Sinister Security: Google

Congress just asked big tech companies for private emails about their biggest controversies

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The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee has sent four request for information letters to Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet, and Apple, asking for closely held details on some of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley. It released the letters publicly this morning, and the companies must respond by October 14th.

“There is growing evidence that a handful of corporations have come to capture an outsized share of online commerce and communications,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) in a statement. These letters should help the committee understand “the degree to which these intermediaries enjoy market power, how they are using that market power, whether they are using their market power in ways that have harmed consumers and competition, and how Congress should respond.”

The Judiciary Committee announced an antitrust investigation around large tech companies earlier this year. The Federal Trade Commission is currently investigating Amazon and Facebook, and the Justice Department has authority over Apple and Google.

All the requests include company organization charts, financial reports, and any documents they’ve produced for earlier antitrust probes by the FTC or Department of Justice. But they also drill into the details of individual services.

Alphabet’s letter demands executive emails discussing Google’s acquisitions (including DoubleClick, YouTube, and Android), the company’s search algorithm, and Google’s “actual or proposed suspension of any specific app” or app category from the Play Store. Google’s dominance across interrelated markets like search, advertising, and mobile operating systems could be letting it unfairly crush competition in any one field, and there’s strong evidence that it’s done so in the past.

The Amazon letter asks for emails about how Amazon ranks products, including its own Amazon Basics brand. Congress also asks about Amazon’s many acquisitions across medicine, home security, and grocery stores. And it wants details about Amazon’s effective takeover of the book retail market, like whether it adjusted its search algorithm to “place greater business pressure” on a publisher.

Apple’s letter addresses several well-known controversies. Congress asked for emails about its crackdown on parental control apps, a deal with Amazon that hurt third-party resellers, and its overall pattern of “Sherlocking” third-party apps. Beyond government investigations, Apple is fighting lawsuits over its locked-down approach to app sales.

The letter to Facebook, a perennial congressional target since late 2017, focuses on Facebook acquiring competitors WhatsApp and Instagram. Congress also wants information about Facebook’s sketchy data collection app Onavo, which allegedly helped Facebook decide that WhatsApp posed a business threat. Facebook will need to produce material about how it cut companies off from its social graph, including Vine, although some emails about that are already public.

This all constitutes information that people (especially journalists) have been speculating about for years. And it would shed light on some of the most important business decisions of the past decade — or even longer.

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The stakes are too high for Apple to spin the iPhone exploits

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Today, Apple responded to Google’s discovery of a major iPhone security flaw with a bristling statement that accused its rival of creating “false impressions.” But Apple did very little to clear up those false impressions, and seems to have created some of its own, as we’ll see by taking a close read.

First, let’s talk about what Apple did confirm. When Google originally published detailed information about the iOS exploits, it conspicuously did not say specifically why they were created or who they were targeted at. Following Google’s disclosure, TechCrunch reported that the exploits were part of a state-sponsored attack that was meant to target China’s minority Uighur population. (The attackers also reportedly targeted Android and Windows devices.) It has been widely reported that China is persecuting the Uighur minority in the country with torture, internment, and surveillance; just yesterday, Reuters and CNN reported that China is trying to hack telecoms to track Uighurs across Asia. So there’s plenty of looming context regarding the potential source and aim of iOS exploits like the one disclosed by Google.

Apple confirmed today that the iOS exploits indeed were targeted at Uighurs; Apple says that they “affected fewer than a dozen websites that focus on content related to the Uighur community.” But Apple’s framing minimizes the context and potential consequences of the exploit against that community in favor of irritation at Google’s blog post and the subsequent media coverage.

To its credit, Apple did disclose and confirm the exploit targeted the Uighur community, which Google did not do. But Apple’s statement is almost entirely focused on Google’s perceived failings, instead of the ongoing persecution of a religious minority in China, which is one of Apple’s largest markets and also the focus of an ongoing trade war that directly implicates the company’s products.

Several times in today’s statement, Apple takes something Google itself said and spins it as an act of omission.

Apple:

First, the sophisticated attack was narrowly focused, not a broad-based exploit of iPhones “en masse” as described. The attack affected fewer than a dozen websites that focus on content related to the Uighur community.

Google:

Earlier this year Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) discovered a small collection of hacked websites. The hacked sites were being used in indiscriminate watering hole attacks against their visitors, using iPhone 0-day.

Here Apple repeats Google’s own original claim, but spins it by connecting it to a line later in Google’s piece about the attack being “en masse.” Reasonable people may disagree about the scope of “en masse,” which means both “a group” and “all together,” but Google certainly did not omit information about the vector of the attack.

Apple:

Google’s post, issued six months after iOS patches were released, creates the false impression of “mass exploitation” to “monitor the private activities of entire populations in real time,” stoking fear among all iPhone users that their devices had been compromised.

Google:

Real users make risk decisions based on the public perception of the security of these devices. The reality remains that security protections will never eliminate the risk of attack if you’re being targeted. To be targeted might mean simply being born in a certain geographic region or being part of a certain ethnic group. All that users can do is be conscious of the fact that mass exploitation still exists and behave accordingly; treating their mobile devices as both integral to their modern lives, yet also as devices which when compromised, can upload their every action into a database to potentially be used against them.

[...]

I shan’t get into a discussion of whether these exploits cost $1 million, $2 million, or $20 million. I will instead suggest that all of those price tags seem low for the capability to target and monitor the private activities of entire populations in real time.

Apple takes Google’s quotes here completely out of context. Google is talking about the perception of risk and the inherent vulnerability of computing, which is not really up for debate. It’s also talking about the mass targeting of a specific community; as we learned today, that community happens to be a religious minority being actively persecuted in China. It’s bizarre that Apple marginalizes them here by ignoring the nuance of the attack and extrapolating Google’s concerns to “all iPhone users.”

Apple:

Second, all evidence indicates that these website attacks were only operational for a brief period, roughly two months, not “two years” as Google implies.

Google:

TAG was able to collect five separate, complete and unique iPhone exploit chains, covering almost every version from iOS 10 through to the latest version of iOS 12. This indicated a group making a sustained effort to hack the users of iPhones in certain communities over a period of at least two years.

[...]

Initial analysis indicated that at least one of the privilege escalation chains was still 0-day and unpatched at the time of discovery (CVE-2019-7287 & CVE-2019-7286). We reported these issues to Apple with a 7-day deadline on 1 Feb 2019, which resulted in the out-of-band release of iOS 12.1.4 on 7 Feb 2019. We also shared the complete details with Apple, which were disclosed publicly on 7 Feb 2019.

Where does Google imply the website attacks were operational for two years? Google explicitly says their evidence indicated “a group making a sustained effort” over those two years, not that iPhone users were compromised that whole time, and points to its disclosure of those vulnerabilities to Apple. Apple’s reading here is disingenuous at best.

Google:

There was no target discrimination; simply visiting the hacked site was enough for the exploit server to attack your device, and if it was successful, install a monitoring implant. We estimate that these sites receive thousands of visitors per week.

Apple:

Regardless of the scale of the attack, we take the safety and security of all users extremely seriously.

Apple has not earned a “regardless” here. It has given us no idea of the actual scale of the attack. It does not even respond to Google’s estimate that thousands of visitors may have been affected per week. Even if we take Apple’s word that the exploit was only operational for two months, that’s potentially tens of thousands (or more) of unwitting victims who are members of a vulnerable population that is currently being targeted by a repressive government. “Taking the safety and security of all users extremely seriously” would keep the focus on the users under attack, not the Google researchers who discovered the exploits.

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Google and Dell team up to take on Microsoft with Chromebook Enterprise laptops

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Google is launching new Chromebook Enterprise devices that it hopes will draw more businesses away from Windows-powered laptops. Microsoft has dominated enterprise computing for years, but as businesses increasingly look to modernize their fleet of devices, there’s an opportunity for competitors to challenge Windows. Google is teaming up with one of Microsoft’s biggest partners, Dell, to help push new Chromebook Enterprise laptops into businesses.

Dell is launching Chrome OS on a pair of its popular business-focused Latitude laptops, offering both a regular clamshell design and a 2-in-1 option. While it might sound like just two existing Windows laptops repurposed for Chrome OS, Google and Dell have been working together for more than a year to ensure these new Chromebook Enterprise devices are ready for IT needs. That includes bundling a range of Dell’s cloud-based support services that allow admins to have greater control over how these Chromebooks are rolled out inside businesses.

It means IT admins can more easily integrate these Chromebooks into existing Windows environments and manage them through tools like VMware Workspace One. Microsoft and its partners have offered a range of admin tools for years, making it easy to customize and control Windows-based devices. Google has also tweaked its Chrome Admin console to improve load times, add search on every page, and overhaul it with material design elements.

Businesses will be able to choose from Dell’s 14-inch Latitude 5400 ($699) or the 13-inch Latitude 5300 2-in-1 ($819). Both can be configured with up to Intel’s 8th Gen Core i7 processors, up to 32GB of RAM, and even up to 1TB of SSD storage. The processor options are a little disappointing considering Intel just announced new 10th Gen processors, but the blow is softened slightly as both devices will offer LTE options and USB-C docking.

Google is now teaming up with a number of OEMs to better target enterprise customers. While Dell is the first OEM to announce Chromebook Enterprise laptops, there will be more. “This is not an exclusive with Dell,” explains John Solomon, vice president of Chrome OS at Google, in an interview with The Verge. “We’re launching with Dell first… but in the future we will be getting back to doing this more broadly with the ecosystem.”

You can imagine Lenovo and HP partnering to offer Chromebook Enterprise laptops in the future, just like they currently offer devices to both consumers and businesses. This tighter integration benefits OEMs as they can now bundle a larger stack of software and services on a Chromebook targeted at businesses.

Chromebooks have traditionally fared well in education but have had little traction in businesses that are used to relying on Windows. Google’s new focus is a significant change, but it doesn’t mean the company is suddenly going to attract business customers overnight. “Enterprise is more of a marathon than a sprint,” admits Solomon. “For Google this is a key moment for us to really telegraph that we’re very serious about the enterprise. This is not just a project that’s ‘well you know it’s like an experiment, we’ll see how it goes.’ This is a long term and serious commitment.”

Microsoft has tried to counter Chrome OS with Windows 10 S laptops

Microsoft’s response to this new Chromebook Enterprise offering will be telling. It has steadily been trying to counter Chrome OS with cheaper Windows-based laptops of its own, but that’s not a modern OS challenge. Microsoft is also currently working on a “Windows Lite” version of its operating system that will be far more cloud-powered to compete with Chrome OS. This stripped-down version of Windows could help Microsoft better compete with the modern benefits of something like Chrome OS. Microsoft has tried to counter Chrome OS with efforts like Windows 10 S in the past, but it’s always been more of a locked down version of Windows than anything truly modern.

”What I’ve read is that Microsoft is actually going to modernize their operating system, because they have an operating system that was actually architected for a world of IT that was very client-centric, very sort of heavy device,” says Solomon. Microsoft’s support of older applications, hardware, and even Windows versions is what sets it apart for IT admins right now, but Google is betting on its modern OS taking over.

”There’s a reason there’s not been malware attacks or viruses on Chromebooks, it’s a very tough surface for any bad actor to penetrate,” says Solomon. “I would imagine Microsoft are going to try to modernize their operating system and bring it to where IT is going, but they have the problem of legacy and we don’t.”

If Microsoft does try to create a more Chrome OS-like operating system, Google thinks it will still have the upper hand thanks to its investments in machine learning. “We’ve been working on Chrome OS for 10 years, it’s not just something we came up with last year,” explains Solomon. “We’ve developed areas that we’re innovating in, like machine learning — which is the core competency of Google — and we’re starting to apply it. We have a raft of features that we’re working on for management of the product through machine learning, and actually deep at the OS level. So, how you can optimize the CPU, battery, and display through that.”

Google’s partnership with Dell is a big warning shot to Microsoft and its Windows dominance, but it’ll be up to Google and its partners to really prove it will work. We’ve seen Google exit the tablet hardware business earlier this year, and its efforts to push Chrome OS onto tablets haven’t really worked out. Google now needs to prove it’s willing and able to provide flexible software and services that will convince businesses to make the big Windows switch. Solomon described enterprise as a marathon and not a sprint, but with Microsoft involved it’s going to be more like a really long boxing match between two of the world’s heavyweight tech companies.

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Google’s new policy forbids employees from having ‘raging debates’ over politics

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Google used to be the epitome of young, smart, techy culture. Its offices have always been lauded as a workplace where free expression, thinking outside of the box, and challenging the status quo were valued more than the ability to keep your head down and meet quotas. Those days are over.

The Mountain View company recently updated its Community Guidelines for employees to reflect a change in company culture. Usually, policy updates don’t warrant a news article, but the language in this particular one is the strongest indication that Google‘s finished pretending to be a scrappy startup and it’s now going full-on corporate.

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The memo begins by emphasizing that employees at Google are there to do a job:

Working at Google comes with tremendous responsibility. Billions of people rely on us every day for high-quality, reliable information. It’s critical that we honor that trust and uphold the integrity of our products and services. The following guidelines are official policy and apply when you’re communicating in the workplace.

It then reminds employees that they’re responsible for their own words and actions, and that Google will hold them responsible — a part that reads like the Miranda rights, then it gets to this part:

While sharing information and ideas with colleagues helps build community, disrupting the workday to have a raging debate over politics or the latest news story does not. Our primary responsibility is to do the work we’ve each been hired to do, not to spend working time on debates about non-work topics.

Google‘s been embattled over the past few years and its reputation with those who believed it to be an idealistic company hellbent on making the world a better place has been a bit sullied. From working with the US military to develop AI for use with a weapons platform to pissing off the US government by choosing to invest time into a censored Search for China, the company’s made few friends in Washington. And the combination of citizen protests and employee dissent has made clear that Google‘s culture is, at least to outsiders, a dumpster fire.

It appears the company hopes to solve this by squelching free expression and forcing employees to focus on the task at hand, not the world around them.

The new rules also seem to prohibit employees from criticizing celebrities and politicians:

Don’t troll, name call, or engage in ad hominem attacks – about anyone. This includes making statements that insult, demean, or humiliate (whether individually or by reference to groups) other employees, our extended workforce, our business partners, or others (including public figures), or that violate other standards of conduct or policies against harassment and bullying.

This equates to “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” And that’s a tone-deaf, disgusting policy that’ll almost certainly have a chilling effect on internal conversations covering politics, terrorism, and journalism – subjects Google has a direct influence on.

This isn’t the end for Google, but it’s the end of Google as we know it. It’s possible the company will continue to attract the same top-tier, blue chip talent as it always has. But it’s more likely that the change in corporate culture means the next generation of developers, engineers, and free-thinkers won’t see it as the cool, rebellious answer to IBM or Microsoft it started out as.

For better or worse: Google‘s just another stuffy big tech company worried about its own bottom line. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, it’s how most tech companies operate. But you have to feel bad for the employees who’ve been there for a decade or more – those who were hired back when “don’t be evil” was more important than “don’t upset anyone.”

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Google Comes Under Fire for ‘Secret’ Relationship with NSA

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Grant Gross
PC World

Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group largely focused in recent years on Google’s privacy practices, has called on a congressional investigation into the Internet giant’s “cozy” relationship with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.

In a letter sent Monday, Consumer Watchdog asked Representative Darrell Issa, the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, to investigate the relationship between Google and several government agencies.

The group asked Issa to investigate contracts at several U.S. agencies for Google technology and services, the “secretive” relationship between Google and the U.S. National Security Agency, and the company’s use of a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration airfield in California.

Federal agencies have also taken “insufficient” action in response to revelations last year that Google Street View cars were collecting data from open Wi-Fi connections they passed, Consumer Watchdog said in the letter.

“We believe Google has inappropriately benefited from close ties to the administration,” the letter said. “Google is most consumers’ gateway to the Internet. Nonetheless, it should not get special treatment and access because of a special relationship with the administration.”

Consumer Watchdog may have an ally in Issa, a California Republican. In July, he sent a letter to Google raising concerns that White House Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Andrew McLaughlin, the former head of global public policy for Google, had inappropriate e-mail contact with company employees.

A Google spokeswoman questioned Consumer Watchdog’s objectivity. Some groups have questioned the group’s relationship with Google rival Microsoft, and Consumer Watchdog’s criticisms of online privacy efforts have also exclusively zeroed in on Google, with the group rarely mentioning Microsoft, Facebook and other Web-based companies in the past two years.

“This is just the latest in a long list of press stunts from an organization that admits to working closely with our competitors,” said the Google spokeswoman.

But Consumer Watchdog gets no funding from Microsoft or any other Google competitor, said John Simpson, consumer advocate with the group. “We don’t have any relationship with Microsoft at all,” he said. “We don’t take any of their money.”

Consumer Watchdog has decided to focus on Google’s privacy practices because the company’s services serve as a gateway to the Internet for many people, Simpson said. If the group can push Google, “without a doubt the dominant Internet company,” to change its privacy practices, other companies will follow suit, he said.

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DHS Seizes Websites for Merely LINKING to Copyrighted Material

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Eric Blair
Activist Post

Apparently the Department of Homeland Security is now authorized to rewrite and enforce copyright infringement laws. In a stunning precedent, the recent round of domain seizures to shut down websites that allowed illegal streaming of the Super Bowl also included a few other websites that were seized simply for linking to infringing content.

Mike Masnick of TechDirt, who received and published a DHS seizure affidavit, had this to say in a must-read article:

…the affidavit itself is chock full of legal and technical errors, compounded by assertions-as-facts that seem to have little basis in reality. This is immensely troubling, especially given that the specific legal issues here are hardly settled law, and Homeland Security seems to be acting as if these cases are no brainers, allowing them to flat out seize domains, even when those websites have been declared perfectly legal in their home countries.

The biggest problem is that Homeland Security seems to suggest — without a hint of doubt — that merely linking to infringing content is criminal copyright infringement. That is a huge stretch. The affidavit appears to make it clear that it believes that these sites are guilty of direct criminal copyright infringement, rather than any sort of contributory copyright infringement. As we’ve discussed in the past, the courts have tended to say that embedding and linking can be contributory infringement, but not direct infringement. Homeland Security and ICE may be in for a bit of legal trouble trying to prove that embedding is direct infringement.

Until these unprecedented seizures, online copyright infringement was dealt with by simply asking infringing websites to remove the material and replace it with a link to the source. Previous cases have normally been battled out in civil court. Alternative news giant, Matt Drudge, is currently fighting a seemingly ridiculous civil lawsuit over linking to news stories.

These new actions by the DHS and the courts seem to be motivated more by private corporate profits than by actual copyright law. Nonetheless, the agenda seems to be to make nearly every website that links to copyrighted material guilty of criminal infringement, thus justifying arbitrarily blacklisting domains deemed to be in violation of such a broad precedent. This is yet another Napoleonic guilty-until-proven-innocent action, apparently displaying the corporate state’s lack of concern for the rights of individuals and small businesses. What’s more, it is also another tyrannical tool being used to control the flow of information.

Additionally, this type of precedent would seem to massively change the Internet as we know it. What’s next, seizing websites that link to those affiliate sites, like Facebook, Google, or Twitter? Well, that’s the exact question Masnick investigated in his follow-up article, “Homeland Security Tries And Fails To Explain Why Seized Domains Are Different From Google.” Masnick reports on an interview with a DHS agent in charge of the domain seizures, James Hayes:

In the interview, John Moe asked Agent Hayes a very simple question: given that these domains were all seized based solely on the fact that they link to infringing content hosted elsewhere, and all of the same content is also linked from Google, will the Feds seize Google’s domain name? Well, more specifically, Moe asks if ICE could seize Google’s domain name. Amusingly, right after being asked, Hayes conveniently gets cut off, but he does call back and the question is asked again.

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However, once he gets back, he tries to tap dance around this issue. Hayes says “no” that ICE will not seize Google’s domain name and that’s because it’s only targeting sites that “don’t do due diligence” to make sure that the content they’re linking to isn’t infringing. There’s a pretty serious problem with this claim in that it’s wrong on both sides of the equation. First off, Google, as a search engine, does no due diligence to check that links only go to non-infringing content. Second, in at least some of the cases (specifically in the case of dajaz1), we know that it was actually Homeland Security and folks like Special Agent Hayes who “failed to do their due diligence,” so the songs named in the ICE affidavit were, in fact, provided by the labels or representatives of the musicians. In other words, according to Special Agent Hayes’ own criteria, Google is more of a criminal operation that Dajaz1.

Despite the DHS’s obvious distortion of the law, we are rapidly approaching a day where information can no longer flow freely on the Internet. We better wake up and share these stories with everyone we know, because tyranny is fast approaching. These words written above belong to nobody but the open-source, free Internet. Share and re-post at will.
For additional information about online copyright laws and guidelines, please visit the Citizen Media Law Project.

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Google Seeks to Weaken Search Engine Ranking of “Content Farming” Websites

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Russia to Impose Internet Controls Like China?

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New Google Algorithm is Live: News Aggregators Will Be Punished

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Eric Blair & Michael Edwards
Activist Post

Just over a month ago, Google announced that they were changing their algorithm in order to weaken the search engine rankings of sites they deem to be “content farmers.”

Whereas most of Google’s algorithm changes are barely noticeable, the current change that they have been working on since last January will affect 12% of U.S. searches.

There has been much debate about what “content farming” is, and Google has done little to offer a clear explanation, simply stating, “low quality” or “shallow” sites would be affected. This is similar to the vague definition of pornography — you’ll know it when you see it.

The problem with such a vague approach to what is a strictly defined algorithm is that it leaves too much room for a human interpretation. And as we have seen, Google has been exposed as having connections to U.S. intelligence agencies, which doesn’t bode well for alternative news sites that aggregate anti-establishment stories from around the web. Given the other censorship threats facing the Internet, it seems those who might be critical of Internet control and real-time surveillance of average Americans are being targeted.

One definition of content farming sites comes from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land:

Looks to see what are popular searches in a particular category (news, help topics)

Generates content specifically tailored to those searches

Usually spends very little time and or money, even perhaps as little as possible, to generate that content

The first point is particularly troubling for alternative news, since these are the sites who often scour mainstream news to discover which topics are of popular interest so that competing commentary can be offered on a given issue. Even in the area of “help topics” there are many alternative news sites, such as our own, who focus on tips for survival, protection from economic crisis, advice for privacy protection and personal security, etc.

Again, with the overshadowing definition of “shallow” content, who is deciding this? Furthermore, point two addresses tailoring content for specific searches, which sounds a lot like the “Google Bombs” introduced by Alex Jones and implemented by others as an effective way to compete with the mainstream media pablum, which focuses heavily on celebrities, sports, and other truly shallow and low quality content.

And, finally, point three seems to penalize blogs and other low-cost means of sharing opinions, as if not having a mainstream media budget automatically implies low quality, when provably the reverse is often true. Those who research information and present their own opinions as to the significance of what they have studied generally are doing so out of a passion to expose lies and direct their fellow man to the truth.

Google’s punishment of those who re-post material as an essential tool for sharing information appears to now reduce news aggregators to the status of plagiarists within the algorithm. There are many alternative news sites and blogs which have original material that they freely share, in part or in full, purely to support one another in disseminating the truth. We all know what plagiarism looks like and a link back to the original source should not, for instance, be grounds for labeling a site as shallow.

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Google needs to address the vital tool of sharing information, as well as to more clearly define their algorithm in upcoming press releases, or we can only conclude that they have begun to wage war on news sites who aggregate information to present an alternative to establishment media.

Read Google’s announcement here

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Senate panel to look into Google and Web search

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AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US senator who chairs the subcommittee on anti-trust issues has announced plans to examine Google’s “dominance” of the Internet search market.

Herb Kohl, a Democrat from Wisconsin who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, put online search on the agenda for the new session of Congress.

Kohl said the subcommittee planned to address competition in online markets and Internet search issues.

“Access to the wealth of information and e-commerce on the Internet is essential for consumers and business alike,” the senator said in a statement.

“The subcommittee will strive to ensure that this sector remains competitive, that Internet search is fair to its users and customers, advertisers have sufficient choices, and that consumers’ privacy is guarded.

“In recent years, the dominance over Internet search of the world’s largest search engine, Google, has increased and Google has increasingly sought to acquire e-commerce sites in myriad businesses,” Kohl said.

“In this regard, we will closely examine allegations raised by e-commerce websites that compete with Google that they are being treated unfairly in search ranking, and in their ability to purchase search advertising.

“We also will continue to closely examine the impact of further acquisitions in this sector,” Kohl said.

The Justice Department is currently reviewing Google’s proposed $700 million acquisition of flight information company ITA Software, a deal which is facing opposition from several leading online travel sites.

According to figures released on Friday by tracking firm comScore, Google remains the overwhelming leader of the US search market although its US market share slipped to 65.4 percent in February from 65.6 percent in January.

Yahoo!’s share of the US search market was unchanged at 16.1 percent while Microsoft’s share increased to 13.6 percent in February from 13.1 percent in January.

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Google, FTC reach Google Buzz privacy settlement

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Google Blackmailing Users to Obtain Their Mobile Phone Numbers?

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Governments Order YouTube To Censor Protest Videos

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Forget copyright infringement, YouTube is now complying with removal orders from governments to stop populist rage going viral

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet

In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.

The latest example is You Tube’s compliance with a request from the British government to censor footage of the British Constitution Group’s Lawful Rebellion protest, during which they attempted to civilly arrest Judge Michael Peake at Birkenhead county court.

Peake was ruling on a case involving Roger Hayes, former member of UKIP, who has refused to pay council tax, both as a protest against the government’s treasonous activities in sacrificing Britain to globalist interests and as a result of Hayes clearly proving that council tax is illegal.

Hayes has embarked on an effort to legally prove that the enforced collection of council tax by government is unlawful because no contract has been agreed between the individual and the state. His argument is based on the sound legal principle that just like the council, Hayes can represent himself as a third party in court and that “Roger Hayes” is a corporation and must be treated as one in the eyes of the law.

The British government doesn’t want this kind of information going viral in the public domain because it is scared stiff of a repeat of the infamous poll tax riots of 1990, a massive tax revolt in the UK that forced the Thatcher government to scrap the poll tax altogether because of mass civil disobedience and refusal to pay.

When viewers in the UK attempt to watch videos of the protest, they are met with the message, “This content is not available in your country due to a government removal request.”

We then click through to learn that, “YouTube occasionally receives requests from governments around the world to remove content from our site, and as a result, YouTube may block specific content in order to comply with local laws in certain countries.”

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Google to show off mobile wallet for Android phones

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Using a mobile phone is likely to ease queues

BBC News

Google is set to introduce a mobile payments platform that will turn its Android smartphones into a digital wallet.

At an event in New York on Thursday, the tech giant is expected to show off the technology, called near field communication or NFC.

The technology allows devices to “talk” to one another wirelessly.

Consumers wave their phones in front of a reader at a checkout to pay for a purchase or to receive special offers.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the program will initially be launched in New York and San Francisco before being extended more widely across the US.

Retailers who are said to be taking part include department store Macy’s, American Eagle Outfitters and Subway fast-food chain.

While Google has made no comment on the reports, it has sent out invitations to the press asking them to attend an event at its New York offices where it will show off its “latest innovations”.

Mobile network operator Sprint is also expected to take part.

In January Google chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in a guest edition of the Harvard Business Review that mobile money was a key part of Google’s strategy for 2011.

“Phones, as we know, are used as banks in many poorer parts of the world – and modern technology means that their use as financial tools can go much further than that,” said Mr Schmidt.

Demand

Research firm Forrester has said it expects 40-50 million NFC-equipped phones to be sold in 2011.

Apple is reportedly planning to include the technology in its upcoming iPhone 5 which is expected to be unveiled at its developer conference next month.

Microsoft is also said to be making plans to incorporate NFC in future Windows phones, as is Blackberry maker RIM.

Samsung and Visa have said they will facilitate mobile payments via NFC on smartphones during the summer Olympics in London next year.

“Google’s Nexus S device that it recently announced is the first Android-powered device supporting NFC and we expect NFC is going to increasingly become a default feature of every smartphone that is sold over the next couple of years,” Charles Govlin, principal analyst at Forrester, told BBC News.

Market researcher Gartner said with the total value of mobile transactions reaching $245bn in 2014, demand for mobile wallet services would be huge.

But not everyone is convinced that contactless payments using a phone will replace cash.

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“In my view, while I think it is clear that potentially these phone-based transactions will be widespread, it will happen slowly, one reason being that consumer behaviour changes very slowly,” said Mr Govlin.

“The big beneficiary here will be Google, a company that is all about information. The metadata involved in such transactions could allow Google to serve ads and make you a more valuable target for advertisers,” he added.

Last week the first NFC service was announced in the United Kingdom involving Orange and Barclaycard.

Mobile wallet services have been available in Japan for a number of years.

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Google Updates PageRank: Top Alternative News Aggregator Punished

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Eric Blair
Activist Post

Today is the day of reckoning. In January of this year, we reported that Google was changing its algorithm to punish “content farming” websites. We predicted that this change would punish some alternative news aggregators. Lo and behold, today Google released their PageRank update and one of the most prominent alternative news aggregators has been punished.

Infowars.com, with over 3.5 million backlinks to a huge amount of original content, was reduced from a PR 7 to a PR6.

At the beginning of this year, Google explained the algorithm change on their official blog as follows:

As ‘pure webspam’ has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to ‘content farms,’ which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content.

WebWorkshop explains the importance of Google PageRank:

PageRank is Google’s way of deciding a page’s importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page’s ranking in the search results. It isn’t the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.

Perhaps this move also reflects the Department of Homeland Security’s new precedent of seizing websites for merely linking to copyrighted material and Google’s confirmed role in working with government intelligence agencies. But that would be too conspiratorial, right?

Well, we know that Google-owned YouTube has openly censored sensitive material at the behest of government requests, and that current proposed legislation seeks to criminally penalize embedding YouTube videos. Clearly all of these acts, whether they be technical in nature like the algorithm change, or corporate-supported legislation, are indicating that the free flow of information on the Internet is under attack.

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Google sees growing struggle over web censorship

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Google Takes Down Over 11 Million CO.CC Sites

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Google exec rejects charge search results ‘cooked’

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WASHINGTON (AFP) – Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt rejected charges that the Internet giant has “cooked” search results to favor its own services during a grilling on Wednesday by a Senate antitrust panel.

Schmidt, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, also sought to distance Google from Microsoft, which was the target of US antitrust action in the late 1990s.

During an hour-and-a-half of testimony, Schmidt repeatedly stressed that Google’s search algorithms are designed to return the best results for users and are not rigged to give preference to its own products or services.

Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah was not convinced and pointed to a study of product search results in which he said Google Product Search displayed an “uncanny” ability to repeatedly show up third in the rankings.

“You’ve cooked it so that you’re always third,” Lee said.

“Senator, may I simply say that I can assure you we have not cooked anything,” Schmidt replied.

Lee said Google may not qualify as a monopoly under antitrust laws but the company “is in a position to help determine who will succeed and who will fail on the Internet.”

“In the words of the head of Google’s search ranking team, Google is, ‘The biggest king-maker on Earth,'” he said.

While Lee subjected Schmidt to the toughest questioning of the day, other senators expressed their affection for the company or said they were undecided about whether Google is abusing its power.

“I love Google,” said Democratic Senator Al Franken of Minnesota. “Google has utterly transformed the way we locate and use information.”

At the same time, Franken said he found Schmidt’s answers “fuzzy” about whether Google favors its own products in search results over those of its rivals.

Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder and chief executive of online restaurant review site Yelp, told the subcommittee that Google “is no longer in the business of sending people to the best sources of information on the Web.

“It now hopes to be a destination site itself for one vertical market after another, including news, shopping, travel and now local business reviews,” he said.

“Websites in Google’s search results now take a back seat to Google’s own competing products,” Stoppelman said.

Schmidt, who stepped down after 10 years as Google’s chief executive in April for co-founder Larry Page, opened the hearing on whether Google is abusing its dominance in Internet search with a reference to Microsoft.

“Twenty years ago, a large technology firm was setting the world on fire,” he said. “But that company lost sight of what mattered and Washington stepped in.

“Many of us in Silicon Valley have absorbed the lessons of that era,” Schmidt said. We get it. By that, I mean we get the lessons of our corporate predecessors.”

The Mountain View, California-based Google has drawn increasing scrutiny from US and European regulators as it has grown over the years from a scrappy Silicon Valley startup into an Internet powerhouse.

European Union competition watchdogs began an investigation into Google in November and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opened its own probe into the company’s lucrative search and advertising business in June.

As it has grown, Google has branched out into various businesses including online mapping, shopping, travel and providing operating systems for mobile phones and tablet computers.

Schmidt said the challenge for Google is to provide the most relevant answers to users of its search engine.

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“This means that not every website can come on top,” he said. “It’s a ranking problem and there are definitely complaints from businesses who want to be first in rankings even when they’re not the best match, as best we can tell, for user search.”

Schmidt also said that using Google is a choice for consumers and they can always go elsewhere.

“If you don’t like the answer that Google search provides, you can switch to another engine with literally one click,” he said.

“The ultimate correction against any mistakes that Google makes is how consumers behave,” Schmidt said. “And we live in a great fear every day that consumers will switch extraordinarily quickly to other services.”

According to the tracking firm comScore, Google accounted for 64.8 percent of US search market share in August followed by Yahoo! with 16.3 percent and Microsoft with 14.7 percent.

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Google’s New Privacy Policy, or Spying-On-You Policy Has Begun

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FCC: Google staff knew Street View cars were stealing private data

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Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post

Recently, I reported on the choice made by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to clear Google of wrongdoing in connection to their interception of the private data belonging to Americans over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, and the measly $25,000 fine given to them.

This is just one of the many ways Big Brother Google has invaded our privacy and continues to do so on a daily basis. If you’d like to know how to take steps to block these methods read this guide and this guide as well.

Keep in mind, their egregious privacy breaches are only going to get worse as their new technology is implemented and they bring on the head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and thus further emphasize their connections to government and the intelligence community.

The $25,000 fine was only because “For many months, Google deliberately impeded and delayed the [FCC’s Enforcement] Bureau investigation by failing to respond to requests for material information and to provide certifications and verifications of its responses.”

Now it has emerged (see the document embedded here) that the FCC knew that Google was actually well aware of what their Street View cars were doing.

The unnamed engineer behind the collection of information from wireless networks told a senior manager and at least one other colleague about the plans before it was released.

The Google engineer told two colleagues that his Street View software could actually collect “entire emails and URLs … as well as passwords.”

Furthermore, Google “provided evidence to the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) showing that the data collected resulted from a deliberate software-design decision by one of the Google employees working on the Street View project.”

So much for the “fragmented data” they claimed they collected and their original statement, “Quite simply, it was a mistake.” In fact, the newly released document indicates that their early claim was the exact opposite of the truth.

Indeed the FCC report indicates that five engineers were involved in implementing the code, but they were allegedly unaware of the fact that it could capture private data.

However, I consider this case quite dubious as the engineer explicitly told this to two colleagues in 2007 and in 2008.

Even more ludicrous is the fact that the anonymous engineer, referred to as “Engineer Doe,” recommended that Google’s privacy lawyers review the program in October of 2006; a recommendation which they ignored.

“For more than two years, Google’s Street View cars collected names, addresses, telephone numbers, URLs, passwords, email, text messages, medical records, video and audio files, and other information from internet users in the United States,” said the report.

Are we really to believe that somehow all of the statements from the engineer to his colleagues and all of the data being collected were somehow completely overlooked for over two years?

Personally, I find such an assertion outright absurd. Yet, the document says that “The record also shows that Google’s supervision of the Wi-Fi data collection project was minimal … indeed, it appears that no one at the company carefully reviewed the substance of Engineer Doe’s software code or the design document.”

The problem here is that they say “appears,” something which cannot be proven or substantiated in the slightest. How would no one review the design after he specifically told people what it was capable of?

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One would assume that they would address such problems, that is if they cared about privacy at all. There is the possibility that they indeed were well aware of the capabilities and let it proceed anyway.

In the end, the FCC somehow determined that Google did not break any laws in stealing private information from Americans, a decision which is hardly surprising given the connections that Google enjoys.

I’d love to hear your opinion, take a look at your story tips, and even your original writing if you would like to get it published. Please email me at Admin@EndtheLie.com

Please support our work and help us start to pay contributors by doing your shopping through our Amazon link or check out some must-have products at our store.

This article first appeared at End the Lie.

Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on Orion Talk Radio from 8 pm — 10 pm Pacific, which you can find HERE. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com

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Oracle v. Google and the Dangerous Implications of Treating APIs as Copyrightable

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There has been no lack of ink spilled on the legal battle between Oracle and Google surrounding Google’s use of Java APIs in its Android OS.

And no wonder, what with testimony by both Larrys (Page and Ellison), claims of damages up to $1 billion, and rampant speculation that a ruling in Oracle’s favor could change the way we all use the Internet.

Today, we got our first taste of what where this all might be heading: the jury came back with a finding that, assuming APIs are subject to copyright, Google has infringed at least some of Oracle’s.

But significant outstanding questions remain, including whether copyright can in fact apply (the judge alone will decide this) and whether Google made a legal fair use of those APIs (we believe it did).

What’s really at stake here?

This first stage of the trial concerns whether Oracle can claim a copyright on Java’s APIs and, if so, whether Google infringes those copyrights. (In 2010, Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, which developed Java.) When it implemented the Android OS, Google wrote its own version of Java. But in order to allow developers to write their own programs for Android, Google relied on Java’s APIs. (For non-developers out there, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are specifications that allow programs to communicate with each other. So when you read an article online, and click on the icon to share that article via Twitter, for example, you are using a Twitter API that the site’s developer got directly from Twitter.)

Here’s the problem: Treating APIs as copyrightable would have a profound negative impact on interoperability, and, therefore, innovation. APIs are ubiquitous and fundamental to all kinds of program development. It is safe to say that all software developers use APIs to make their software work with other software. For example, the developers of an application like Firefox use APIs to make their application work with various OSes by asking the OS to do things like make network connections, open files, and display windows on the screen. Allowing a party to assert control over APIs means that a party can determine who can make compatible and interoperable software, an idea that is anathema to those who create the software we rely on everyday. Put clearly, the developer of a platform should not be able to control add-on software development for that platform.

Take, for example, a free and open source project like Samba, which runs the shared folders and network drives in millions of organizations. If Samba could be held to have infringed the Microsoft’s copyright in its SMB protocol and API, with which it inter-operates, it could find itself on the hook for astronomical damages or facing an injunction requiring that it stop providing its API and related services, leaving users to fend for themselves.

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Another example is the AOL instant messaging program, which used a proprietary API. AOL tried to prevent people from making alternative IM programs that could speak to AOL’s users. Despite that, others successfully built their own implementations of the API from the client’s side. If copyright had given AOL a weapon to prevent interoperability by its competitors, the outcome for the public would have been unfortunate.

Setting aside the practical consequences, there’s a perfectly good legal reason not to treat APIs as copyrightable material: they are purely functional. The law is already clear that copyright cannot cover programming languages, which are merely mediums for creation (instead, copyright may potentially cover what one creatively writes in that language). Indeed, the European Court of Justice came to just that conclusion last week. (Ironically enough, when Sun Microsystems was an independent company, one of its lawyers wrote amicus briefs arguing that interoperability concerns should limit copyright protection for computer programs.)

Improvidently granting copyright protection to functional APIs would allow companies to dangerously hold up important interoperability functionality that developers and users rely on everyday. Let’s hope the judge agrees.

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