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Content Nation: Google's Gmail Privacy
Concerns vs. Visionary Content Value |
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12 April 2004 |
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In danger sometimes we find answers to our problems in
places that we would least expect to find safety. The
controversial terms
and conditions of use associated with Google's new Beta
Gmail
email service seem to be very threatening to many concerned
about the privacy of personal content. But in a world in
which dangerous and noxious emails turn up in even
corporate inboxes with alarming regularity, what's wrong
with trying to control the context of personal content?
Gmail may be just the experiment we need to design a strong
content nation that can both protect and serve its
citizenry. |
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The wave of
furor raised by privacy advocates regarding Google's
barely-out-of-the-box Beta of
Gmail is
almost deafening in its breadth and resolve. News wires,
weblogs and governments are heaving up a united chorus against
its concept and its
terms and conditions of use. There are two major factors
that have people up in arms. First, Gmail is scanning incoming
and outcoming emails for information that can help to place
contextual ads alongside incoming mails, a capability that may
also feed Google's understanding of Web links and topics that
people find to be important. Secondly, Gmail terms and
conditions allow for (but do not require) the surrendering of
personal emails to governmental authorities conducting
investigations and for the storage of Gmail in whatever country
Google chooses for hosting. The fact that the Ts&Cs may be
modified at any time seems to exacerbate the issues in some
minds, though this is a fairly common practice for new and
innovative services that are breaking new ground.
There are some legitimate concerns being
raised, as some of the initial legal language is in need of
redesign. Google is great at serving people with technology,
but still learning how to talk with them. But from a cooler
perspective it's worth noting that Google is trying to address
major deficiencies in how email is perceived and managed as
content. The most common argument on the wires today is that
Google proposes to step over the line of being a "common
carrier" for personal email as styled by telecommunications
law, as opposed to providing a content service at a
telecommunications destination. So they may. But perhaps
that's the point: telecommunications law is out of date and has
done a woeful job of protecting people from the true enemies of
privacy.
The
U.S. CAN-SPAM Act has done virtually nothing to stem the
tide of noxious and dangerous content making its way into
inboxes. Concerns about government surveillance of emails are
hardly unwarranted (as if this doesn't happen anyway), but in a
time when
my spam filter's inbox feels more like a dirty public restroom than the vestibule of my private domain awaiting
valued content guests, the government is hardly at the top of
my concerns. Many of these emails come through pretending to be
from me or known associates or with viruses intent on stealing
personal information from me, furthering the abuse of my
personal identity. Email as currently designed is one of the
least private forms of personal communication ever invented.
In the meantime, millions of people worldwide have their
emails scanned and filtered by their employing organizations,
many of which have a huge stake under corporate compliance
regulations to be held accountable for every piece of content
that passes through their jurisdiction. While corporate "big
brothers" have instigated some of this monitoring, most of the
requirements come from those entrusted to protect the public
good from corporate malfeasance. In the process of putting
systems in place to manage corporate content such as emails far
more effectively, corporations have already started to discover
what Google is trying to bring to light: that when email is
treated as content that's an integral part of a knowledge base,
huge value is placed at the disposal of both organizations and
individuals.
The real upshot of Gmail is twofold. First, it recognizes
that governments are largely ineffective at protecting email
from the very real privacy concerns that individuals have in a
world in which there are many supra-governmental threats. Spam
and viruses are electronic terrorism, agents in a highly
networked world in which individuals can no longer rely on the
protection of governments for either personal privacy or
personal security. In response to this terrorism, Google says
to people: you have a choice. You can play it the government's
way, which isn't working, or you can play by the rules of our
corporation, which will try to protect you as well as any
powerful corporation would protect its own interests. In
exchange for this protection, Google offers the second part of
its bargain: membership in an elite electronic society, in
which the machine acts as a benevolent and neutral agent to
help people understand what everyone is thinking and
considering important at any given point in time. In other
words, with Gmail you gain entry into a corporation-sponsored
content nation that may empower individuals and institutions
with a far wider and more powerful knowledge base than any
single corporation could muster otherwise (see our
earlier weblog).
Seeing the birth of this content nation-state in the hands
of a corporation is very unnerving to many. "You've been living
in a dream world, Neo," the character Morpheus opines in the
movie
The Matrix as he reveals to the captive freed from a
future world dominated by less-than-benevolent machines the
mythical existence in which the machines had coddled him.
Confronting the reality of the threats to one's freedoms can be
very jarring. But it's the coddling that's the real danger, the
choices made for us to which we accede all too easily. Privacy
advocates and governments are finding an easy target in
Google's corporate interests even as they fail on so many other
levels to provide individuals with the true personal privacy
and security that's needed for a sane and safe content nation.
For those who find it hard to imagine that a corporation
could give birth to a fair and global content nation, please
remember that many of the first settlers of New England and
other parts of North America -
Plymouth
included - were under the auspices of corporations, also. Some
of those experiments turned out pretty well. Google's
sponsorship of a new way to approach content security and
content value via Gmail may be just the incubator that the
world of content needs to establish a new regimen of how to
protect personal content value fairly while providing extremely
powerful new levers into communal content value. It may fail,
it may stumble, and if it does, so be it. Nobody has to get on
the boat to the "new world", after all. In the meantime, a
world is struggling to find the right answers for personal
content security in vain. For now, here's to the colony.
-
John Blossom
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