All posts in user control

Hi. We're your new overlords.


Hi. We're Apple.


We are delighted to inform you that regulations require you to carry a device that:

a. Tells us where you are at all times;

b. Records who you talk with, and for how long;

c. Can be used to record exactly what you say, and the responses of other participants in these conversations;

d. Collects email and text messages sent by you and to you.

You will never be informed when this information is examined by anyone.

Buy a phone. It's cool.


You must tell us everything you do, no matter how trivial. Identify your friends and acquaintances, and how you know them. We expect you to check in with us at least several times a day, every day.


Install apps for Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare.


Tell us everything you are curious about.


Install apps for Google and/or Bing.


Pay us, because tracking you and sorting through all the information you give us takes time and we need to pay people to do it. Additionally, we need to sell your data to advertisers, marketers, or possibly just hand it over to law enforcement regardless of whether or not they have any legal right to have it, and your data doesn't package itself. Your data is worth money, and you must pay us because we value your data. We value it so much that we will sell it, because that lets us make more money. So pay us. We need to continue watching you.


You will be charged a reasonable monthly fee for these services.

Thank you,

Your new overlords

I came across another discussion on the use of Google Apps within K12 organizations -- this is a lightly edited version of my reply in that thread:

With Google Apps, the real value for Google isn't in "owning" your content. The value for them is in mining it, and then using that information to hone their business selling ads and working with affiliate advertisers -- and their privacy policy expressly states that your data will be used in this way.

From Google's Privacy Policy, at http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html

Log information – When you access Google services, our servers automatically record information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website. These server logs may include information such as your web request, Internet Protocol address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser.

So, they can track a request for a specific web site to a specific user, and can keep track of what an individual does over time.

Affiliated Google Services on other sites – We offer some of our services on or through other web sites. Personal information that you provide to those sites may be sent to Google in order to deliver the service. We process such information under this Privacy Policy. The affiliated sites through which our services are offered may have different privacy practices and we encourage you to read their privacy policies.

The approximate translation: when using Google Apps, you might get sent to another site, and this site might have a different privacy policy, and this site might share a different set of your private information with us. You may or may not know when this is happening, but it's your responsibility to know when to check for the privacy policy of these sites.

Then, the policy goes on to list why Google is collecting this information:

• Providing our services, including the display of customized content and advertising;
• Auditing, research and analysis in order to maintain, protect and improve our services;

I've chosen a very small section of the privacy policy here, but the full policy goes into much more detail, including info about geographical data.

For a sense of what can be inferred from even very rough user data, take a look at the fallout that occurred when AOL released search data from it's userbase. This search data is nowhere near as precise as what Google collects, but it still revealed an astonishing range of information about its users.

So, when schools are using Google Apps, every member of that community is participating in unpaid marketing research. If you are buying Google Apps as part of a service, you are paying to participate in market research.

As a closing thought, I'd like to hear the conversation that ensued if a person walked into the head of school's/principal's office and said the following:

"I'd like to enroll all of our Middle School students in an unpaid marketing research program. They'll never know it's going on, and every facet of their online collaboration will be tracked as part of the study. Oh, and it comes with email."