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What Do Google and Facebook Have on You?

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By Dr. Mercola

Google and Facebook are two of the largest and clearest monopolies in the world, and between them, the harvesting of your personal information goes far beyond what most people realize was even possible.

I have recently removed Google Search from this website and replaced with a search engine without the privacy concerns, but has similar capabilities.   The search bar at the top of the website is the most used and essential feature for you to research the many thousands of pages I’ve published over the last 20 years.

Google catches every single thing you do online if you’re using a Google-based feature, and Facebook has a record of everything you’ve ever said or “liked.” All of this data is being used to build very powerful personality profiles that are sold for profit and used in a variety of different ways. As previously reported by Gawker:1

“Every word of every email sent through Gmail and every click made on a Chrome browser is watched by the company. ‘We don’t need you to type at all,’ [Google co-founder Eric] Schmidt once said. ‘We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.’”

Facebook Sells Your User Data, and It Can Be Used Against You

Google’s data harvesting is particularly concerning in light of its military connections,16 and the fact the company has repeatedly been caught infringing on privacy rights and misrepresenting the type and amount of data it collects and shares on its users. Make no mistake about it: Capturing user data is Google’s primary business.17 The fact that it provides practical services while doing so only serves as a convenient distraction from the fact that privacy violations are taking place.

Earlier this month, more than 3,100 Google employees signed a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai, urging him not to go ahead with plans to provide AI technology to the Pentagon’s drone program, known as Project Maven. As reported by Fox News,18 “Google’s AI contribution could … improve the system’s ability [to] analyze video and potentially be used to identify targets and civilians.” The letter also urges Pichai to establish a corporate policy that disallows it from participating in “warfare technology.”

Email correspondence obtained via freedom of information act requests also reveal Google has maintained an intimate relationship with the National Security Agency (NSA) for a number of years. In 2014, Al Jazeera19 published correspondence between NSA director general Keith Alexander and Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt. At the time, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden had gone public about the NSA’s ability to spy on civilians.

In a 60 Minutes special, NSA cyberdefense chief Debora Plunkett claimed the agency had thwarted a plot by the Chinese to capitalize on a technical vulnerability in the basic input/output system (BIOS) of computers sold to the U.S. System BIOS refers to the firmware that initializes hardware activation when you start up your computer, and provides runtime services for the operating system and various programs. Plunkett claimed the NSA worked with computer manufacturers to fix the vulnerability.

However, according to Al Jazeera, the NSA did “exactly what Plunkett accused a nation-state of doing during her interview,” namely inserting back doors into BIOS, thereby gaining access to the raw data of any given computer. According to a 2013 article by Spiegel Online, an internal NSA catalog reveals the agency in fact has back door access for a number of different end-user devices.20

The Making of an Orwellian State

Some experts believe the plan to combine Alphabet-Google’s data harvesting with a military 5G network is a very bad idea. “What could possibly go wrong with a nationalized, dual-use, military-civilian, secure 5G wireless network to centralize all military and civilian U.S. transportation traffic control and management with Alphabet-Google as the only commercial wireless ISP ‘financing/anchor tenant?’ Way too much,” Scott Cleland, former White House deputy coordinator for international communications and information policy, writes on his blog.21

“… National Security Council Staff apparently have a network vision for a secure 5G wireless network for the U.S. military, that is ultimately capable of C3I (command, control, communications, and intelligence) of the ‘total situational-awareness,’ necessary for the 21st century, ‘Internet of the Battlefield’ of integrated, autonomous warfare of vehicles, drones and robots …

Who could compete with a new government-sanctioned, Alphabet-Google, ‘information transportation superhighway’ monopoly? Who’s going to watch these watchers? And what are the incorruptible proposed checks and balances to prevent the near absolute power of a ‘Google-GoverNet’ from becoming a modern Orwellian Big Brother Inc.? …

Consumer networks are the primary security vulnerability for national security networks. Alphabet-Google has well-documented hostility to cybersecurity, privacy, and accountability to government. Comingling Google’s unmatched civilian surveillance database with military C3I artificial intelligence capabilities on the same network is a recipe for abuse of power … And Alphabet-Google warrants antitrust scrutiny and prosecution, not antitrust absolution.”

Protect Your Privacy by Avoiding Google and Facebook

Indeed, Alphabet, the rebranded parent company of Google and its many divisions, has turned into an octopus-like super entity with tentacles reaching into government, food production, health care, education, military applications and the creation of AIs that may run more or less independently. A key component of many of these enterprises is incredibly detailed personal usage data.

Ultimately, your user data and personal details can be used for everything from creating personalized advertising to AI-equipped robotic warfare applications. As noted in previous articles, Google’s involvement in education and health care also has far-reaching ramifications, and in these settings your personal data could potentially be used to influence not only your personal lifestyle decisions but also to shape society at large.

Today, being a conscious consumer includes making wise, informed decisions about technology, and two of the greatest personal data leaks in your life are Google and Facebook. Here’s a summary of action steps you can take right now, starting today, to protect your privacy. For more information, see Goopocalypse.com’s boycott Google page.

1.Sign the “Don’t be evil” petition aimed at Google, created by Citizens Against Monopoly

2.Avoid any and all Google products:

a.Stop using Google search engines. So far, one of the best alternatives I’ve found is DuckDuckGo22

a.Uninstall Google Chrome and use the Opera browser instead, available for all computers and mobile devices.23 From a security perspective, Opera is far superior to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to further preserve your privacy

b.If you have a Gmail account, close it and open an account with a non-Google affiliated email service such as ProtonMail,24 and encrypted email service based in Switzerland

c.Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives25

d.If you’re a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts

3.Minimize your use of Facebook, and be mindful of what you post, click, and comment on while there

Sources and References

The post What Do Google and Facebook Have on You? appeared first on LewRockwell.

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