Google's Dystopian Crisis Tracking Could Be Straight out of George Orwell's
1984
Google's move is merely the latest in a long line linking big tech companies
ever more closely with the government and the security state.
by Alan Macleod
April 08th, 2020
By Alan Macleod
In the fight against COVID-19 (coronavirus), Google has announced it is
partnering with dozens of governments around the world, sharing its users'
location history, and, in the process, giving us an insight into how much
the Silicon Valley company knows about us.
"As global communities respond to COVID-19, we've heard from public health
officials that the same type of aggregated, anonymized insights we use in
products such as Google Maps could be helpful as they make critical
decisions to combat COVID-19," it wrote, presenting its mountain of
intrusive data collection as a positive. "We hope these reports will help
support decisions about how to manage the COVID-19 pandemic," it added,
suggesting that location data from its users' devices could "help officials
understand changes in essential trips," inform businesses and help local
governments plan and provide more efficient transport services, thus
limiting the deadly virus' spread.
The data it has released, even to the public, is certainly interesting (and
quite worrying). For example, location data gleaned from smartphones shows
that there are now 85 percent fewer trips to grocery or pharmacy stores in
Italy, compared to early February, before the coronavirus struck the
country. Italy went on extensive lockdown, and Google's data shows it.
Retail and recreation visits are down 94 percent, trips to parks are down 90
percent, transit stations 87 percent. The country's infection curve appears
to finally be flattening. In contrast, American retail and recreation visits
are only down 47 percent, grocery and pharmacy visits 22 percent, parks 19
percent and transit stations 51 percent, suggesting American people are not
staying at home nearly enough to dampen the flames of the virus.
Google insists that its new policy will not breach users' privacy, promising
to "adhere to our stringent privacy protocols and protecting people's
privacy. No personally identifiable information," it claims "will be made
available at any point." This has not reassured everybody. MintPress News
spoke to one advertising executive who rolled his eyes at the announcement.
"Your name is only one data point," they said, noting that "The layers and
layers of information you're giving it," like where you live, what your
interests are, and which person's social media accounts you keep frequenting
(your own), make it beyond easy to identify whose data you are looking at.
"It's you whether you like it or not, even if you're name's not attached to
it," they said.
Non-profit civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation
expressed some concern over the news, too. Although they recognized that the
data Google holds could help the fight against COVID-19, they cautioned that
consent should be required before data is used and the process must be
transparent. "Experts will often be working within private companies with
proprietary access to the data. Even if they make all the right choices, the
public needs to be able to review these choices because the companies are
sharing the public's data," they said, calling on Google to release its full
methodology.
Whistleblower and privacy advocate Edward Snowden went further, claiming in
an interview last month, "there's not really any hard evidence that this
does work." "This is not GPS on your phone" they are using, he said,
claiming that, as long as it was not in airplane mode, some data would be
captured whether you consent or not. Technology site The Verge, however,
wrote that the data is gleaned only from users who have already opted into
storing their location history. Thus, if users disable their location
history, this should prevent them from the majority of the tracking.
Technology allows for the monitoring of individuals to better regulate stay
at home orders. However, this opens up new possibilities for authoritarian
regimes. Israelis who violate quarantining are now subject to up to seven
years in prison, and location data could be used against individuals. It
would be something to be sent to jail because your phone ratted on you
talking a walk. Furthermore, given the country's history of racist law
enforcement, the law has the potential for serious abuse.
Google's move is merely the latest in a long line linking big tech companies
ever more closely with the government and the security state. In their book
titled, "The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and
Business," Eric Schmidt and fellow Google executive Jared Cohen wrote, "What
Lockheed Martin was to the twentieth century.technology and cyber-security
companies [like Google] will be to the twenty-first."
In 2018 Facebook announced it was partnering with the Atlantic Council to
help them weed out fake news on its platforms. An offshoot of NATO, the
Council is run by dozens of senior former government officials, including
Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and numerous former
heads of the CIA, including Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta, and Michael
Morell. Since working with the Council, Facebook has moved quickly to
suppress information and views emanating from Washington's enemies,
including the governments of Russia and Venezuela. And when Trump
assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, Facebook banned all messages
of support for the slain statesman, despite the fact that he was popular
with over 80 percent of his countryfolk. Facebook explained the decision,
noting they were not a neutral service provider but an American company that
operates under American laws, and when Trump declares anyone a terrorist,
they will comply.
Although Google's latest use for our data is arguably the only occurrence of
it being used to help humanity rather than relentlessly advertising to it,
it still has worrying ramifications. Snowden warned that new laws infringing
on civil liberties tend to be "sticky," i.e. very hard to get rid of.
Funding both political parties and paid billions by the government and the
security state for military contracts, it is increasingly difficult to see
where big tech companies like Google end and the government begins. Perhaps
Schmidt and Cohen's prophecy was correct.
