Google - such a lovely corporation

[David Guyatt]

googly (ˈɡuːɡlɪ)n, pl -lies1. (Cricket) cricket an off break bowled with a leg break action

[C20: Australian, of unknown origin]

**

google (ˈɡooːɡlɪ)n, pl -lies1. (Not Cricket) a criminal [sic?] corporation that spies on citizens to gain power and wealth

[C20: United States, thought to be of criminal origin?]

Google to be tried in the UK: High Court upholds British claimants' 'secret tracking' case






The search giant had originally claimed that it should be tried in the US

JAMES VINCENT

Thursday 16 January 2014

The High Court has ruled that a group of British users suing Google for breaking privacy laws can do so in the UK.

The search giant had asked in December that the trial be heard in the US, but the High Court has ruled this Thursday that the claimants have "clearly established" that the UK courts are the "appropriate jurisdiction" for the claims.
Google now faces a group action lawsuit by users of Apple's Safari browser. The claimants, called Safari Users Against Google' Secret Tracking, allege that the search giant tracked their browsing history online without their knowledge and breached the 1998 Data Protection Act.
"I am satisfied that there is a serious issue to be tried in each of the claimant's claims for misuse of private information," said Justice Tugendhat.
"The issues of English law raised by Google Inc are complicated ones,and […] it would be better for all parties that the issues of English law be resolved by an English court."
The lawsuit is significant as it could set a precedent for how UK customers can litigate against internet companies based in the US.
Google has promised to fight against the decision with a spokesperson saying: "A case almost identical to this one was dismissed in its entirety three months ago in the US. We still don't think that this case meets the standards required in the UK for it to go to trial, and we'll be appealing today's ruling."
The case in question was brought in Delaware but was struck down after it was ruled that plaintiff could not prove that he had been harmed by a loss of money or property. The British claimants, however, have a stronger case due to the UK's Data Protection Act.
The group of more than 100 claimants allege that Google tracked the websites they visited between the summer of 2011 and spring 2012. This information was then "aggregated and sold to advertisers who used its DoubleClick advertising service."
Justice Tugenhadt noted that the search giant's defence - that the data collection was not private information as it was anonymous - was not legitimate: "[Google] would not collect and collate information unless doing so enabled it to produce something of value," said Tugenhadt.
Allegations of this kind have been a problem for Google in the past, with the search giant paying out a record $22.5 million (£13.8m) in the US in August 2012 after being found guilty of circumventing in-browser security to track users.
When the British case was first made, Judith Vidal-Hall, one of the claimants and a former editor of Index On Censorship, described Google's approach as "arrogant, immoral and a disgrace":
"If consumers are based in the UK and English laws are abused, the perpetrator must be held to account here, not in a jurisdiction that might suit them better," said Mrs Vidal-Hall.

Hmm. I wonder why it wanted to be tried in the US? Does it think it can manipulate the legal system in its favour perhaps?

[Albert Doyle]

Because of the great individual rights the US upkeeps as a principle.

[Marlene Zenker]

Think of the data Google will start acquiring with their acquisition of NEST. Now they will be able to determine things like the temperature of your house and oh yeah, whether you're home or not and other habits that they can discern from the thermostat and who the hell knows what they'll stick in Nest's smoke alarm. Then I say to myself "well, this isn't even on the same platform with the NSA..." we are so screwed.

[Magda Hassan]

San Francisco's guerrilla protest at Google buses swells into revolt

Campaign against tech giant pricing ordinary citizens out of the housing market becomes increasingly disruptive and forces city to act

• Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
  
  
• The Observer, Sunday 26 January 2014 06.56 AEST
  

Protesters have disrupted Google employees' journeys to work. Photograph: Steve Rhodes/ Steve Rhodes/Demotix/Corbis

Google's corporate mantra may be to do no evil, but to a determined band of activists in San Francisco the company could just be the devil incarnate.
Corporate buses that Google and other tech companies lay on to ferry their workers from the city to Silicon Valley, 30 or 40 miles to the south, are being targeted by an increasingly assertive guerrilla campaign of disruption. Over the last two months, a groundswell of discontent over the privatisation of the Bay Area's transport system has erupted into open revolt.
Well organised protesters have blocked buses, unfurled banners and distributed flyers to tech commuters who have seemed either nonplussed, embarrassed or downright terrified. And this could be just the beginning.
"We're in the planning process for the next protest," one of the organisers, Erin McElroy, told the Observer. "We're trying to stay creative with each one, not just repeat over and over."
Just before Christmas, a window was smashed on a Google bus in Oakland, across the San Francisco Bay. Last week, protesters doorstepped a Google engineer who they claimed was involved in working with the government to develop eavesdropping techniques and "war robots" for the military. "Anthony Levandowski is building an unconscionable world of surveillance, control and automation," they wrote on flyers left near his house. "He is also your neighbour."
Corporate security guards have started to make a discreet appearance as the protests escalate. The core grievance is one keenly felt by almost everyone in San Francisco: the way the tech sector has pushed up housing prices in the city and made it all but unaffordable for anyone without a six-figure salary. Almost no San Francisco police officers live in the city any more, and neither do most restaurant workers or healthcare workers. The funky, family-owned shops that once defined the city are closing because owners cannot afford the business rent, never mind the rent on their housing.
The activists claim that the so-called "Google buses" are exacerbating the problem, because they are making it easier for tech workers who might otherwise live closer to their offices to live in San Francisco instead.
In a metropolitan area known for its flamboyant political theatre, its anarchist streak and a tendency for liberals to turn on each other as much as their political enemies, the point has not always been made with the greatest subtlety.
"You are not innocent victims," one flyer directed at tech workers said. "You live your comfortable lives surrounded by poverty, homelessness and death, seemingly oblivious to everything around you, lost in the big bucks and success."
Already, splits are appearing in the protest movement. McElroy is part of a campaign championing affordable housing and fighting against a sharp rise in evictions. She does not condone the window-breaking, the attack on Levandowski, or the aggressive flyers. She also said she wanted the tech workers themselves to join the protests. That was in contrast to an anarchist commentator, The Counterforce, who wrote: "All of Google's employees should be prevented from getting to work."
Still, the protests have the attention of the city authorities. The public transport agency, which had previously allowed the Silicon Valley firms to operate their buses free of charge, agreed last week to introduce a tariff for use of city streets and city bus stops. It was, however, a notably modest tariff: just $1 per bus per bus stop. City officials said their hands were tied by rules preventing them from levying a more significant fee without a public vote endorsing a move. But that did not begin to satisfy the protesters, who heckled as two tech workers addressed a heavily attended public meeting and said they were looking for a much more comprehensive response.
"One dollar per bus stop is not in any way a remedy and does not mitigate the damage," McElroy said.
Google argues that the protesters are gunning for the wrong target, because the buses alleviated traffic and pollution and because most of the employees who take the bus would live in San Francisco anyway.
Those claims were challenged by a study published last week by researchers at Berkeley, across the Bay from San Francisco. They found that rents around the stops used by the Google buses were up to 20% higher than in otherwise comparable areas. They also found that 30-40% of tech workers would in fact move closer to their jobs if the bus service did not exist.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/ja...-francisco