FTC Worries About Consumers, Cloud Data, and Privacy

This is real, and not enough people are paying attention.  Add to the passage below Google’s DNS service and their desktop apps and browser control, then all the information spilling out onto Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook (Facebook being in direct competition for control with Google) and one begins to see the inevitable.

Science Fiction has long prided itself on warning of “big brother’s” impending arrival and how the Government would create the all-seeing, all-knowing surveillance system that would enslave us all, and yet it has not only failed to predict that we would be willing participants in building it, but that the very Science Fiction fans it catered to would be at the forefront of this participation.

We’re giving away our privacy and our freedom, one “free convenience” at a time.

From Slashdot:

“Ars Techina has a nice article about the FTC’s concern that consumers don’t understand the implications of storing their data in the cloud. From the article: ‘Data is now sitting on servers outside of your control, where it can be accessed far more easily by Google itself, hackers, and law enforcement than it ever could if kept within the device. Once data passes over the network, it gets much easier to access in realtime; once it is stored on a remote server, it gets much easier to access at any time. And those are just the phone settings. Google also has access to search history data, anything stored in Google Docs or Spreadsheets, complete schedules stored in Google Calendar, and recent Maps searches. Combine them all, and companies like Google become one-stop shops for authorities looking for personal information.’ Do you think the average consumer even has a clue about this issue?”