Dangerous Google and Naked Users

Google users seem to have stripped off their safety vests, naked and paranoid. New technologies, while providing people with all sorts of convenient experiences, may also very likely become a new form of bondage, watching over and hijacking your life.

Snowden’s disclosure of PRISM this July revealed Google’s cooperation with the U.S. government in sharing its users’ data, a scandal that has made the search engine giant a target of public debate. Once again, a foreign source’s recent tip-off on Google gaining access to Android global users’ Wi-Fi passwords is pushing Google into the spotlight. According to U.S. media, the world’s leading mobile phone operating system, Android, is able to back up its Wi-Fi users’ passwords. Once your device is connected to a Wi-Fi network, Google will get to know your login information. With this capability, Google provides users with a “convenient” password-restoring service and in the meantime collects all their password info through Android devices. In this way, you would open the door and donate your privacy without realizing it.

It’s not just that one-time stealing and disclosure of one’s Wi-Fi password is disconcerting; more importantly, your whereabouts and traveling schedule are also completely exposed. Google backs up the net list on your Wi-Fi device and each corresponding password, covering places far more than your home but also hotels, bookstores, libraries, cafes, offices and various other venues where you have stayed. It adds these data to its map of Wi-Fi access points to complete a depiction of your whereabouts and habitual traveling routes. With just a small mistake or instance of negligence, users’ individual privacy could be given away and exploited all at once. For Android cellphone users around the world, it’s much more than just a bit disconcerting!

One of the century’s greatest IT giants, Google has been fearlessly pushing forward in developing new technologies. Such “killer” apps as Google Maps and Google Glass are greatly influencing people’s social life. “Don’t be evil” was once a popular slogan. Its meanings can be interpreted in two ways: First, Google has the potential to make threats. Second, Google should take on more social responsibilities. Unfortunately, Google is becoming a threat, as its user penetration reaches each corner of the world. It is not an exaggeration to say it has become a threat to the whole society. On the one hand, it is offering the best user experience; on the other, it is ripping you off with every tiny part of your privacy.

Using images from Google Maps, Peter Singer and Jeffrey Lin, two American researchers, recently wrote an analysis of China’s covert project of Liaoning, the country’s first homemade aircraft carrier. Based on nothing but photos pulled from blogs and the Internet, the report made a startling “check-up” on the ship, uncovering all kinds of its potential capabilities.

“The grainy photos that they were getting from those spy satellites were nothing compared to what you can get from Google Earth,” says Singer. The images they analyzed mostly came from different national defense forums. Some had been provided by military experts, retired vets and plain enthusiasts, others from official broadcasts or citizen journalists.

In the face of science and technologies, humans are both strong and weak. New technologies grow only in one direction — forward, yet the truth of history teaches us that in welcoming a form of convenience, people also bring to themselves a kind of bondage. More often than not, new media create alienating effects. Materialistic and spiritual production grow against humans, turning into a force of alienation.