Google Is Quietly Recording Everything You Do ...
| Quote from Justice Louis D. Brandeis | |
"[The founding fathers] conferred, as against the Government,
the right to be left alone -- the right most valued by civilized men."
Even
though this may not come as a surprise to most of you, it is still
something that is happening all around us, all the time, and right under
our noses: Google is quietly recording everything we do, from
conversations we have over the phone and texts to videos we send and
create over webcams and camera phones. As if that weren’t enough, they
are even tracking our movements and logging every place we visit.
The question then becomes, is this
something innocent civilians need to be concerned about? Many people
argue that since they have nothing to hide, being surveilled in this way
doesn’t bother them. But regardless of whether we ‘deserve’ to be
watched or not, isn’t this also a HUGE invasion of privacy?
Or is this simply part of the
bargain when we willingly put our personal information, photos, and
conversations online via social media?
The fact of the matter is that Google
has a record of all of this, so you could theoretically listen to
conversations you had years ago. Weird. If you knew that this had been
happening while it was happening, would you still have been fine with
it? If you had been given a choice to have these things recorded or not,
what would you have chosen?
This raises obvious and disturbing parallels to the thought police in George Orwell’s classic 1989. At
what point do we decide that enough is enough and demand our privacy?
To do so, would it mean giving up our precious smartphones, which have
become completely engrained into who we are and how we experience each
other and the world around us? How much do we value privacy? Or is it a
value?
As Snowden has said, “Arguing that you
don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide
is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you
have nothing to say.”
It’s a valid point. He is responsible
for exposing a lot of digital privacy information to U.S. citizens, and
if it weren’t for him, many of us wouldn’t even know that the NSA was
literally recording our every move, including things we were led to
believe were private. Intimate conversations with loved ones, personal
discussions with family members, silly jokes that could potentially be
taken out of context — anything you say that is technically against the
U.S. government could see you labelled as a terrorist, according to the
Patriot Act.
Keep in mind that Google specifically
claims this information is never used against you, but merely recorded
for your best interest and to enhance your online experience. This begs
the question, why not give us the option? If this is solely for our
benefit, why not promote this feature and have users sign up for the
specific functions they want and leave those they don’t? Yes this is
public information, but how many people really know about it and how to
access it? Having this information technically available to the public
but not realistically accessible or publicized is much like hiding in
plain sight.
Google now processes, on average, over
40,000 search inquiries every second, which translates to 0ver 3.5
billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year, worldwide.
The data collected from these searches is stored for each individual who
conducted them. You can find out a lot about a person from their search
history. Through analyzing this data, companies can then steer the
results in a particular direction and the entity that is the internet
could effectively influence the world. More specifically, Google could
predict the future based on trends.
This information is often tied directly
to location data retrieved from the device being used. This means that
not only does the search engine know what your interests are, but also
how they manifest and relate to where you are at any given moment. To
some, perhaps many, this could be a good thing. Having your phone pop up
and tell you about all the cool things that are in close proximity to
where you are based on your accumulated interests at any given moment
could be useful.
Let’s not forget Google’s motto: “Don’t
Be Evil.” Of course, this could be a great way of simply being ‘not
evil.’ But as to whether or not they are using this accumulated
information for their best interest at the cost of your privacy is up to
you, and luckily, you do have the option to turn all of this tracking
and recording off.
If you would like to turn off this tracking, please check out the following steps provided by the Free Thought Project:
- You can start this eye-opening journey by heading to Google’s history page and looking at the long list of recordings. The company has a specific audio page as well as their record of where you’ve been on the internet.
- If you’ve never disabled the feature, you will see a list of audio recordings, even some done outside of the Google app, as well as a transcript of the audio Google has converted to text.
- What we recommend is after scrolling through Google’s recordings of your search history, delete them all and disable the functions.
- To delete particular files, you can click the check box on the left and then move back to the top of the page and select “delete”. To get rid of everything, you can press the “More” button, select “Delete options” and then “Advanced” and click through.
- The easiest way to stop Google recording everything is to turn off the virtual assistant and never to use voice search. But that solution also gets at the central problem of much privacy and data use today – doing so cuts off one of the most useful things about having an Android phone or using Google search.
*Please note, just because you turn off
this tracking and recording feature on Google does not mean that you
won’t continue to be tracked, recorded, and followed. The safest way to
avoid this is to leave your smartphone at home from time to time, and
cover your camera and mic on your webcam, computer, and smartphone. It
is important to note that many Smart TVs also have these recording
functions for audio and video, so if you are concerned about your
privacy, be sure to unplug them when not in use.
Much Love
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