freedom (by Trevor Timm)

April 16, 2012
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  San Francisco, CA – Last summer in the wake of the London riots, British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted that the government should have the power to censor social media and “stop [alleged rioters] from communicating via these websites”. But after Cameron’s plan was widely compared to the tactics of former Egypt President Hosni Mubarak – not to mention the same social media services were instrumental in helping organise post-riot cleanup – the proposal never materialised. Unfortunately, Cameron’s declaration that the “free flow of information” can sometimes be a problem, then an aberration, seems to have turned into a pillar of the UK government’s 2012 agenda.…

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The internet filter bubble

January 7, 2012
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Thanks to Google’s search engine we now have the ability to retrieve instantly a massive amount of information on virtually any topic or any question we might have. On the surface, it seems that we are all better informed and more knowledgeable as a result of Google.  But are we? Consider the fact that Google recognizes  users and collects information on their digital behavior–their favorite searches, articles they have read on Google news, and even their choice of words.  Everything is recorded, the pattern is analyzed, and a user profile is created. Then, when you perform a search, Google tries to find…

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