An Australian court just ruled StreetVew was illegal (I can find a link if you’d like). The Europeans are freaked out by . . . just about everything about Google.
Intercepting WiFi data . . . well, I could see an American getting uneasy about that. Though I’m not too sure how much of my traffic is particularly sensitive, unless I found out that they were doing something specific evil with it. They’ve got a lot of my passwords from non-wireless interaction, I guess.
For most Americans, as long as they’re not being made spambots or having their identity stolen, it seems that “data privacy” in general and Google in particular is just . . . eh, not a burning concern. And hey, StreetView brought us Horseboy. Net win.
Why the anomaly of the American attitude vis a vis . . . pretty much anywhere else? Who’s got the right of it?
Oh, you beat me to what should have been in my OP – JUST the same divide. What percentage of Americans would hear “GM” and think of anything other than the car company, and how many supermarket chains would advertise “non-GM” as a selling point in the U.S.? A low single digit percentage on both, I’d guess.
Done and done, says the idiot (me) who read the headline but not the story – it wasn’t a court but an administrative agency, and the headline misled me a bit because, well, it was the WiFi interception aspect of the StreetView project, not the photographing itself, that the agency was P.O.'d about.
But I don’t think I’m wrong that some governments have criticized StreetView as such on privacy grounds (more stories than I thought were conflating the photo privacy issue vs. the WiFi sniffing)
The people? Well, that’s a tougher nut to crack. It’s either because people here don’t care so much about data privacy (could be true) or because people here freak out and scream socialjism whenever there is a government agency tasked to look out for their best interests, so the society has very weak regulatory protections over privacy, and so no one hears about it, so the sheeple don’t know any better.
My point is that you’re asking why Americans are normal, instead of asking why Europeans are crazy (in this specific matter, obviously). Americans aren’t worrying about Google because they have no reason to; it’s the Europeans who are acting illogically in this case.
It’s only that I recognize the fact that Europeans can be as ignorant and hysterical as Americans, just focused on different issues.
I would bet a good part of it is because Google is an American company. The concerns are partly due to the fact that he US doesn’t have a great reputation (in Europe) right now for respecting rights, partly due to fears of American cultural imperialism, and a bit of good old xenophobia. You can bet if Google were a German company, a lot more US citizens would be concerned.
If anything . . . I’m quite willing to entertain the idea that being in a minority of one (this probably isn’t true, I’m sure people could persuade me other societies were equally generally cool with Google and saw little downside) might suggest the U.S. is overlooking or vastly underestimating some serious dangers? Again, I don’t know where I end up on this.
I’m a little clearer on GM food, as that’s closer to a pure science issue (vs. technology plus human nature, which is where mischief would come from, if serious mischief came at all, with Google/data monkeying). I don’t worry a lot about GM at all, though I guess I’ll revisit that from time to time as and when someone more convincing than Prince Charles shows me some science . . . .
If anything, it’s a minority of 300 million. I’m also unclear as to how many European and other countries have a problem with Google - is the phenomenon really continent-wide? I certainly haven’t encountered it here.
Besides, the way the internet works today, complaining about Google is like fish complaining about water.
IMHO, this misses the mark a bit. It’s not just Google, and it’s not just Europe. I think it’s just an attenuation to privacy rights in the US vis-a-vis other countries. Our society primarily operates on the basis that if the right isn’t enshrined in the constitution, it’s not really a right at all. So people here either don’t care because of that (doubtful) or they don’t think that there is anything to do about it except let “the market” regulate the privacy rights (probable) since they don’t know of another way.
Contrast that to Europe (and other places) where you have government offices that can and do take citizen requests for investigation into privacy offenses. It’s not because they see Google as some domineering, American company, playing puppet to the American Imperialist puppeteer - it’s because they see Google as a domineering company who derives much of their economic value from harvesting data that many may feel is private.
This is undoubtedly true, but I would think more from the government perspective, not the people themselves.
Hahaha! The Christian Science Monitor - that well known international news agency which includes as part of the article, “The British comparison shopping site Foundem, the Italian-German shopping guide Ciao, and the French search engine eJustice have all made complaints” - big players in the global market indeed.
Hardly freaking out, but given that there was indeed a news story recently about the unauthorised collection of data from people’s homes in the creation of street-view, for which Google apologised, then it is true that this touches on civil liberties/data protection, which is an important issue in the UK at least (can’t really speak for Europe, as the continent is actually quite a big place with a variety of cultures). In fact, as usual that’s the point - you can’t really talk about attitudes in Europe with any certainty - but by all means feel free to carry on painting with your broad brush.
I wouldn’t say “rest of the world” either - Canadians are arguably the most plugged-in citizens in the world, and I don’t think anyone is particularly disturbed by Google. Our bugaboo is not being allowed to play the songs we buy on our home iPod and our work mp3 player.