Comments on: Our Google Government

By: Ambuj Saxena

Ambuj Saxena — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 18:10:10 +0000

1) Do you lose sleep over the fact that the US government has thousands of well-publicized bilateral treaties with China, and can hand over your data to them?
2) Do you lose sleep over the fact that smaller firms with insufficient resources to manage security leaves your data far more vulnerable to hackers?
3) Do you have any reasons to believe that NSA or DHS or any other division related to national security have “Gone Google” with “Most Confidential Data”?
4) Give example of one such State Government Data which will be of any use to China?
5) Have you ever heard of the words “Government Contractor”? Do you have any reasons to believe that Google is the first for-profit company that government has handed over public data?
6) Do you really believe that there are no safeguards to prevent accidental (or even deliberate) data mining of such data by Google?
7) “When you reach a point where the government cannot operate without a private company, then the private company has effectively gained control of the government.” Please elaborate on the origin of word “cannot”? Do you really believe that the argument holds by rules of logical deduction?
How would Google being forced to part away state government data to federal government any different from any non-Google company?

PS: Please avoid underlining words that are not hyperlinks.

By: Thor

Thor — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:27:53 +0000

I think many of you are missing the point of this article. You do that by thinking this is a technical issue. This is not at technocal issue allthough Google apps are a great product/service.

Like pointed out above. Putting all your eggs in one basket is high-risk and downright stupid. No matter how technically sound it may seem. This is especially true for business critical data like government information.
The risk of loosing control of this critical data can easily outweigh the technical/cost benefits. Decisions like these should be analyzed by all stakeholders before moving the critical mass over to commercial and centralized data center of any kind.

By: uk visa

uk visa — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 10:39:45 +0000

Sherri, from a UK perspective I trust Google above Gordon Brown and his imbeciles…
Why is Google better than Gordon Brown’s government:
Google have more PHDs on one floor than there are in the whole of Gordon Brown’s government.
Google is staffed by professionals, Gordon Brown favours amateurs.
Google has a history of success, Gordon Brown doesn’t.
Google is fiscally astute, Gordon Brown isn’t.

By: hunt

hunt — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 07:43:24 +0000

Federal Reserve Bank is a Private Organization too.

By: philosecurity » Blog Archive » Governments and Your Personal Data

philosecurity » Blog Archive » Governments and Your Personal Data — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 05:57:04 +0000

[...] Our Google Government [...]

By: Metacrawl Diaz

Metacrawl Diaz — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 07:04:57 +0000

I agree with the people on here that say lets hate on google when we dont other companies who do the same. But its still a scary thought to think about one company having so much power. I agree with jan about having the freedom to be able to use google as a service for this, but what next?

By: Jan

Jan — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 22:32:55 +0000

Better that anything be controlled by Google than by some hosting company chosen by a politician (or a maniacal president like George Bush) because of some favor owed…

By: Rob Szarka

Rob Szarka — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 23:09:51 +0000

In my list of things to worry about, handing over control of our elections to companies like Diebold (or whatever they’re calling themselves now) is a lot higher than worrying about outsourcing email to Google. And I’m not really worried about Google mining the data. But if state governments aren’t encrypting sensitive data before it leaves their control, or if the data on Google’s servers *is* the public record rather than simply a backup or a convenient copy, then we ought to be asking whether the security risks are worth the exposure.

By: Anthony Cochetti

Anthony Cochetti — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:23:21 +0000

I think what Luigi said bears repeating. These government agencies are using Google Apps, which means they are using services like GMail and Google Docs to manage communication through email (and we don’t know what communication but it’s more likely to be low-risk where sensitive data is not involved) and to manage document creation and distribution (again, we don’t know what these documents are). I don’t see why this is cause for immediately jumping to the paranoid conclusion that this means Google has “all of our public data”. For one thing “public data” is a meaningless phrase. I have no idea what you mean by that. Let’s just assume it means something like “tax records”, and in that case are you able to demonstrate that this is in fact the type of data being handed over? Can you demonstrate how this data is stored (if it’s even being stored in computers, considering how slow corporations much less government agencies are to change how they manipulate data) and if this method is at all compatible with a quick transfer off to Google’s servers?

Is there any information at all which describes what kind of data is being stored by Google besides what I provided above which can only leave us to conclude it’s simple stuff like email and documents and not sensitive “public data”? You can certainly try to argue that they’re sending sensitive emails or composing sensitive documents but I think it’s unlikely especially when there’s no evidence. I think it’s worth noting that even a place as remote and unassociated with technology as Alaska has policies in place that seek to prevent its paid employees from using private email for official purposes (you may remember the fiasco with Sarah Palin and how she used her private email for government work, something that did not go down well with those in her government). Despite many people’s views government agencies are not inherently stupid, they are capable of exhibiting discretion. Additionally, not everything a government agency creates in day-to-day operation is sensitive.

It’s worth looking into, and then making conclusions, not the other way around.

By: lux

lux — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 18:33:27 +0000

If you look at the recent Twitter corporate data hack, all it took was one compromised Google Apps login to ferret out a huge amount of highly sensitive corporate data.

If even a technically savvy company like Twitter can be breached so easily, how long will it be until one or more government Google Apps accounts are hacked? All it takes is one fool with an easy to guess password.

By: fjpoblam

fjpoblam — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 16:23:44 +0000

The answer is a govt takeover of GOOG

By: JimT

JimT — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 16:05:43 +0000

Is Google becoming too big to fail?

What happens to all the government records, email, etc. if or when Google goes bankrupt? There have been very few, if any corporations that have survived “forever”.

By: Luigi Montanez

Luigi Montanez — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 12:47:22 +0000

If state governments are using Google Apps, that means they’re using Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Groups (or some combination thereof). So they’re essentially replacing Microsoft Office products with Google products.

So we shouldn’t assume that they’re storing “our public data” on Google’s servers, because we don’t know exactly how Google Apps are being used.

However, we as citizens have the full right to know exactly what IT infrastructure our governments use, and that should be fully disclosed by the states after we demand it from them (it’s not Google’s job to disclose that)…

By: Kenny

Kenny — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 12:42:49 +0000

Do you agree that 60% go to a company with good technology is better than 60% go to 100 of unknown company?
Which do you think easier to control sensitive data and do you think Google take the risk to ruin itself?

By: Nik

Nik — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 11:11:38 +0000

@ #8, Peter said:
——————————————————-
To be absolutely honest, they are even scarier than I thought. Is there anything in the TOS that stops them from using whatever data they collect through government sources to other ends (such as to target ads)?
——————————————————-

Even if it’s not in their TOS, it would be illegal for them to do so.
Even if in their TOS there was the contrary, ie that they have the right to use those informations for any purpose they see fit, and even if a government was insane enough to sign this, it would still be illegal under current law.

The question is not whether or not they have the legal right to use these information (they categorimatelly don’t, under any circumstances), but whether or not they have the technical way to do so without being caught (to which the answer is that they potentially could).

By: Jakub

Jakub — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 10:55:15 +0000

Maybe the real problem is that US government holds SO MUCH data about it’s own citizens …

By: Rob G.

Rob G. — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 08:04:14 +0000

I love Google. I of course do not authorize anyone to keep records on me. I appreciate the quality search Google provides. That records about people and their personal information such as address, phone etc. is available to anyone is wrong. The truth is we the people must stop big brother from getting bigger. No one asked me if I supported Camera’s all over. I don’t. It starts small and grows (facism that greedy large corporations cause). Fake a 911 here as an excuse to steal money and power and expand forever the military and their advanced weaponry does not make me feel safer. (Because it could be used against us (the citizens) if it falls in the wrong hands.)

By: Kuan

Kuan — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 07:19:23 +0000

I trust Google more than incompetent government I.T. departments, which is what it boils down to. They are probably a lot cheaper and more efficient. While I’m not keen on one company holding all that data, it should be a lot easier to secure one point of access than a massive mess that are government websites.

Besides that, do you even know what they are storing in the cloud? It could be totally harmless info.

By: James

James — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 06:18:41 +0000

Look people, putting all your eggs in one basket is a mistake. Trusting all your data to one company’s data centers is a mistake. It’s a mistake that you can pay greatly for if something goes wrong with those data centers. Each state should have its data located in its state within buildings it owns, on infrastructure that it owns. I don’t really care if Google were a vendor, but centralizing everything creates a major point of failure… Even if the data is in multiple places within a single infrastructure it’s still a bad idea.

By: Philipp Lenssen

Philipp Lenssen — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 05:04:38 +0000

“3rd party firms have always played a primary role in government IT – so now they use Google instead of Microsoft?”

I think there’s a potentially crucial difference here: when they use Microsoft software, and they make sure to control or block their outgoing network stream, then they are apparently not at risk from data sharing/ spying. With Google, the data is hosted within Google, not within the government anymore.