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Lea Kissner is back at her alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley, armed with a crisp gray blazer, a slide deck, and a laptop with a 'My Other Car Is A Pynchon Novel' sticker on it. Since graduating in 2002, she's earned a PhD at Carnegie Mellon in cryptography and worked her way up at Google, where she manages user privacy and tries to keep things from breaking. She's here to tell a hall of computer science students how she did it—and also how to create privacy-protective systems at a scale that you won't find outside a handful of massive tech companies.
Source: https://gizmodo.com/meet-the-woman-who-leads-nightwatch-google-s-internal-1825227132
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Meet the Woman Who Leads NightWatch, Google’s Internal Privacy Strike Force
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
When I met th'POPE back in '58, I scrubbed him with a MILD SOAP or
DETERGENT for 15 minutes. He seemed to enjoy it ...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 18 2018, @04:54PM (5 children)
Google, and privacy. Several posts have mocked the idea that Google respects privacy. I chuckled, some of them are funny. And, Google gets further and further away from their old "Don't be evil" motto. They aren't squeaky clean, that's for sure.
But - overall, Google is a helluva lot more privacy conscious than say - Facebook. THAT company puts your ass on the auction block, routinely. And, they aren't too concerned about anonymizing data. Despite their disclaimers, I'm sure that Facebook had a damned good idea what Analytica was up to.
IMO, Google is pretty secure. And, they actually have privacy policies that kinda make sense, with different values of "making sense". Few companies offer policies that make as much sense.
Sure, Google scans your email - but how many of you have had the contents of your email forwarded to third parties? Google does intrusive advertising - but you can "opt out" by blocking their ad servers, if you can't "opt out" any other way. Intrusive - that intrusiveness has it's limits. Google hasn't made any special attempts to bypass my adblockiing! Assuming that they are pretty damned smart, they have to know that millions of us block their advertising. Why aren't they defeating out adblocking? Well - maybe - just maybe - that old "Don't be evil" lingers.
I can't be a Google Phanboi because they piss me off in several different ways. But, putting things in perspective, I don't think they just shit on privacy, like so many others do. They could do a whole helluva lot better, but Facebook proves that Google could do infinitely worse! Remember, the young woman who was targeted for maternity products was targeted by Target - not by Google.
I'll continue to use Google products in the foreseeable future. I trust them, to some extent, now. Of course, my degree of trust is subject to change. If they screw up a couple more times, like when they insisted that I MUST identify myself with a "real" identity, I can be gone.
Oh - that real identity thing. I won that round. You and I both know that if Google were really determined to positively identify their users, they would have won. They are big enough, they have enough clout, they COULD HAVE won. But, I, along with some unknown number of other people, objected, and won. Google still doesn't have my verified, real identity.
Don't get overly comfortable using Google products, because things could go to hell in a handbasket tomorrow. But, at this point in time, there is little reason to be uncomfortable with them.
All of that, despite the fact that they engage in chickenshit social engineering, and social justice warrior nonsense.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday April 18 2018, @07:46PM (2 children)
Ever heard of DoubleClick AdSense or AdMob? Google sells you to the highest bidder, they just have the auction house in house and doesn't sell you to outside ad firms because they bought all of the big ones they could get their paws on and won't help any of the remaining small ones get big by sharing their trove of user data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @08:13PM (1 child)
I think he mentioned this but that your data set is anonymous. Lacks a name to refer.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @04:40AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Re-Identification [wikipedia.org]
It's a thing, obviously.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Wednesday April 18 2018, @08:01PM
As a business, its common sense to actively diversify the companies you depend on as much as you can. A business should take care to avoid too much reliance on a single vendor or supplier; and so too should individuals -- even if they are a great vendor right now. It will go to 'hell in a handbasket' sooner or later; and it will be worse the more dependant you are on them.
I agree with you. I don't think google is toxic the way facebook is. But given how much reach they have, and how much I "have" to use them already; i pretty much always choose 'not google' when i can.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 18 2018, @08:56PM
*dons oven proof hat*
OR they got access to enough data that 99.9% of users are easily identified anyway.
Ok ok, seems more likely that they don't really care about real identity as they can still send ads to your account. Better to have a larger herd than to know every detail about each animal.