Homeland Security gets secret access to Google Goggles
December 15th, 2009Imagine this future headline:
“Google Goggles is not to go public, but instead will be partitioned off for the exclusive use of Homeland Security.”
Think about it; how could Google say ‘no’ to Homeland Security or the NSA if they ask them to provide this service to them? And what about Facebook or any other social networking service that allows you to tag photos of people?
Do you REALLY imagine that these companies are going to say ‘no’?
Remember what happened with the telecoms industry and the requests for bulk back door access to all comms data? The only company that said ‘no’ found its CEO Joseph Nacchioimmediately charged with ‘crimes’; the only honest company that respected the privacy of its users found itself in very hot water for not obeying the immoral and illegal orders of the NSA.
This my friends:
is the face of a true hero.
I guarantee you that Google Goggles, or something like it will be provided to the NSA or Homeland Security without any hesitation or a word of its existence being uttered to the public.
The people who run these companies are scared shitless of the Federal Government; they know what happened to Joseph Nacchio, and they do not want that to happen to them.
In case you have no idea what this is about:
Privacy concerns have forced Google to delay an expansion of its Goggles service which would have enabled camera-phone users to identify strangers on the street.
The experimental Google Goggles application, which was launched last week, allows smart-phone users to search for subjects simply by snapping a picture of them.
Users can focus their phone’s camera on an object and Google will try to match portions of the picture with the tens of millions of images in its database.
But privacy campaigners have raised fears over the ‘ facial recognition’ potential of the service, which would allow users to track strangers through a photograph.
Google, which has confirmed the technology is available but has yet to decide if it will be rolled-out as part of Goggles, has now confirmed that it is blocking aspects of the application until privacy implications have been fully explored.
Google spokesman Anthony House said: ‘We do have the relevant facial recognition technology at our disposal. For instance with our Picasa picture service a user can tag a friend in their photo album and it will search for and tag any other pictures of that person.
‘But we haven’t implemented this on Google Goggles because we want to consider the privacy implications and how this feature might be added responsibly.
‘So if someone uploads a picture of a stranger on Goggles there is no process to identify them and the search will come up with “no matches found.”
‘We will have talks with privacy advocates and consumers before we consider any changes – it may be people want such a service, but we don’t have a rigid timescale on when any decisions will be made.’
[…]
The only way you can protect yourself from Google Goggles or Facebook Goggles or the other apps that will make use of social networking sites and tagging is to not only delete your Facebook account, but to get everyone you know to delete theirs also.
It appears that everyone has built the ultimate surveillance system with their own hands; all the spooks had to do is sit back and watch it happen and then infiltrate or blackmail the companies that own the networks.
Brilliant!
As usual, BLOGDIAL suggests that you do not take a pessimistic view of these matters.