Google's Top Execs Are Saying the Opposite Things About Internet Privacy

Last week, Google’s chief internet evangelist Vint Cerf and its executive chairman Eric Schmidt each publicly discussed internet privacy. Cerf, one of the chief architects of the Internet itself, said "privacy may actually be an anomaly” at a Federal Trade Commission event. Schmidt took a quite different approach in a speech at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. “The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything,” he said. Meanwhile, Google continues to mine its users’ data on a massive, unprecedented scale.

Yes, taking shots at Google over its data mining enterprises might be an exercise in picking low-hanging fruit. Yet Google has at least attempted to live up to its “Don’t be evil” motto; or, worse, convinced users that it has.

Qualifying his privacy-as-anomaly theory, Cerf credited the industrial revolution and growth of urban centers for creating a “sense of anonymity.” Privacy, he argued, was essentially non-existent. “In a town of 3,000 people there is no privacy,” said Cerf. “Everybody knows what everybody is doing.”

Cerf also explained that when he lived in a small town several decades ago, the postmaster saw all mail going in and out of the town. That is, all senders and recipients. An interesting analog to NSA snooping, but Cerf doesn’t reckon with the sheer logistics of small town postmasters logging and storing all mail data. Nor does he mention the postmaster’s inability to easily scan such records to establish patterns that would be of interest to government. And perhaps most importantly, postmasters legally could not open the mail, offering the town’s citizens a modicum of privacy. The NSA, on the other hand, can peep email messages without users ever being the wiser.

Having come from a small town of 1,500 myself, I would also argue that Cerf is fundamentally wrong about their poor quality of privacy. Sure, there is some truth that small town residents have a sort of invasive awareness of the town’s goings-on, but New York’s circles of wealthy elite also exhibit this type of social behavior. Hell, everybody does, to a degree. Despite what Cerf believes, privacy does exist in small towns. Secrets abound.

Cerf, to his credit, wants internet privacy, though he thinks "it will be increasingly difficult for us to achieve”. While his historical and social observations on privacy are worth consideration, his comments might have the effect of conditioning people into acceptance of corporate and state surveillance. This “we’ve never had privacy, so don’t be too upset” line of thought is already widespread and toxic enough that Cerf shouldn’t add weight to it. It implies that human progress is static—that it cannot be altered to ensure maximum freedom for every individual.

On the other hand, Schmidt’s words, if true, are far more optimistic and surprisingly antagonistic. “We have strengthened our systems remarkably as a result of the most recent events,” Schmidt said in his speech. “It’s reasonable to expect that the industry as a whole will continue to strengthen these systems.”

Is it really reasonable to expect stronger encryption across the board from big tech? A cynic might argue that Google’s move toward greater user privacy through encryption seems more like tactical PR meant to counteract bad post-NSA-leaks press. The cynic would also observe that Google, seeing potentially high losses to global revenue, has no other choice but to make pro-privacy statements.

Perhaps Google has the ideological and financial marbles to fight government on surveillance. Still, assuming they can win and keep the NSA out, users will continue handing over their private data to Google.

So, with Google’s checkered past with user privacy, the only thing we ought to say to Schmidt and Cerf is “Show, don’t tell”. If enhancing privacy is a worthy goal, then a good start would be giving Google users complete control over their private data. Otherwise, Schmidt and Cerf are simply hedging to please both customers and government. Which, of course, is the sad refrain pulsating through the Internet age.