Facebook and Google: An Obvious Question Ignored
July 2, 2019
I read the Guardian’s opinion essay by Shoshana Zuboff, the author of the beach read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The write up’s title is “It’s Not That We’ve Failed to Rein in Facebook and Google. We’ve Not Even Tried.” I marked this passage as interesting to me:
The tech companies’ innovation rhetoric effectively blinded users and lawmakers for many years. Facebook and Google were regarded as innovative companies that sometimes made dreadful mistakes at the expense of our privacy.
The argument is that words caused law makers, users, and observers to unwittingly help out the bright folks who created “surveillance capitalism.”
This is one of the themes in Dr. Zuboff’s best selling book. A couple of observations:
- I am not sure Facebook and Google knew what they were doing. Situational decisions, user acceptance, and revenue pulled the folks forward. Hindsight makes the path easy to spot like a satellite photo that reveals an old Roman road.
- The technology components became available. In the spirit of tinkerers, a bit of experimentation produced some winners. When internal innovation was not enough, a couple of acquisitions proved to be the spark Facebook and Google needed. Who knew that DoubleClick cookies would be a better idea? Who knew that bad actors would flock to Facebook services?
- Governments — particularly the Five Eyes’ group — realized that Facebook and Google could be very useful. I recall that after my lecture at the International Chiefs of Police meeting in Canberra seven or eight years ago, quite a few attendees wanted to talk about the utility of non governmental data captured by these two outfits.
So what’s the big question?
What value do Facebook and Google deliver to LE and intel agencies?
Answer that, and there might be some useful topics for discussion. Pointing at committees and officials who are groomed by lobbyists is not particularly helpful.
Stephen E Arnold, July 2, 2019
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