Privacy according to Google

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” -- Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google.

To be more precise, this is what he said:

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines -- including Google -- do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.

The Google CEO’s statements have been controversial, to the point that people at Mozilla have recommended switching Firefox’s search engine to Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, which supposedly has better privacy policies than Google.

Privacy is not something that only worries people who are doing “dirty things”, as Alexander van Elsas says:

Privacy isn’t just about hiding personal information. Privacy is about choice. It’s about freedom. It is about the user that can draw his personal line somewhere in this exchange. It’s about restoring the balance between the user and the service provider. Many hot shot Internet guru’s have told us that privacy is dead. What they are saying is that personal choice and freedom are dead? Do you really believe that? That would be evil.

And Google’s motto is supposed to be Do no evil.